Lean Sales

How to improve on commercial actions both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Applying Lean principles to sales & marketing processes can give surprising results in terms of improvement in a company’s performance.

However, there has always been a sort of scepticism in applying Lean principles to Sales and Marketing themes because there is still widely a held belief that anything to do with these areas is more to do with the empathy and creativity of the sales and marketing people than with a standardised process similar to that of production.

There are five principles involved in the Lean Philosophy at the basis of interventions in the Sales and Marketing area, which are:

Value: i.e. the value for the customer as a driver for the definition of the company’s Value Proposition;
Map: meaning the identification of the value flow, i.e. of the actions required to develop and deliver the company’s Sales Proposition to the market, by eliminating all unnecessary
activities and related waste;
Flow: fine-tuning business processes and an organisation aimed at keeping the flow of activities “moving” that create value for the customer;
Pull: making the whole corporate system be “pulled” along by the customer;
Perfection: pursuing perfection by constantly applying the PDCA cycle in support of the activities of continuous improvement;

The Lean Sales approach developed integrates a set of processes, conduct, tools and best practices aimed at making the commercial Value Stream converge with the Customer Journey.

Only the alignment of the two processes allows you to:

Stabilise the relationship between the customer and the company;
Align the business processes with the real needs of the customer;
Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of commercial activities and related performance by reaching and constantly monitoring results that can be sustained over time;