A few years ago I was introduced to Lean Manufacturing, also known as the Toyota Production System or “TPS”. One of my clients is a big proponent of Lean and they helped me on my quest to learn more. The book they recommended to me was “The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey K. Liker. Perhaps it was the latent engineer in me, but I found the book and the philosophy completely fascinating. What struck me most was how well the Lean philosophy matched the key concepts we are trying to teach in helping companies develop a corporate wide selling culture. Here are a few of the key concepts that really jumped out at me:
Kaizen: Literally translated Kai means “change” and Zen means “to be good”. Kaizen is the principle that the quest to be “good” is a journey with ongoing and continuous improvements along the way. The concept behind Kaizen is that improving is a culture and not an initiative. The ideal is to have a culture continuously focused upon becoming better. At the heart of sales excellence in a corporate culture is this idea of Kaizen – the idea that there are always opportunities to change for the better with regards to a company’s selling skills at all levels.
Muda or “Waste”: In Lean, this is defined as anything that takes time but does not add value for your customer. I would expand “time” to include your resources or your knowledge. How much waste exists in your selling process? How many proposals, presentations, meetings, and tasks add absolutely no value to the process of helping a customer solve their problem? And yet we continue to “fetch the rock” when asked to, if only because the prospect requested it. Creating efficiency in the selling process is key to our ability to sell more. Time tends to be our scarcest resource. Where can the waste be eliminated to create more opportunity?
5 Whys: Lean advocates asking why a problem exists five times, going to a deeper level with each “Why?” to get to the root cause of the problem. So often our sales people and the technical teams that support them are content with the surface level description of a prospect’s problems, never asking “Why?” even once. One of our goals in training is to get our clients to be committed to the real problem, the “root cause” and not to the first description of the problem that the prospect presents.
Process: The idea in Lean is that “The right process will produce the right results”. First, development of a standardized process for selling is key. It is far too difficult to discern whether or not you are on the right track unless the track is a familiar one. Another great point that Lean makes is that strict standarized processes are actually the foundation for creativity and continuous improvement. It would seem that by forcing everyone who faces the prospect to adhere to a strict process would be taking the creative elements out of it. Not so. Strict process allows us to keep those aspects of our best practice that work, while evaluating those aspects that do not, and creatively improving the weak steps to the process. Without strict processes, success is happenstance and non-repeatable. With them, success is repeatable, and the process can always be evolved and improved for greater results.
Hansei or “Relentless Reflection”: One of the pitfalls of sales training is the short term nature of the results. Seldom does long term change come out of a workshop. In trying to create lasting change for the better, we have found that one key is to equip the participants with both the desire to improve, and the tools to make the improvements they feel are most beneficial. Hansei and Kaizen go hand in hand with the goal of becoming a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous improvement. All of the best ideas in our workshops seem to come from the participants. Getting those great ideas is a product of instilling deep curiosity and reflection through the experience of the workshop.
It seems an entire book could be written looking at the analogs between Lean Manufacturing and Lean Selling. As I continue to learn more, the parallels fascinate me. Are there any other “Lean” advocates out there?
About the Author
