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.