How to Bridge the Gap Between Sales, RevOps, and Dev Teams in Salesforce

Agile Salesforce development is a critical component of improving business outcomes because it helps bridge the gap between sales, RevOps, and development teams. By breaking down silos, fostering communication, and promoting collaboration between the business and IT, you can make changes to production much faster and with fewer errors. Plus, this velocity enables your sales team to maintain its competitive advantage.

In this blog, I explain what it means to implement the agile mindset across functions and discuss the benefits of this cross-functional integration, before providing a blueprint for a synchronized, agile work environment that boosts productivity and helps skyrocket revenue.

What Is Agile?

Before I explain how the agile mindset works across functions, let’s briefly explore what agile is and how it came about. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was pretty standard for developers to use the waterfall methodology. However, this had several distinct drawbacks, leading to a very rigid process with little to no room for adjustments. And all too often, the software was outdated even before the release date.

So in 2001, 17 visionaries came together to define a better way of developing software – one that allowed more room for innovation, incremental improvement, and responsiveness. The group of experts created the Agile Manifesto, the document that laid the foundation for agile software development. This methodology emphasizes delivering value early and often by prioritizing:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Focus on the customer.
• The ability to respond quickly to change.
• Short development cycles known as sprints.

The Agile Mindset Across Functions

Before long, agile proved super effective. Dev teams were able to respond to bugs and changes faster, time-to-market shortened, and customer or end user satisfaction improved. Because of this, the main principles of agile – embracing change, collaboration, and a commitment to delivering tangible results – resonated with many functions and industries beyond software. 

Regardless of whether you’re a business user or a member of the IT team, agile allows you to implement a cycle of constant improvement. By making small, impactful changes that drive success over time, you’re always ready to pivot and adjust strategies in response to new requests or developments.

Benefits of an Agile Ecosystem

So what are the benefits of an agile, cross-functional ecosystem?

1. Improved collaboration and enhanced team dynamics.
2. Streamlined processes and optimized outcomes.

First, agile practices enhance team dynamics by encouraging collaboration. Consider this example: your sales reps (who are in this instance the end users) have their finger on the pulse of the market, so they know immediately when they need a new feature or an update in production. When they communicate their findings to the RevOps team, RevOps can inform the development team who then create features and solutions that meet the end users’ evolving needs. Meanwhile, RevOps can make less impactful changes – like putting together packages that make sense for various use cases – within guardrails that are defined by development.

Second, an agile ecosystem streamlines processes and boosts outcomes due to increased efficiency, reduced time-to-market, and improved customer satisfaction. Let’s say that multiple sales reps want certain modifications to a quote. They can relay that information to RevOps, who ask development to prioritize the request for the next sprint. As a result, the sales reps have access to the updated quote sooner, meaning they can start using it immediately, leading to increased customer satisfaction and increased revenue capture.

Agile Salesforce Development for Cross-Functional Teams

Both the business and IT deal with rapid change and the need for constant innovation. In a cross-functional setting, the challenge is to translate agile practices into strategies that resonate with the objectives and workflows of the non-technical teams. 

For end users, adopting agile practices is about moving from a fixed mindset to one that’s fluid and flexible. This allows the team to pivot and request changes to production based on real-time market developments and customer feedback. It’s similar to how developers iterate on a product.

RevOps is responsible for integrating these continuously evolving change requests with the broader organizational goals. Agile release management offers a huge opportunity for RevOps to enhance its role as the facilitator of sales efforts. It bridges the gap between sales and dev so there’s effective communication while simultaneously adapting production to changing market dynamics. Ultimately, it’s all about tailoring offerings and outputs to the needs of those being served.

For business users, embracing the agile mindset usually requires a bit of a cultural shift. It’s a move away from the traditional way of doing things to a more dynamic process of continuous improvement. Sales needs to become comfortable with frequent, smaller adjustments, while RevOps has to foster a culture of transparency to openly share data and insights for more informed decision making.

Strategies for Adopting Agile

If you’re excited about transforming your approach to planning, collaboration, and execution, here’s how you can integrate agile practices on your cross-functional team:

• Streamline Salesforce change management using agile practices: For example, you could set up shorter cycles for working on change requests. This way, the sales reps don’t have to wait for the tools they need to engage effectively with customers. 
• Facilitate rapid adaptation to evolving end user needs: For instance, when you’re releasing a new product, you can quickly update packages and reporting dashboards to reflect this addition.
• Enhance data utilization with agile methodologies to inform sales strategies: This ensures that the business has access to timely, actionable insights to guide the decision-making process. 
• Unblock the overburdened IT Group: IT is busy with projects across the entire organization. Instead of allowing business users only the ability to request changes, allow them to make small tweaks on their own. Agility opens the door to delegation of responsibilities downstream to experienced users while maintaining guardrails to prevent unintended or major changes. 

Note: The key to integrating agile methodologies in a cross-functional team environment lies in the willingness to embrace change, delegate certain responsibilities, use data effectively, and maintain open lines of communication across departments.

Strategies for Cross-Functional Collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration might seem daunting because the traditional silos between sales, RevOps, and development teams can be significant barriers to efficiency and innovation. Fortunately, you can use agile practices to foster cross-functional collaboration, break down these walls, and encourage a more cohesive, dynamic approach to achieving the company’s common goals. Here’s how…

Cross-Functional Standups

• Frequent check-ins: A regular 10 to 15 minute standup for members of the sales, RevOps, and dev teams provides a chance to share updates, highlight obstacles, and align on goals.
• Key benefits: Scheduled standups ensure that every team is aware of what the others are working on, which fosters a sense of unity, shared purpose, and shared responsibility.  

Sprint Planning

• Collaborative goal setting: Hold regular planning sessions with members of all three teams where you collectively decide on the objectives for the upcoming sprint in a realistic, comprehensive manner. This ensures your goals are aligned with overall business objectives. Make sure there’s a known decision maker to prevent roadblocks and paralysis by analysis.

Retrospectives

• Reflect and adapt: After each sprint, gather cross-functional teams and discuss what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve processes. This will help foster a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. 

Tips for Promoting Open Communication and a Unified Approach

• Encourage active listening: Because everyone comes from a different background and has different experience, every perspective completes a critical part of the puzzle.
• Facilitate transparency around progress, challenges, and insights: Ways to promote this include shared dashboards, regular update emails, and shared work management applications.
• Create problem-solving focus groups: Bringing together diverse expertise to tackle complex challenges: This facilitates innovative thinking and encourages collective ownership of solutions.
• Celebrate joint successes: When any one team member succeeds, they all succeed. This reinforces the value of working together towards common goals.

Leverage Agile Salesforce Development for Better Business Outcomes

It is not only possible, but actually advisable to implement agile Salesforce development from the initiation of a change request all the way through the release of the change. When sales, RevOps, and dev work together effectively, you empower the business to move faster and respond to market changes as they happen. 

A DevOps platform like Prodly can be highly useful in this endeavor, as it empowers admins and business users to make updates while minimizing risk by sluicing more involved projects towards the dev team. And that agility is exactly what you need to be competitive in today’s business environment.

To learn more, download our eBook: Getting Started with Agile Release Management.