Lean Sales Methods Webinar

During the week of June 3rd, the Business901 blog and Podcast will be dedicated to the latest thoughts on utilizing Lean Sales Methods in organizations. At the end of the week, Friday June 7th, I will host a webinar on Lean Sales Methods followed by an interactive session and a Q and A. Only registered participants will be invited to webinar and Q & A.

Lean Sales Methods allows us to start thinking about adaption and understanding that occur during learning cycles. We no longer can think about control and manipulation that occurs in the traditional sales funnel.  The problem is that sales forces have been forced to create their own hybrid way to accomplish their goals, SALES. As a result, most organization have left the sales people fend for themselves as long as they met their numbers.  We accepted a variety of methods from relationship to problem solving selling deeming that every salesperson has their own style. Though this is true, it often results in misinformation and downstream problems after the job has been sold.

Lean Sales Methods do not organize and streamline the process for a cookie cutter approach. Instead it emphasizes an action framework that allows sales people and teams to evaluate a range of options around pre-constructed scenarios. In simpler terms, we practice the possible outcomes and determine strength based approaches to them. A general outline of the week long activities:

1. Gemba Walks
2. Why every sales call should be constructed around CAP-Do
3. What Metrics should be reported
4. How to improve Sales Dialogue
5. Teaming in the Sales Arena
6. Why Problem Solving is out and Challenging is in.
7. What is in it for the Sales Managers

The webinar will be approximately 15 minutes long. Afterwards, there will be an interactive session on Story Dialoguing your Sales Pitch followed by a Q and A session.

Join us and register for this event. The material will be distributed, through a variety of media, to include Business901 blog, podcast, YouTube channels, Slideshare and the newsletter. At a later day, it will be accumulated and posted to the Training content on the Business901 website. By registering, you will receive this material as it is distributed. We will also furnish updates and lessons learned to the registered participants. Only registered participants will be invited to webinar and Q & A.

About: Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and marketing arena. He has taken his process thinking of over thirty years in small business within a wide variety of industries and applied it through Lean Marketing Concepts. Joe put himself through college utilizing the GI Bill, the result of being a member of the 82^nd Airborne Division, and as a welder at Asphalt Drum Mixers. This hands-on approach and an education in both in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering have served him well becoming president of that company and later leaving to own several other companies. Joe has participated in company revitalization efforts, start-ups, and turnarounds, in a variety of industries, to include professional services, retail, and manufacturing.

Average Salespeople are Problem Solvers

One of my favorite books last year was The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. The authors summed up much of what I have been trying to say for the past several years in a much more compelling and concise way than I ever could. I encourage you to read the book. I have the Kindle Version and audio version of the book (I like it).

At the heart of their research is the Sales Person and Sales Manager. First, let me explain the five types of sales people that you will recognize in an instant.

1. Hard Worker: Show up early, stay late and always willing to put the extra effort.
2. Relationship Builder: Strong personal and professional relationships and advocates for the customer.
3. Lone Wolf: Follow their own instincts instead of the rules, they just gitter done.
4. Reactive Problem Solver: Tend to focus on heavily on post-sales follow-up ensure promises are kept.
5. The Challenger: Assertive and have a deep understanding of customer’s business.

Many would look at this mix and think how they have a few of each type. In fact, the study shows that the average salesperson is spread across all five areas. As the authors say, “mediocrity comes in multiple flavors.” What is so revealing in the study is that 40% of the top (star) performers are The Challenger model. The attributes of The Challenger were further broken down into six significant factors:

1. Offers the customer unique perspectives
2. Have strong 2-way communication skills
3. Knows the individual customers value drivers
4. Can identify economic drivers of the customer’s business
5. Is comfortable discussing money
6. Can pressure the customer

These factors correlate to how the challenger creates sales. They are willing to challenge a customer, and their thinking to create new opportunities through more effectiveness or innovative ways of thinking. In other words, they are making the customer more profitable with different ideas. Another surprising truth is that this also relates to sales managers. The sales manager role is not resource allocation but assisting sales people in innovative ways of getting a deal done. The authors define this innovative thinking in this way.

This is about creatively connecting the suppliers existing capabilities to each customer’s unique environment and then presenting those capabilities to the customer through the specific lens of whatever customer obstacle is keeping that deal from closing.

What is happening in the world of sales is that we are on the edge (or maybe already there) of a collaborative way of selling. We no longer can just sell to a customer; we have to sell to the customer’s customer. The only way that I believe possible is if we are participating at the point of use of our product or service. 

When most people think about Lean, they view Lean only from a problem solving perspective, that 5 Why stuff. In that context, a Lean sales person would assume the role of an expert solving a problem for someone. If we view it from The Challenge perspective, we would just be average utilizing Lean Sales and Marketing. When I apply Lean to Sales and Marketing, I view Lean as a knowledge building exercise. It is the deeper understanding of the customer business that we achieve through the methods of PDCA and EDCA. We are exploring opportunities and helping the customer become more efficient or create better opportunities. It is not the role or expert that you must take. Experts are only average sales people. You must allow your customer to become your Sensei and learn their business from their perspective. This opens up the role of The Challenger Sale, which happens to be the most productive type of salesperson.

Would you like to learn more about this subject?

Lean Thinking with Service Dominant Logic

Learn more at this upcoming event: Grow your Small Business with Lean

The Planning Cycle

I constructed this document five years ago when most of my consulting centered around project management. As I review it now, I can see where the influences of different planning instruments and schedulers such as Kanban and the Last Planner®  (Last Planner is a registered trademark of Lean Construction Institute has not changed my thinking but enhanced it.

 

The Planning Cycle from Business901

This was never meant as a presentation just a quick 27-page read.  However, it is one of my most downloaded presentations that I have on Slideshare.