The 5 Whys of a Lean Sales Conversation

I have found talking to little or too much are both ineffective ways to proceed in a sales conversation. When we discuss a Lean Sales Person, many people think of this problem solving person that is out finding the root cause and how their product/service could benefit the customer.  I have expressed my views on that subject as a problem solving salesperson ends up typically being an average salesperson. More on that subject in this blog post, Lean Salespeople are Challengers, not Problem Solvers.

I think we need when having a Lean Sales Conversation it is not about asking 5 Whys to find the root cause. Rather, I like the CAP-Do approach where we concentrate more on the downloading of information at the beginning.  This conversation is not what I would call one of discovery, that seems to be little premature. I think of the yoga saying; ”if you want to take a deep breath, you first need to exhale.”  And, in a Sales conversation the person that needs to exhale is the customer.

I learned this process from the book, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone.  I get more mileage of these words than any other sales pitch or script I have ever constructed. Instead of saying Why, the response should be Hmm! Really! Sorry, that is the second response. Before I get into a parody of Who’s on first, Here is my list of 5 Whys:

1. Hmm
2. Really
3. And So
4. Then what Happened
5. Tell Me more

In my job, I will write auto-responders and telephone scripts. The first step in this process is not to think what you want a customer to know, feel, and do. That leads to an attempt  to manipulate the customer actions. Instead, try to learn what the customer knows, feels and wants to do. I look at this from a perspective of learning, the Lean way.  Hmm, and Really equate to exhaling. You learn what they know. And so, and Then what Happened draws out the feelings. Tell me more opens up the response that signifies what they are going to do.

These 5 little prompts, mixed with a small amount of conversation will get you further than any other preconceived  planning that you can do. This is the Check in the CAP-Do cycle and why you must stay away from the elements of PDCA and root cause. Don’t discover, learn! It all starts with a Hmm!

Consider Attending the Webinar, Lean Sales Methods on June 7th

The Casual Relationship of Lean Sales

In a recent podcast, Scenario Thinking the Next Big Thing, with George Wright, co-author of Scenario Thinking: Practical Approaches to the Future, I asked, “When we are looking at different alternatives to the future, we paint a picture with scenarios? 

George:

Yes, the scenarios are descriptions of the future often constructed by management teams. They usually rough out about four scenarios of the future. They are all very qualitative. Their absolutely, pictures of the way the future might be. But, they are casually linked components in the scenarios. For instance, Martians land from outer space with ray guns and start shooting us, the scenario tends to be much more logical steps from now into the future may be 10,15, 20, 30 years. Hence, the scenarios are portal pen pictures of the future that are plausible to the people who constructed them. People say, “I can see this series of events starting to happen.” You can go out in that way like dominos swarming in one direction or you can go out in a different way. If they are all plausible futures, than they are futures we need to be concerned with, without occurring major investments. Scenario thinking is an approach that first started out with capture intensive industries like the airlines, the oil industry where major investment has to be made now. It has to work well against a range of futures. That’s the scenario approach, getting these robust decisions that work well no matter what.

About George Wright: George is currently Professor of Management at Durham Business School, University of Durham, UK. He has consulted and provided management development programs on scenario thinking and decision making with organizations such as Bayer, EADS, Petronas, Scottish Power, Thales, United Utilities, and national and local government in the UK.

One of the key items, I found in George discussion is the issue of causality. In scenario planning, we seek for, not one, but several casual causes. When you think of a sales process, it reminds me of a mini-scenario planning effort. Seldom are decisions within an organization made by one or two people. More often, they are being done by committee. The committee often evolves depending on the circumstances. In this scenario, sorry for the pun, how do sales and marketers understand the process? How do they determine, who has the most influence on the committee and who influences that person?

This blog post, Lean Sales and Marketing: Outcome Based Mapping, contains my thoughts and several additional links.

What are the benefits of BPM?

My podcast guest next week, Theodore Panagacos is a former Management Consultant with Booz & Company and has years of experience helping organizations design and implement business models that improve its service to customers. His book, The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Management: Everything you need to know and how to apply it to your organization has become an Amazon top seller in its category Business Process Management.

I asked in the podcast one of the most basic questions, “What are the benefits of Business Process Management? What do we get out of it?”  Theodore’s answer was simple, to the point and best of all, answered the question.

BPM is all about identifying what you do-do and what you don't do within a business. BPM helps managers identify the day to day activities that the business runs in a visual representation. Having that sort of information allows managers to make more informed decision about again, the day-to-day operation of their business.

When you go down to the improvement level and the actual level analysis level, you can then start looking at time and cost improvements. For example, how many FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) employees are associated with a particular event or task? How long does it take them to execute that task? When you have that insight and information, you can run certain scenarios that allow you to optimize those processes so that your business is running again at optimum efficiency.

You have other potential benefits like ensuring that you adhere to a regulatory compliance. A lot of industries such as the mining industry and even the banking industry, they have tight laws that govern what they can and can't do and more often than not, there are regulatory bodies that govern these laws. They want to know that the bank has their processes documented particularly if you are dealing with sensitive information like people's bank accounts. There are a couple of things here; I mean regulatory, process optimization and manager's insight into how the business is run.

A Savior for the Lean Enterprise

I see statements from the Lean Startup^TM folks that The Lean Startup is changing everything. I think that is rather silly because it is not The Lean Startup that is causing the change. The Lean Startup is just adapting to the way the world is changing.

