APPLYING FUNDAMENTALS OF LEAN IN SALES & MARKETING

When talking to organizations about apply Lean to Sales and Marketing, most organizations
are looking for 1 thing and 1 thing only Streamline Sales Work on the process - Were
Process people We want to make things Better, Faster, Cheaper.
The top value stream is how many Lean Consultant or trainers would approach the sales and
marketing perspective. They would apply it on a typical project by project basis to such
marketing activities as sales, promotion and distribu-tion. Extending the waste and cost cutting
focus of Lean efforts to marketing in an attempt to make these activities more efficient.
Everyone knows the undisciplined and creative activities that define marketing offer a rich
treasure trove of cost savings when made more disciplined and structured. But what about
making these activities more value enhancing? Can Lean grow market share or top-line
revenues?
But to do all these things, what do we need? We need metrics, DATA - it is the process way of
doing thingsNow that we have big data, we have all the quantitative data we need and want.
But what about the qualitative And who best to collect that DATA than our salespeople. We
want Pull in Lean Sales But is it operations pulling or the Cus-tomer and where is the Sales
Guy? This is how I think Lean is perceived by the sales people. Value Stream Map your process,
Collect data for improvement, And we are just not sure who is pulling and who is pushing and
the customer involvement. We only know what happens without him; While lean thinking is
increasingly being applied beyond the operations arena in many organisations, sales and
marketing appears to have been particularly immune to the lean mantra.
The reasons behind this are not particularly well documented or researched and probably include
the reluctance of sales and marketing managers to view what they do as definable processes, a
belief that they operate in a black box world of relationships and the art of selling and that all the
lean stuff is just for the shop floor.
At this stage it is worth noting that the term sales and marketing covers a broad array of
activities
including sales management, business development, advertising, market research and planning,
product development, direct marketing, communication, PR, etc.
Furthermore, there are different sectors for example, FMCG, consumer durables, business-tobusiness (B2B) each of which have their own approaches and methods.
This articles focus is the classic sales management and business development function in B2B
relationships and while lean principles and techniques can no doubt be applied to all areas, a
degree of adaptation will invariably be required.

ENGAGING WITH THE SALES & MARKETING AUDIENCE

Leans focus on identifying and delivering value to customers should make it a prime concern of
sales and marketing people, who are generally charged with that task in many organisations.
Most lean advocates would probably claim that the concepts and principles of lean are just as
relevant to the sales and marketing function as any other part of the organisation, since the need
for short lead times, high quality, even flow of activities, minimising waste, continually

improving are just as applicable to selling the businesss products or services.

But why should sales and marketing people embrace lean? Well, at a fundamental level, lean
promises to not only lower the cost of sales, but also improve sales growth, as illustrated in
figure 1.
Of course, this is not guaranteed and there are several other factors that will influence matters,
such as general market conditions and competitor behaviour, but the opportunity for this winwin situation should been enough to persuade sales and marketing sceptics to embrace lean
ideas.
The key task is to engage with sales and marketing managers in a way that will make them want
to positively adopt lean, so that they think in terms of processes and value streams and start to
examine how they approach their work and re-design it along lean lines.
The behavioural change required may be challenging, though appealing to self-interest certainly
has a place, especially since the culture of bonuses and incentives is all pervading in the sales
and marketing world and an improvement methodology that has the potential to make targets
easier to achieve is bound to raise inquisitive eyebrows.
Finding the right way to communicate is also critical, since the language of lean is a long way
off the language of sales and marketing and so some translation is necessary to ensure that this
does not become a barrier to acceptance.

PROCESS THINKING IN SALES & MARKETING

One of the great system thinkers and influencers of lean thinking is W. Edwards Deming, so it is
unsurprisingly that process thinking is at the heart of lean.
It is not possible to develop a truly lean organisation if you cannot define what you do, how you
produce or deliver, what the organisation does and how it does it. All organisations are built on
processes, whether purposefully defined or not, and processes support the value stream and
business strategy.
Anecdotal experience suggests processes are often not fully understood in sales and marketing
and particularly the case with senior sales and marketing managers. It is therefore important to
bring process thinking into the centre stage of sales and marketing planning and the Sales and
Marketing Process Model is an example of a vehicle to achieve this, as shown in Figure 2.
The model emphasises the need to focus on four core sales and marketing processes:
sales/market planning, new enquiry generation, sales conversion, and customer retention (which
includes added value services).
Sales and marketing management must ask the following questions about their capability to
deliver:
include, for example, identifying the root cause of problems, removing waste and bottlenecks,
improving process flow and gaining a better understanding customer needs.
Experience suggests that in SMEs the overall process is weak at the front end, with typical
symptoms being an overreliance on one or more existing customers, a lack of selling skills and
ability to develop relationships.

