Can Lean Improve Sales?

[David Dodd]

Over the past few weeks, one question that has received a great deal of attention in lean discussion forums such as this one is: Can lean improve sales? Clearly, the interest in this issue has been driven by the current global recession. In most cases, the real thrust of the question is whether having lean production and support processes can help a company improve sales. When people respond to this question, most will usually point out that a lean company is highly efficient and that it can offer lower prices and/or faster job turnaround, both of which can help grow sales.

I agree that these attributes of lean can support sales, but lean principles can also be used to improve sales in a more direct way. Yesterday, I created a post for the PrintCEO blog, Print CEO - Printing Industry News Blog, that introduces this topic. I won't repeat the entire post here, but one of the main points I tried to make is that marketing and sales is a business process. And because it is a business process, marketing and sales can be analyzed, measured, and improved using process improvement tools such as lean and Six Sigma.

The starting point is to recognize that your marketing and sales process itself must provide value to customers. The objective of the marketing and sales process is to produce customers. To accomplish that objective, the marketing and sales process takes "raw materials" (people or organizations in the marketplace who have the kinds of problems your company can solve) and adds value for them until they are transformed into customers.

How does a marketing and sales process add value to a prospective customer? Primarily by using a range of communications techniques and media to convey information that the prospect needs to make an informed buying decision. So, to begin creating a lean marketing and sales process, draw a map of your existing marketing and sales process. Then look at each activity in your process map and ask yourself some simple questions. Does this activity create value for a prospective customer? If not, it's waste. Then the question becomes: Can the activity be eliminated or substantially reduced? If the activity provides some value, does it provide enough? Is there a way to change the activity so that it will provide more value? Are there "value gaps" in your sales and marketing process? In other words, do your prospective customers need certain information or assistance that your current process is not providing?

In the post at Print CEO blog, I made the point that most managers try to solve sales problems by providing training on individual selling skills, or by tweaking the sales compensation program, or by simply demanding more marketing and selling activity - more prospecting, more sales calls, or more quoting. At times, these actions can be useful, but if the underlying marketing and sales process is flawed, or wasteful, or ineffective, they won't solve your sales problem.

 

[scottsorheim]

I completely agree. Sales is a process like anything else, and must be viewed from the perspective of adding the most value to customers.

I haven't yet seen a group/company/publication that explicitly states they are doing "lean sales" (they may be out there, just haven't come across them), but there are a few resources that I have found that whether or not they know it, I think are promoting lean within sales:

This book looks at making your sales process measurable and managing toward sales metrics:
The Dolphin and the Cow

I think this book really looks at the sales process from a customer perspective...and eliminating waste. Only do things in your sales process that help move your prospective customer to a decision (add value).
Same Game New Rules

I talk more about these books here: sclog » Blog Archive » Sales as a lean process…really?

Also, there is a "lean marketing" organization I recently stumbled on here:
Value Acceleration

Scott Sorheim

 

[mattf]

The one section I completely agree with in your Print CEO post is this:

The second component of how you sell is the process you use to engage and work with your customers....Companies at the lowest level have no formal selling process. Every salesperson does his/her own thing. At the highest level, a company uses a well-defined selling process. The company monitors and measures the use of the process by its sales team and provides continuous feedback to individual salespeople about the process.

This hit right at home. At the company I work for the sales people do their own thing. We do not target specific sections of the market, we do not create continuous feedback and each salesperson has their own way of handling their accounts.

A part of that is there is no upper management support, which is the largest part of this all. Its mostly of a "hoarding" of information, which I believe is counter-intuitive, but I don't run the company! Onto the rest of the article....

Your argument divides when talking about perspective customers and continued customers. You mentioned it briefly in your blog post, but I think you should of stepped it further. The whole idea of getting perspective customers is to develop a relationship to create ongoing and long term partnerships that last for decades and decades. The ideas you put forward are good, but the "value" the salesperson gives off must also be matched with the "value" of the printed work, and there is the divide.

We can talk all day about how to improve sales and production efficiency, but the main attribute that needs to be consistent is the company needs to trust itself first before this starts. Lean can improve sales but if the workflow of the company doesn't support that improvement sales will not go anywhere. As I said before, the only way to start it off is to create management support, which I believe is the hardest part of the whole process. That might be a deeper discussion to talk about later though.

 

[grm0001]

Great information..
I agree with your informations about how to improve sales..
Popularity of product will improve the sales..
Thanks for the post..
It is useful to all who are willing to improve their sales!!!!

Gentlerain Marketing