Are Lean Salespeople Trusted with an Andon?

Peter Drucker had a catchy statement: “Efficiency is doing things right: effectiveness is doing the right thing.’ If you have enough foresight to know with certainty what the “right thing’ is in advance, then efficiency is a fitting substitution for effectiveness. In the world of Sales and Marketing, however, the correlation between efficiency and effectiveness Read More …

A Lean Interpretation of Christensen’s Talk

I base my Lean Thinking on 3 principles. Standardization, Improvement, and Exploration. The little “i” of innovation is provided through SDCA and PDCA. Standard Work (SDCA) creates a can-do attitude and frees up time for problem-solving. Applying PDCA, allows you to “see” opportunities for improvement and leverages the resources in your environment. I like to Read More …

Have you done a Customer Relationship Audit?

I know your thinking that all you need is the Net Promoter Score and I will not disagree that it is an important question. However, sometimes just a good old audit and questionnaire might still have some value. You may not be able to do it all in one setting or even ask all the Read More …

Sales Collaboration Using E – E – E

I like to use the term EDCA (Explore-Do-Check-Act) learned from Graham Hill to designate the Explore aspect of Lean. I view it as more of Design Type thinking content that allows for that collaborative learning cycles with a customer. Most of us design sales and marketing actions around how we think, not how the customer Read More …

Using Job Methods to Sell Your Ideas

Most of us familiar with Training Within Industry know that the majority of the training in TWI has been in the area of Job Instruction. When we think about Sales, we immediately think about Job Relations. I think TWI offers a greater opportunity. We spend most of our time training sales and support people to Read More …

5 Core Sales Concepts of Lean Thinking

When introducing Lean Thinking many of us would start with the five core concepts of Lean depicted in the classic books, The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones. The basic thought process goes something like this: As value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and Read More …