I think it is about time companies start to look beyond sales methodologies when improving sales results.

Sales methodologies tend to focus on management of energy and improvement of discipline in daily operations. Both items are important to high performance and one can clearly identify the existence of both in winning sales organisations. But there is a big but here.

Sales methods aim at improving sales performance, but most of sales methods approach this from wrong angle. They focus on the individual sales person and do not appreciate the whole system and environment nor do they focus on identification of root causes of any problems. Therefore companies should look beyond sales methods when improving the sales performance and sales effectiveness.

B2B selling is very complex environment and therefore any improvements require systemic approach. The environment includes lots different potential customers with different needs, incentives, management system, sales support, marketing outreach, new offerings and so on. One cannot make sustainable performance improvements through picking just one element in the system and improving it’s performance.

Lean thinking helps to understand the whole system. Lean helps managers to identify the root causes of any performance problems and it helps to improve the performance of the whole sales and marketing system. Usually this requires more discipline in thinking than monetary investments. Proper analysis will save both time and money for companies.

Cheers,

Tapio

Take a look at my latest book on Amazon.com (titled Lean Sales) to learn how B2B companies can create breakthrough results in sales and marketing based on Lean principles and 20 case studies of implementation. Join the Lean Sales movement.

P.s. I am very interested to hear learnings and experiences from other companies applying Lean in sales.