In larger organisations, there are often issues towards the middle and end of the model, such as
the inability to sell additional products to existing customers or issues with losing customers
through poor relationship management.

LEAN THINKING PRINCIPLES

Womack & Jones in their seminal book Lean Thinking proposed five lean principles that can be
used as a framework to guide lean implementation. These principles can be readily adapted and
used in an sales and marketing context and provide an overarching framework for developing a
lean sales and marketing approach, as illustrated in Figure 3.
The first principle - understanding what the customer actually wants (the voice of the customer
- VoC) is central to lean thinking and, not surprisingly, equally fundamental to sales and
marketing .
As those closest to customers, the sales and marketing function, is usually tasked with
understanding their needs and defining the detailed offering, though how much of the
understanding is based on objectivity and how much on subjectivity is a moot point.
A further complication is that in some sectors actually identifying the customer is problematic,
as buyers are not always the final consumers of the product.
The second principle is about ensuring that all the elements of the sales and marketing process
are integrated and flow along the value stream. The four core processes of the value stream are
the key drivers, each with specific phases of activity which should only comprise of value
adding activities.
Waste removal can be achieved by undertaking a mapping exercise that enables non-adding
value activities to be highlighted and considered for elimination. Value stream mapping is a
valuable skill for individuals and teams.
There are many types of mapping tools and having an appreciation of where and when to use the
appropriate mapping tool can prove a real benefit to improving sales and marketing
performance. For example, the Big Picture Map might be used to scope out and gain a high level
overview of a situation it copes easily with the bigger issues and enables a wider perspective of
an overall picture to be achieved.
At a smaller scale, a four field map might be used to design or redesign a quotation process with
the objective of reducing the time taken to process and enquiry.
The third principle is about flow and many lean thinkers contend that this is the essence of lean
ensuring that value adding activities flow quickly and smoothly through the value stream. From
an sales and marketing perspective, it is about making sure that all elements in each part of the
four core processes exhibit continuous flow in order to make them efficient and effective.
Common symptoms of a lack of flow in sales and marketing processes include:
Overburdening of people through excessive work load backlogs in specific parts of the
process.

 Excessive variation in process that are meant to be relatively standard.

Unevenness of the workload demand.
Too much non-value adding activity (waste) in processes.
Typical non-value adding (wasteful) examples include:
Using substantial resources to collect customer information, for example from surveys, and
then not being able to interpret it or gleaning no insights from its analysis.
Having a customer care programme which is misaligned to the specific needs of the
market.
Spending significant resources generating sales leads for the wrong type of customers.
Giving too much attention to customers of the wrong type.
Producing reports that are not read, do not lead to action or do not inform decision
making.
Multiple approval sign-off levels.

FIVE LEAN SALES & MARKETING PRINCIPLES

1. Specify value by offering
Understand in detail what the customer values about your product offering

2. Integrate the value stream

When you understand value, remove the non-adding value parts and bring those value adding
closer together
3. Make the offering flow
Organise your processes so the offering flows without disruption

4. At the pull of the customer

Set up your operation to only supply those elements that the customer values and pulls from you
(not pushing)

5. In pursuit of perfection

Accept that you can always get better so aim to build in a continuous improvement ethos
Principle four is only take action at the pull of the customer. The opposite of pull is push
that is, trying to give the customer something that may not be valued. Pull in classic lean
manufacturing terms is about ensuring that a product is only made for known demand, avoiding
a make to forecast mentality (some even contend that forecasts are either lucky or lousy!).
In the sales and marketing world, the benefits of adopting this approach are specifically related
to work patterns throughout the process, in that work is organised only in response to pull, or
real demand, from the customer. Specific benefits include:

Highlighting issues with workflow, including backlogs

Enabling an alignment of skilled resources to demand
Highlighting opportunities for continuous improvement
The fifth principle - in pursuit of excellence - is where every activity undertaken by every person
in every part of the sales and marketing process is focused on adding value aligned to the needs
of the customer.
It is an ongoing mission, where those working on sales and marketing processes are trained to
recognise and then remove successive layers of non-value added activities as part of continuous
improvement practice. This represents a cultural shift, requires behaviour changes and takes time
to embed.

