How Lean is your Sales process?
In the nineties Lean Manufacturing or Lean Production was all the hype. It was being proposed as the optimal way of producing goods through the removal of waste and implementing flow, as opposed to batch and queue.
This generic process management philosophy was derived from the successful Toyota Production System (TPS) and was mainly build on the Seven Wastes as identified by Toyota’s Chief Engineer, Taiichi Ohno.
These wastes concern:
- Goods and materials
- Production machines, production capacity
- People, workforce
The Seven Wastes for Lean are:
Defects prevent the customers from accepting the product produced.
Overproduction must be stored, managed and protected.
Conveyance: Each time a product is moved it stands the risk of being damaged, lost, delayed, etc.
A cost for no added value.
Transportation of goods and parts does not make any transformation to the product.
Waiting of the workers, the products and the capital investment sunk in goods.
Inventory: any item not being actively processed to add value is waste.
Motion refers to the transport of the producer or worker or equipment: not bringing any value.
Over-processing: Using a more expensive or otherwise valuable resource than is needed for the task.
Adding features that are designed in but not needed by the customer.
Selling Leaner
In the current economic crisis having a leaner Sales process or selling leaner could have a great impact on company results.
The goods, the production machines and the workforce all need to be redefined:
- Leads:
The goods are the leads as they have required an investment.
A real expense has been made to get any lead. There is no such thing as a free lead.
- Sales tools:
The production machines are all the tools being used in the sales process: mobile phone, telephone, fax, email, pc, pda, crm, website, car, Internet, …
- Sales:
The people are the sales reps and the sales assistants.
The Seven Wastes for a Lean Sales process
Defects:
Proposing wrong product or solution to a lead.
Overproduction:
Getting too many leads no sales rep can follow-up: lead qualification is required.
Conveyance:
Handing over leads from one Sales rep to another.
Waiting:
Sales people waiting at the telephone, before the meeting, on the airport, …
Waiting for a reply by email, fax or letter.
Inventory:
Any qualified lead that isn’t followed up.
Motion:
Sales people do travel a lot.
If they could travel less the operating costs of a company could be significantly lower.
Over-processing:
Taking the Sales Manager to visit a small customer or very local reseller.
Calling the CEO for setting the price on a small deal.
Other Wastes in Sales
In selling or the sales process there are many other wastes possible:
Budget:
Following up upon a lead not having a budget or insufficient budget
Dispatching:
Investing time in a lead that doesn’t move forward in the funnel and neglecting other leads that are moving forward.
Meetings and conference calls:
Setting up never ending series of meetings and conference calls.
Avoiding the unknown:
It is easier to talk to a known relation than to start with an unknown company as relations still need to be build.
Not using the information
Not using the available information.
Or not being able to gather the available information.
Not investigating in the company.
Not selling to the decision maker:
Addressing those people in a company who will never take a decision:
- Technologists
- Users
- Staff or assistants
- External consultants
How lean are you selling?
How much waste do you have in your sales process?
Can you measure your waste in selling?
If you could measure, then you can avoid waste in Sales or sales process.
LEADSExplorer can give you indications by showing visually the efforts made compared to the intensity and number of website visits by company.
This allows to find companies getting:
- Plenty attention from Sales and hardly any response: no reply or website visits.
- Hardly any attention from Sales and paying frequent visits to your website.
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I always enjoy reading quality articles by an author who is obviously knowledgeable on their chosen subject. I’ll be following this thread with great interest. Keep up the great work, till next time
[...] time, and otherwise streamlining the existing process to make it better and cheaper. Here’s a good “lean” article, by way of [...]