Lean works well for groups that do not rely on an external environment to function, ones that can be self-reflective and internally focused on improvement. However, that business model is getting smaller and smaller. The rapid expansion of knowledge is decreasing the advantages of past proprietary offerings in product/service and in operations. What is left is a complex web of internal and external activities that I use Service Dominant Logic to describe.

If we have learned anything from The Lean Startup, it should be Steve Blank’s mantra of “Get out of the Building” has surpassed the outdated Voice of Customer Model. The instrument of Gemba Walks should no longer be only thought of as an internal practice on the shop floor, rather an external practice at the customer point of use of your product/service offering, not at the point of transaction. Customers are now being redefined as users. It is in this concept that we must build our structure around, reaching out past the user to find new synergies, new connections at the fringes which will result in new ways to create value.

Hoshin Kanri is the traditional Lean practice for building strategy and vision. It is a Lean Leadership tool for communication. What fails process is the faulty assumption that we can still rely on data gathering and Voice of Customer techniques. It is not the concept of Voice of Customer rather the tools we use to gather this information. Surveys and Focus Groups need to be replaced with senior leadership actively participating with client-facing techniques that resemble a good old-fashioned discussion. Discussions of this sort lead to discovery. Ask any Lean Startup that has tried a Problem Interview or a Solution Interview. For a description of a Lean Startup interview process, I recommend Ash Maurya’s book, Running Lean

Lean needs to adapt its thinking and seek new ways to engage the users in their learning cycles. The methods of SDCA-PDCA-EDCA are well suited for this new environment. The practice of Hoshin Kanri lends itself for adaption of this new thinking throughout the organization. However, it will take a change in thinking of many established Lean Enterprises and Organizations if Lean is to continue to flourish.

Other process methodologies of the 90s are floundering; Lean is flourishing because it has been the most adaptable. It has spread to many disciplines through an internal focus on improvement. However, it may be ripe for disruption as the external forces of the marketplace take hold. Will the Lean Startup be an instrument of disruption or a savior for its Lean counterpart?

P.S. This blog post is an extension of my recent posts, Is Lean Playing to Win? Part 1 of 2 and Is Lean Playing to Win? Part 2 of 2. The posts are my reactions to this LinkedIn thread, What do we have to do to have Lean survive a leadership change?,

The Competitive Advantage of Simplification

For decades, Irene Etzkorn and Alan Siegel have championed simplicity as a competitive advantage and a consumer right. Consulting with businesses and organizations around the world to streamline products, services, processes, and communications, they have achieved dramatic results. Simple is a groundbreaking and invaluable guide to achieving the three fundamental principles of simplicity: clarity, transparency, and empathy. It lays the foundation for organizations that want to enhance the customer experience as a way to drive business results.

Irene, my guest next week on the Business901 podcast, is a worldwide authority on simplicity, built the Simplification practice of Siegel+Gale. As executive director of Simplification, her clients include the nation’s top banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, utilities, and health care providers.

I enjoyed the book,Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity, and the podcast. Below is a brief excerpt from the upcoming podcast.

Joe: What are the secrets to simplification? Is there something that when you walk in that guides you towards complexity? Is there a secret to understanding how to look at things with simple eyes?

Irene: Yes, there is and I think it lies in the fact that clarity is best achieved through an intuitive structure of information. Most often, we find people who have a complicated topic or complicated communication want to begin by re-writing and/or re-designing. Those are two ingredients and important skills and certainly ones that we advocate. They are not the place to begin. It is necessary to begin and look at the process. What is the data, the content? What do you know about this customer? For example, if you already know what state they live in, you don't have to include a lot of "if-then" clauses that say "if you're in Michigan", "if you are in New York", etcetera and have the person deal with all that. Instead, you can push out to them a customized communication. Starting further up the chain and providing a summary to a more detailed approach. Can you answer likely questions for 80% or 90% of the readers or the users upfront? People who have further questions can continue on in the communication, but you haven't created an introductory barrier for the majority of people. In actions, a lot of simplification is about intuitive organization and structure.

Another example of that is insurance policy. Property casualty insurance, people do not read their insurance policy, for some, they are novel. They read them usually at the time of need when they have a claim. Putting what to do if you have a claim as the first item in a policy is much more customer focused. That is a reflection of the organization of the company that's producing it. It is a more meaningful document for the consumer.

Joe: I think you made the great example there because it's amazing how many times the redundancy is built in and I think of health care right away where I am asked the same question so many times that I feel that I probably had to have answered it wrong along the way.

Irene: Absolutely and that's a good example because one of the 3 key principles that we've talked about in the book to achieve simplicity, one of them is empathy and emphasizing with the circumstance of the communication or the interaction is really important. When you mention health care, that's a great example, not only are you sometimes being asked for the same information repeatedly, you may be in a state where half the time you are drugged or you’re ill. Obviously, for some reason, you're seeking health care. It's not your finest moment probably in terms of clarity of thought and emotional state etcetera etcetera. It's a good example where even more so in that circumstance, you would want things to be accessible, clear and not redundant certainly.

Joe: You mentioned empathy, what are the other 2 key principles?

Tune in next week to the podcast for the answer or if you cannot wait buy the book,Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity.

About Siegel+Gale: (www.siegelgale.com) Simplicity is the centerpiece of the strategies they develop that reveal the unique truths of an organization, the engaging stories they create that connect brands with their audiences and the meaningful experiences they deliver that are both unexpectedly fresh and remarkably clear. Since 1969, Siegel+Gale has championed simplicity for leading corporations, nonprofits and government organizations worldwide.