SUMMARY
Sales and marketing managers seeking to improve performance will find that adopting a lean
approach offers them an effective and appropriate set of tools and techniques to help in realising
their goals. When considered as part of a wider integrated lean transformation programme, the
benefits will be felt across the business.
The benefits are primarily based on introducing process thinking and understanding to sales and
marketing staff. Process thinking has not generally been part of the vocabulary of sales and
marketing managers, who perhaps consider it as confining and restrictive, stifling the creativity
required in their work.
However, it can be argued that adopting lean ways and managing by fact does assist in creative
thinking and defining direction. For example, visioning, is a key part of effective direction
setting and strategy formation and by gaining a much clearer picture of what customers value,
sales and marketing managers will be able to better align their offerings with the needs of their
customers and more effectively than their competitors.
Understanding the concept of the value stream can offer real benefit to the sales and marketing
manager, as this clarifies what actually does and does not add value from their customers
perspectives. Having the ability to visualise value streams and the processes within them, helps
in root cause analysis and helps convert reactive behaviour, where processes are out of control,
to highly focused and proactive behaviour where processes are in control. And of course,
processes in control will flow more effectively.

Leans focus on customer value as a route to competitive advantage should sit very comfortably
with the sales and marketing community, since this should be their prime task in any business
and getting a good understanding of the VoC has the potential to be a real differentiator and
order winner. There are a range of VoC tools to help the sales and marketing practitioner gain
deep insights into customer value, as well as develop strategy, refine existing products and
define new products.
Lean is applicable to sales and marketing since sales and marketing is made up of processes, just
like other parts of a business; and once activities
are viewed and analysed as processes, then the opportunities for improvements are revealed. The
particular advantage of this in sales and marketing is that resultant productivity improvements
can not only reduce the resources required to generate sales, but also increase sales through a
better understand of customer needs.
Behavioural change will probably be necessary in most situations, which is invariably
challenging and not without risks and the development of lean culture is a long term journey.
However, important immediate gains can accrue as soon as there is a detailed understanding of
sales and marketing processes and clearer appreciation of customer value, paving the route for
the development of a sustainable, continuous improvement sales and marketing way.

MAP VALUE STREAM

When talking to organizations about apply Lean to Sales and Marketing, most organizations
are looking for 1 thing and 1 thing only Streamline Sales Work on the process - Were
Process people We want to make things Better, Faster, Cheaper.
The top value stream is how many Lean Consultant or trainers would approach the sales and
marketing perspective. They would apply it on a typical project by project basis to such
marketing activities as sales, promotion and distribu-tion. Extending the waste and cost cutting
focus of Lean efforts to marketing in an attempt to make these activities more efficient.
Everyone knows the undisciplined and creative activities that define marketing offer a rich
treasure trove of cost savings when made more disciplined and structured. But what about
making these activities more value enhancing? Can Lean grow market share or top-line
revenues?

DESIGN THINKING
Others take a Product Development focus. That design thinking style. Maybe even Lean 3P,
Lean Startup, or a chap-ter from IDEO. Many have argued Lean is about incremental
improvement. It does not allow for breakthrough think-ing. I agree that SDCA and PDCA and
even the continuous mindset may not deliver breakthrough by themselves.
However, like most things you start one step at a time. The culture of Innovation starts with
culture of continuous im-provement. To start with breakthrough thinking is very difficult and
typically not successful. You cannot just turn it on. So starting with PDCA and a continuous
improvement can be a successful way, to create the little i culture. Ramping it up and truly
doing breakthrough innovation, the big I is when you must engage and understand your
customer/market extremely well. Seems to be well thought approach but it has its place.

But to do all these things, what do we need? We need metrics, DATA - it is the process way of
doing thingsNow that we have big data, we have all the quantitative data we need and want.
But what about the qualitative And who best to collect that DATA than our salespeople. We
want Pull in Lean Sales But is it operations pulling or the Cus-tomer and where is the Sales
Guy? This is how I think Lean is perceived by the sales people. Value Stream Map your process,
Collect data for improvement, And we are just not sure who is pulling and who is pushing and
the customer involvement. We only know what happens without him; the customer that is.

LEAN THINKING

In most Lean thinking we talk about Kaizen or Continuous improvement which is

exemplified in PDCA or as it has been called the Shewart or Deming Cycle. Ohno, the guru
of the Toyota Production System came along and says
there is no improvement without a standard. So, in essence, SDCA was created.
I like to think of PDCA in spirals of increasing knowledge of the system that converge on the
ultimate goal, each cy-cle closer than the previous. This approach is based on the belief that our
knowledge and skills are limited, but im-proving. Especially at the start of a project, key
information may not be known; the PDCA provides feedback to jus-tify our guesses
(hypotheses) and increase our knowledge. As we go around the PDCA cycle, we improve our
knowledge relationship with the customer to a point that they either continue down the funnel in
quicker and tighter iterations. Repeated use of PDCA makes it possible to improve the quality of
the communication, the methodology itself, and the results in more real time.

