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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Story Dialogue can improve your Sales Pitch

Developing Pull in the Lean Marketing Conversation

There has been countless books written on the power of storytelling and why that is needed. We are told that we all humans are wired to communicate best through stories. We are told that from the beginning of time that this was how we transferred information and wisdom to each other. We are told that stories help us capture and remember concepts. However, does any organization practice storytelling. Do they practice how to create meaningful dialogue from them?

In the book, Mapping Dialogue: Essential Tools for Social Change, the authors discuss The Story Dialogue technique developed by Ron Labonte and Joan Featherstone. Ron and Joan saw it as a way to use stories to detect important themes and issues for a community, moving from personalized experience to generalized knowledge. The book explained how:

In Story Dialogue, individuals are invited to write and tell their stories around a generative theme - a theme that holds energy and possibility for the group. As a person shares their story, others listen intently, sometimes taking notes. The storytelling is followed by a reflection circle where each person shares how the storyteller's story is also their story, and how it is different.

A structured dialogue ensues guided by the questions: "what" (what was the story), "why" (why did events in the story happen as they did), "now what" (what are our insights) and "so what" (what are we going to do about it). The group closes by creating "insight cards", writing down each insight on a colored card and grouping these into themes.

When transferring this concept to sales training, I find it remarkably useful. Typically when customer conversations are recorded or repeated in sales training, they are evaluated by a certain set of criteria. The most common being did you stay on the script and second, did you engage the customer. I , personally, could not see two more opposite statements. However, I have experienced conversations like this repeatedly.

Instead, use the Story Dialogue as a guideline for improving the sales conversation. Gather your salespeople together and have them listen to a recording, watch a video or listen to an enactment. Now, instead of critiquing, we go around the room and have our salespeople tell how what they heard is also their story, and how it is different. You would capture all the different ideas with the use of insight cards. Group them in themes and have a structured dialogue on improving your sales stories or as many of us might call them, our sales pitches. 

This type of dialogue training can have deeper consequences. Instead of defending our actions, we create a more reflective atmosphere where we start inquiring about viewpoints. This shift through it will take time to develop will also transfer in the dialogue that you will have with customers. Developing a reflective inquiry approach can become a key ingredient in your sales approach. It is where the Lean Marketing Conversation creates pull.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Should your Processes be cast in Stone

Beyond Agile: Tales of Continuous Improvement is the latest publication of Modus Cooperandi. Co-author Maritza van den Heuvel is my guest on the podcast. Beyond Agile examines 10 companies, mostly in the tech world, but also in innovative automotive and business consulting, that have actively evolved their processes. Using tools from Lean, Agile and other schools of management thought, these companies have actively engaged in continuous improvement. Beyond Agile other authors are Jim Benson and Joanne Ho.

Maritza is also the author of the Becoming an Agile Family blog where she writes about the ways her family uses Personal Kanban to navigate work and life. You can also find Maritza on Twitter (@maritzavdh). Maritiza also appeared in another Business901 Podcast,  Becoming an Agile Family thru Kanban. A written excerpt of the blog appeared last week, Life does not stand still Work does not stand still.

 

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About Maritza van den Heuvel: Maritza spent six years doing research in computational linguistics after completing a Postgraduate degree in Linguistics. She eventually left academia for the software industry where she cut her teeth on Agile and Scrum as a Scrum Master and Product Owner, helping teams to evolve from waterfall to Scrum. Along the way, her unquenchable thirst for knowledge led her to Kanban and Lean systems thinking. Since then, she has become a passionate proponent of the power of constraints and visual controls to transform the world of work in the 21st century. She is currently with Pearson Southern Africa, where she’s applying her background to leading innovation in technology-enabled education.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Grow your Small Business with Lean

Lean Scale Up

I am going to devote the week of April 22nd on how to grow, or scale-up your small business. I will be scaling-up the entire week culminating in a webinar, The Lean Scale Up which will be followed by a period of Q & A on the afternoon of April 26th. Only registered participants will be invited to webinar and Q & A.

Lean Scale up webLean StartupTM companies are welcomed, but this is not about finding product market fit or minimum viable product (MVP). It is not about starting a business. If you are looking for rapid growth with the purpose of being acquired, this may not be the fast-track investor-rich style of growth that may be needed. The organizations that will benefit most are small companies that want to establish a method for achieving and sustaining organic growth. To benefit the most, your organization should have a commercially viable product or service (CVP/CVS).

This will follow Lean practices and principles. The two pillars of Lean, respect for people and continuous improvement will provide the bedrock for establishing the culture of growth within your organization. Lean offers the best business model for the implementation of standardization, continuous improvement and innovation. I use the acronyms of SDCA, PDCA, EDCA, respectively, to describe these.

You will learn through the week:

  • How to convert from the entrepreneurial stage to a viable small business
  • How to take a stagnant small business and revitalize it for growth
  • How, when and which products to standardize
  • How to traverse the product/service gateways of SDCA/PDCA/EDCA
  • How to embed the power of 3 in your organizational thinking.
  • How to become customer-centered
  • How to keep your start-up spirit intact
  • How to Sustain Growth

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 82nd 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.