Lean-in on Sales and Marketing

    あまりにも販売中リーン作品。Unless you speak or read Japanese, those first few words may be unfamiliar to you.  They say quite simply, Lean works in Sales too.  Well, I hope they do; although I have been to Japan I can not say I am fluent by any means.  While it often times ends up being a learning curve or feeling like babel Lean principles can also become the common language in Sales and Marketing too.  In fact it may be that Lean when applied to sales and marketing can yield increased results that will provide noticeable improvements to your bottom line.  

1.  Identify Customer Value

  Remember the principles of Lean still apply, we still want to define what value is to a customer.  Because sale and marketing are often in the pipeline this is a fantastic opportunity to get some of the purest data on what customer value is, right from the source.  You may want to investigate some options for CRM initiatives or conjure up an anonymous voice of the customer survey,  whatever your tactic is take advantage of this key principle and begin to identify exactly what value is to your customers.

2.  Set the Standards

  We don't often think of Sales and Marketing as strictly Internal functions, they work on both sides of the Vale constantly going out and returning to report back.  By setting Clear and decisive standards for common activities like quoting, sales orders, email campaigns or contacting customers in the pipeline we can ensure that our sales and marketing team don't start their blogs in a foreign language.  Remember that standards are the basis for improvement opportunities and they can be applied anywhere.  

​3.  Eliminate "Tacit" Implement Transparent

  While this tip is very similar to Standardization, we should note that many times Sales managers and employees are often left trying to figure out what "language" they should speak.  Often times a sales process is not defined and salesman must turn to their experience in hopes that it will work without variation.  One solution to this common issue of Tacit knowledge is to begin to gather the elements that can be standardized and do so, remember if performed correctly Standardization takes the benchmark or the best practice and puts it to work for you. This simple tactical activity will transform tacit knowledge into a common language.  If you can take 20% of your Sales and Marketing teams activities and standardize them just think they will have 20% more time to hone in on Transforming or adding Value to the relationships that may be sitting in queue.

4. Huddle up! 
  
  While huddling is a great start to becoming more transparent, making Sales and Marketing activities Visual is so, so powerful.  When things become Visual we can then manage and support based on the activities shown. That would mean if some activities became Visual in Sales and Marketing or S&OP activities we would then see and be able to track;

1. Relationships or Conditions that are falling to the wayside
2. Opportunities not being attended to
3. Performance

  While many of these Key performance Indicators allow us to track activities that may "not" be happening we should also note the activities that are happening;

1. Meeting Goals
2. Big Sales
3. Cross selling performance
4 Improvement of Triple Bottom Line

  Let's remember too that we track metrics to figure out how we can improve and continue to create new Economic, Environmental and Social opportunities so make things visual with the intention of improving, aligning and supporting each other.

  While it may seem like a foreign language from time to time and you may not be fluent right away, every language has the ability to be learned or translated even the language of Lean in Sales and Marketing. It's like any other Journey, just get started and one day you will look back with astonishment on what once seemed so foreign that now seems so familiar.