LEAN STARTUP
Recently, as innovation, Design thinking have become the buzz word of the day, Eric Ries
created the Lean Startup. It was based on Build, Measure Learn. It is his idea that you develop
product and get it into the hands of the customer at its most minimum level and leave the
customer to decide the value and expand on that. I can argue that in a few instances and in my
thinking and what I learned from a Toyota guru in Europe, Graham Hill, that there was similar
thinking within Toyota called Explore-Do-Check Act. I like that a bit better as I believe it offers
a little more sub-stance and guidance versus the Build-Measure-Learn thinking.
I base my Lean Thinking on these 3 principles. Standardization, Improvement and Exploration.
PDCA is the glue. Without that mindset- it is difficult to traverse between the 3 and I think all
successful companies have a mixture of all three. Some may be more innovative Apple, some
may be more Standard, Microsoft but having a process in place for each, even the innovation
side is what makes Lean successful.
APPLYING LEAN THINKING IN SALES
This basic matrix lets allows us to have a hi-level conversation without trying to view value
streams or product fami-lies and such. Lets just view sales through existing or non-existing
customers and their needs. Many have already done this, just not in Lean Terms. Simple
segmentation like this can go a long way in bringing clarity around applying Lean. Your Lean
Thinkers, Champions will start associating the thinking of Sales to Lean.
Using this matrix add Lean thinking to the concept. Nothing changes, except we now assign a
Lean Process to achieving the outcomes in each individual box. Think about the core being
the standard work (SDCA) of your sales strategy. PDCA providing the bridge between the
core (SDCA) and the edge (EDCA).

I introduce Lean as a Sales, Growth strategy through the processes of SDCA, PDCA and
EDCA. This three step pro-cess for using Lean can be defined this way:
1. Standard Work (SDCA): How do we align our people to focus on our key strengths?
We must have clear non-negotiables or Clarity around who we are and what we do. We
need to define core business and put the majority of company resources into the core
until it achieves its full potential. Profitable companies grow profitably. If you are not
making money, do not look for growth to correct problems. The odds are against you.
2. Continuous Improvement: How do we make sure we keep improving and adapting?
Closed-loop learning PDCA. Most big ideas are made up of a series of successful
smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model or SDCA. This is where
the Little I of improvement resides.
3. New Markets and Products (EDCA): View it as more of Design Type thinking that allows for a
collaborative learning cycle with a customer. Companies need innovative practices. We look to
the fringes of our markets where chaos ex-ists. It is where development and the Big I of
innovation (EDCA) occur, and the Lean Startup principles apply.
There are a lot of different core strategies but they all center on a repeatable business model.
Standards are the most fundamental and misunderstood concept needed for growth. Your core
values are the way you go about what you do and how you do it. It is what your customer
understands and experiences. Standards create the WOW in your business. When an
employee steps out of the box to do something remarkable, it is a result of having the
clarification that this is what are standards (values) would encourage us to do.
Of course if you believe, which I do, that you must have a profitable and well-differentiated core
most of your re-sources will be allocated to SDCA. This would be the pattern found in
established companies. It can be used within Onboarding processes or even used effectively in
those Rs: Re-Sell, Re-Gain, Retain, Renew, Refer. In this model we deal so often with existing
customers. However within those customers are new customers. Todays purchase deci-sions are
being made with an average of 5.4 people needing to sign off. This should not be looked at as
restrictive but further opportunity to build into a customer base.
What does a Lean Startup look like? The Lean Startup will look something like this. The cycle
of EDCA is basically similar to Lean Startup and that is where your resources are until you
prove product/market fit. After doing that, you will not standardize your product immediately,
instead you will conduct PDCA till a standard market and customer be-comes well defined.
The greatest growth opportunities are on the edges of the use of our product/services. We must
make a concentrated effort to identify and participate in relevant knowledge flows on the edge
(EDCA). In the book The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big
Things in Motion, the authors discuss the relationship between the core and the edge. In the
excerpt below, think about the core being the standard work (SDCA) of your growth strategy.
PDCA provides the bridge between the core (SDCA) and the edge (EDCA). When we envision
tomorrows best product or service being used in our customers future it creates far-reaching
possibilities. Our most successful sales people are already thinking in these terms. It is this type
of thinking of your customers business, the edges of their business that we must strive to
achieve through the methods of SDCA, PDCA and EDCA.
Edges (EDCA) and cores (SDCA) need each other. Unless customers become part of the core,
they never fully access our core capabilities. The core also needs innovation from the edge to
continue refreshing and regenerating itself. In business terms, innovating companies need
resources to scale growth and mature companies need new growth plat-forms to compensate for
increasing competitive pressures. PDCA is the bridge between the two.

can

build a culture of PDCA, a culture of learning, growth becomes part of everyones job. It is this
aspect I believe that separates good companies from great companies.
Use Lean as your growth engine. Do something BIG!