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06/22/2012 10:30 AM
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I'm looking for suggestions on appraoches to roll-out Lean to our inside and outside sales team. We have about 2,200 employees with 100+ branch locations. We can successfully cover training - conducted at regional meetings...but any ideas on where to start for Kaizen Events and/or Lean tools. For instance, we can apply the 5S methodology to all locations or pick a process within a branch (but that would be site specific and not impact the larger sales force organization. Ideas?
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06/22/2012 03:47 PM
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Barbara,
Before anyone can give you useful advice about the "how?", we need to know more about your situation - the "why?" Sure lean is a great thing to do, but unless you have some very strong reasons or specific problems you need to solve with lean, it will most likely fail miserably and leave everyone even more jaded.
Applying lean to Sales & Marketing is not like what most organizations do for lean manufacturing or lean office. I've written a book on this subject and it took 5 years of research and application to get a good grip on it. Sales & Marketing processes have transactional, learning, and influence outputs, so the common transactional lean manufacturing / office tools are at best only part of the solution. And mass or tools training (other than for cursory awareness) will probably have no impact. Learning lean is a hands-on process which includes discovering what tools are needed to solve a specific problem identified by those in the value stream.
Please share more about your situation so we can give you more useful answers. What are your biggest business problems and how are they linked to Sales? What gaps do you want lean to help bridge?
Brent
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06/25/2012 06:55 PM
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Hi Barbara
I prefer introducing people to what Lean is along with a basic introduction to some of the tools. Then after that get them talking to see what are the biggest issues they are facing, you may even benefit from different offices doing different things at the sametime if you share the information with the other offices. I have been to places where 5S was needed even though it is a basic tool, they had it just they never called it that.
Most of true Lean's greatest success stories come from dozens of different little Kaizens done in different places, but in big organizations sharing information is key, but remember one size will never fit all, even in Toyota there are differences in how each plant operates and how they do the same job, yet they all share information about both good and bad attempts to improve.
Good Luck and Live Lean and Prosper.
Robert Drescher
ELSE Inc.
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06/26/2012 11:38 AM
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Barbara,
As you said, I would start very simply and local to start. As Brent said, Sales and Marketing is a different process. Most of us deal with the supply side of the equation, sales and marketing works on the demand side. So you have to find common ground to introduce Lean to them.
I think the first step is developing a consensus on Standard Work. It will meet resistance but it is the one thing that will can have a significant impact.almost immediately. I am not talking about developing call scripts, checklist, etc. I am talking about characterizing how we do things or in other words provide clarity. At that point, best practices will surface and a few bad ones will be obvious even to the naysayers.
You can choose to either spread best practices (which I prefer) or solve problems without have to use that dreaded word "buy-in". I will leave you with two thoughts:
Ohno: "Without a Standard there can be no Kaizen."
Dr. Balle: "Lean is not a revolution; it is solve one thing and prove one thing."
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06/27/2012 01:29 PM
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Barbara,
As you know, sales is different than manufacturing but the concepts still apply. Identify the value-add (ex., face time with the customer) and focus on eliminating or reducing everything else. Can you do kaisens on ways to standardize and minimize the administrative and other non-value adding tasks?
Lee
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06/29/2012 11:04 AM
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If what you are asking is "how do I find the why?" it makes sense you are getting resistance. How can you justify change if people don't see a problem? Expose the problem! Lean teaches us visual management tools and surveys (when done correctly) can quantify responses. Ask the right questions that will lead you to the responses you need to get the buy-in.
In my recent experience with Kaizen I found some answers, not all, but some; as to how to find the why. An engaging kaizen event where those who carry out the work, on all levels, are brought together as part of identifying cycle times, waste, and why there is a need for change as well as offer solutions you will find execution to have much less resistance costing less and improve team engagement. Nicknamed in consulting as "the cash cow" for ideas naturally I have several however, lean teaches us we must first seek to understand the opportunity before we can capitalize on an idea. Sales and marketing is so much about passion for the purpose, people, product. Kaizen, from what I know, can bring people together to talk about what they are passionate about and find ways to sell/market more product. Kaizen is like a structured pep-rally for identifying why, knowing why is like profit, if we know why we have a problem we can fix it quickly with sustained results. Have a "let's try it" attitude with a set schedule for continuous improvement. What have you done to engage employee engagement outside of 5s to expose the need for kaizen?
