Lean In Sales - Yes That Is True! Many of us have always thought that the principles of lean are primarily restricted to factories. However, now, that is not the case; lean is not only a factory thing but also a sales thing. Yup, you read it perfectly right. Lean can be thought of as a business ecosystem that takes into account all the operations of an entire company. An example OK, we know that you, the reader, must want an example that will let us prove that sales, too, need the principles of lean. Consider an example of the Toyota Business System - this particular system addresses three key loops, and they are written below. • • •
Design Make Sell
Now, can you make an educated guess as to which one of the processes of this business system (which, of course, is the prototype of lean) is regarded as the most significant one? It is the Sell process because it is the one that is the closest to a customer.
The sales include all the golden nuggets of wisdom Information is the essence of sales, and there are countless fragments of information in the sales department. These fragments can be related to the: • Customers' wants • Price points at which the customers are comfortable • Promotions and marketing tactics to which the customer responds
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Way by which the customer wishes to receive the services or products?
The operation or production department is the most valuable, expensive asset that runs on info. It has been seen many times that only those products or services are created that the info tells or instructs. If, however, the information does not sit well, then even the most valuable and powerful assets will function within its respective silos only. And the result of such a behavior will be pretty detrimentalinventory-related ills and overproduction. The lean comes to sales Whenever you are considering bringing lean into sales, here are a couple of important questions to begin with: • What is the key value in sales? (This question will include finding out who are the external and internal customers of a company.) • How does a company define "waste"? • What are the different mental models within a sales department? • Which of the current sales processes are delivering high values? • How aligned is the derived value from the one that the customer has expected? • And if there is any gap between the value that is delivered and the one that is expected, then what is the way to improve? Once you get the answer for each of these questions, you will be able to get a clear picture as to how lean will come into sales; during finding the answers, you will, in a way, be implementing lean. Mind you, implementing lean outside a factory (that is, within a sales process) is way harder than deploying it within the production process or the in the QA phase. And the sole reason that makes this exercise tedium during the sales phase is because generally from the beginning, the products/services/produce is invisible. For instance, if a factory makes scrap materials, it will not be difficult to quantify its produce as everyone can see a pile of junk. While in a sales process, the forecasting and analyses are generally identical and cannot be seen. For this reason, it is better to solicit the services of a lean manufacturing consulting firm whenever sales need to be made creative and smart through lean. Lean Manufacturing is a strategic approach that allows companies to achieve more of their business strategy in less time. Contact us to know more about about Lean manufacturing consultants and Lean manufacturing assessment..