Kaizen in Lean Sales and Marketing

In a recent tweet from @Kevin_Meyer he expanded on a comment that he left on a Lean Blog about ISO vs Std Work . His tweet said,

What I forgot to mention is that the job breakdown aspect of TWI became our engine of kaizen. A little different than the norm.

I intended to respond to him but felt that the 140 characters of Twitter just might not be enough.

In a recent blog post, I started discussing the PDCA conversation. In the post, I discuss how we split the PDCA cycle in half with one side being the Performer (Seller) and the other side the Customer. Read more about this in the blog post, Sales and Service Planning with PDCA. In a later post, PDCA Planning: Determining Customer Touchpoints, I take this conversation a step further and demonstrate how this applies to a B2C  and B2B individually and to a market. 

As a Lean company, we will invest all kinds of time and money on reducing waste and improving flow through ridding ourselves of non-value added task with tools such as Value Stream Mapping. Most organizations are just clueless on how this type of thinking applies to Sales and Marketing. Sure we can efficiently apply to Office systems and into call centers. But into Sales?   

When we typically think of conversation in Sales and Marketing, we think about scripts, SPIN Selling and of course, ABC (Always be closing). If you have read this blog for any length of time, you understand that I look at PDCA as the culture of Lean and therefore, a necessary ingredient for a Lean company. It is this conversation, not the tired old words that Value is what a customer will pay for (Ref: Value can no longer be defined as What a Customer will pay for!).

In essence, this is the way I took Kevin Meyer’s (Evolving Excellence) quote:  “job breakdown aspect of TWI became our engine of kaizen.” What is the engine of Kaizen for Sales and Marketing? It is the conversation. The quality and depth of this conversation drives Sales and Marketing. I might venture to say that this engine should be the driver for the entire company. If we would build our leading indicators from the PDCA conversations, I believe it would accelerate our growth in the market place.

I question how someone could consider themselves a Lean Enterprise without Lean being applied in Sales and Marketing. The PDCA Conversation is where PULL begins. 

Could I have done it in 140 characters?