Lean Sales and Marketing Workshop – Engagement

Sales and marketing can no longer operate in a vacuum. It has become a process output that intertwines across many of the departments within the organization. As companies have become flat, their decision making is increasingly being done by committee. As a supplier, you must mimic your customer decision-making path and as a result your Read More …

The Kipling Growth Strategy Map

We played around today looking for an exercise to use in an upcoming workshop. We wanted something that demonstrated working from you core value proposition and using an incremental growth strategy. I have been influenced by Chris Zook’s work, which is outlined in Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change and Profit Read More …

Value Stream Mapping should be left on the Shop Floor

Show a little respect for your customers and don’t use value stream mapping in the sales process. The problem is mapping becomes a prediction of what someone might do. We typically take that “prediction” and that “might” and turn them into a guide and should do. We end up trying to manage our customer through Read More …

Lean Sales Method CAP Do

Lean Sales Methods allow us to start adapting and understanding our customer needs during the sales learning cycles. We no longer can think about control and manipulation that occurs in the traditional sales funnel.  Our focus has been backwards when we have tried to improve sales from the inside-out. We must learn to focus our Read More …

The Casual Relationship of Lean Sales

In a recent podcast, Scenario Thinking the Next Big Thing, with George Wright, co-author of Scenario Thinking: Practical Approaches to the Future, I asked, “When we are looking at different alternatives to the future, we paint a picture with scenarios?  George: Yes, the scenarios are descriptions of the future often constructed by management teams. They Read More …

Stop, Look and Listen

Terri Griffith in her book,The Plugged-In Manager provides an easy-to-understand framework for plugging in, explained by these three core practices: Stop-Look-Listen: What does your data say? What do you already know that will help you with this project? Mixing: How do you balance your available resources? Sharing: How can you achieve better results by integrating Read More …