What General Managers Ask About Sales Process Excellence – #4 How to Sustain Improvement?

General Managers have asked us asked us a lot of questions about Lean process excellence over the years. 

We’re counting down the top five questions, and providing the answers. Last week we answered question #5 Where And How Do We Start Lean Process Excellence?

This week, we deal with the next most popular question:

Question #4: How Do We Sustain Sales And Marketing Improvements?

Sales and marketing are notorious for evaporating results. This is reflected in questions like “How to keep this up after 90 days?” and “How do we prevent backsliding?” Here is just one example acknowledging the widely recognized fact that most sales training doesn’t work. Here’s a discussion on LinkedIn lamenting the same issue around CRM.

These writers say things like “Management must reinforce this,” or “It is all in how you use it.”  OK so how, exactly, is management supposed to reinforce the training or use the CRM properly? Management people are just like everybody else. When you ask anyone to work harder, there is a limit to how much improvement you can get.

If that is so, what is the point? It is as though they are asking everyone to “Just do your job better.”  That doesn’t help much.  

Of course, Lean is built with this end in mind, to make changes in a way that enables the gains to be not just sustained, but extended. Here’s How to Get Your Salespeople to Sustain Improvements.

By: Michael Webb

Process excellence separates the men from the boys in business. For a complete guide, visit www.SalesProcessexcellence.com.