In this article on Strategic Selling Group I explored how the principle of Lean are applicable to sales.
Lean has long been associated with manufacturing and credited to Toyota. However, I challenge both premises and am a believer that Toyota’s role in post-war Japan was to ‘commercialise’ a concept that was probably started by Henry Ford. Further, while it no doubt started as a manufacturing ‘tool’, it has since evolved into a set of management principles that can and have been applied effectively across a broad range of industries and business operations.
Lean is about increasing capacity by designing operational processes so the business optimally responds to customer demand and then to utilise the additional capacity to add greater value and/or increase output. And this applies to sales!
The reality is, every function or service provided by any department or organisation is a process that can be documented, standardised, and most importantly, improved – and that