Lean thinking helps organisations improve their results. This applies to B2B sales and marketing as well. Many organisations have been successful at adopting Lean principles in sales. What is special about Lean Sales is it’s ability to create sustainable and predictable sales results.
But let’s start with the background on why one should consider applying Lean in Sales.
I have been working in different roles (including Sales Person, Sales Manager, Consultant, Vice President, Managing Director) in Sales since 1997. On top of selling, I have always searched for approaches that yield repeatable and predictable results. Predictable improvements in outcomes and predictable return on investments. How could we sell more and win more business?
I have looked into sales methodologies only to find that the results have very short life-span. Results fade away in couple of months. Also, most methods require heavy training effort to master. But predictability and repeatability are largely missing.
The biggest draw-back has been the fact that they focus on the lone agent, the sales person, as an individual person. Don’t get me wrong – it is great to help individuals do their work better and help them learn and grow. But this does not usually help the organisation. The organisation is about team work between different functions, teams and processes. The question is how to make the different parts of the organisation to work efficiently and effectively together.
The analogy might be a symphony orchestra. If staffed with the best individuals, one still has to agree to the tune and learn to play together. B2B selling is very complex environment and therefore any improvements require systemic approach. Sales methods don’t cut it.
After looking into sales methodologies I started to look at Six Sigma, Lean and Theory of Constraints for answers. Lean thinking is perfectly relevant to marketing and sales processes as it is to manufacturing and shop-floor operations. The fact that very few people had applied Lean in Sales didn’t make irrelevant to me. I saw this as an opportunity.
I wrote Lean Sales to create one step towards Lean sales processes.
Lean Sales describes both end to end sales management system as well as tools and techniques, practical implementation of Lean principles in Sales. Since publishing the book we’ve worked with number of companies searching for predictable and repeatable sales result improvements. Application of Lean principles in sales makes perfect sense.
Creation of Lean Sales tools and techniques is on going.
Join the journey with us!