Are You Ready to Lead Your Salespeople on a Lean Kaizen Journey?
The tough economy seems to be causing more companies to poke around their sales departments with 5S or other lean-style experiments. We’ve received more inquiries on the topic, and some threads have popped up in lean and process-oriented bulletin boards. Many of these inquiries come from in-house Read more
Five Things Sales and Marketing Can Learn From Lean Production
Some companies already know a lot about the transition from traditional to lean production operations. As it turns out, there are remarkable parallels between the lean journey in manufacturing and the lean journey in sales and marketing (sales kaizen). When implemented effectively, both the benefits and the Read more
Banish the Waste from Sales and Marketing: Think Different!
One of the most valuable questions I ask sales and marketing teams is,
“What kinds of things clearly add no value to your sales and marketing operations?”
People react strongly. They give me examples like:
- Time spent nursing product quality problems
- Time spent on administration, reporting, and menial tasks (leaving little time for customers)
- Trade shows that generate boxes of “leads” not worth calling on
- Marketing literature that no one reads
- Wasting time with the wrong prospects
What is surprising is that these Read more
What Value Does Your Process Create for the Customer?
As a sales manager 18 years ago, when I first asked myself this question, I distinctly remember the feeling of the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I didn’t know the answer then. However, I do now, and you need to know it too. Read more
How Lean Is Your Sales Process?
“Lean Thinking” (by James Womack and Daniel Jones, Free Press, June 2003) helped galvanize a radical approach to managing manufacturing organizations that smooths out production flow, making it far more productive and responsive. Inevitably, some people wonder if “Lean thinking” could apply to sales and marketing—whether it could smooth out Read more
Can You Lean The Sales Process?
If you have not been focused on manufacturing industries in the last several years, you might wonder what the title of this article means. If you have been paying attention to those industries, however, you know that “Lean Thinking” (the title of a book by James Womack and Daniel Jones) Read more