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06/29/2012 11:04 AM
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Brent, you mentioned that you wrote a book on the subject of applying lean to sales & marketing, is the book still in print? Can you give me the particulars? We, our local lean consortium will be having a round table event to put together a program addressing the subject. I envision us beginning with a process map and breaking down the elements to further examine the elements to see what non-value steps can be eliminated and then moving on from there. Anything you can share will be helpful.
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06/29/2012 11:39 AM
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Hi Ken, the book is called The Fluff Cycle and it is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple. It was just published. Process mapping can be very useful in selling processes but I find a lot of groups put too much emphasis on waste reduction and not enough on value creation. What is the specific problem you are trying to solve?
Brent
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07/09/2012 10:58 AM
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I would suggest that you go to www.ballistix.com.au and look at their program on Sales Process Engineering. Justin has put together a program which looks at how you can indeed apply the principle of TOC to sales. Justin is also now based in the USA too. The concept Justin talks about is one which has many applications, and in today's world with constraints and cost reductions, makes sense too.
Regards
Frank
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10/29/2012 03:54 PM
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Originally posted by: Barbara Knoll
but any ideas on where to start for Kaizen Events and/or Lean tools. For instance, we can apply the 5S methodology to all locations or pick a process within a branch (but that would be site specific and not impact the larger sales force organization. Ideas?
Barbara:
Sorry I didn't see your post until now. Be careful!!! I have seen many companies try to approach Lean in sales as if it were just another production plant, or perhaps like it was the accounting or engineering department. Just jumping in with 5S for a sales team is pretty much a waste of time. The benefit is academic, at best, and salespeople will have a great deal of difficulty seeing the point. Attempting to translate Lean directly to sales like this is a mistake.
The reason is that although sales is a production system, few Lean practitioners understand
- what value this function creates (for the customer)
- what standard work looks like in sales (how to actually help salespeople sell)
- what simple measures are meaningful in the sales process (value vs waste)
- what PDCA looks like for sales managers (they are not taught how to do this)
What is required instead is to begin with first principles:
Begin by looking for data around issues and challenges the sales force is struggling with, and do root cause analysis. They cannot see the benefit of having a sales process until it is tied to solving a real problem they currently have. They usually cannot figure this out, because they've never lived in a healthy environment for process thinking. You as the leader of the Lean/process excellence initiative must help them find it.
There are some parallels to the Lean tools in sales and marketing. But they are not what you would think they are, because they have to do with
1) helping the customer solve their problems more effectively
(e.g., understanding where the customer is on their buying cycle
and offering them useful information and assistance - this is
challenging in channel sales or complex B2B environments)
2) making the work observable and repeatable through operating definitions, etc.
(salespeople respect the idea of qualification criteria and a sequence of steps.
The problem is they have never had to create operating definitions around them)
3) anticipating that root causes may - or may not - be inside the sales department
(One of the biggest reasons salespeople will support a Lean initiative, BTW. If the
salespeople believe the company will listen and address root causes where
ever they are found, they will follow you anywhere.)
You have to "give the sales team the problem" of improving their results by a specific method (e.g., sales process excellence), guide them as they create a "plan" for improving and implement it, help them Check what happened, what they learned (it will be much different than they think at first), and then help them learn to Act effectively based on what they learned. (Sales managers are generally not taught such things, and are often quite receptive to them.)
Hope that helps some. Don't mean to be self-promotional, but lots of additional and free information is at www.salesperformance.com.
Michael Webb
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02/04/2013 10:50 AM
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I like the suggestion from Joseph, start with standard work. I do not know if you are familiar with TWI-JI but the method has a four step process and part of this process is breaking down the job to find the key points and reasons for key points. So start with a successful sales person as they will most likely be using a proven method/process which has always worked for them. You can then standardize this process with the key points of success.
Teams provide a lot of value in the sales process, include the operations people and other technical experts who can provide instant answers for the customer.
Finally, sell by using value add, each product or service always has a basic model, determine the value to the customer and add this to the basic price but no more.
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