What Lean Process Leaders Ask About Sales Process Excellence – #3 How to Relieve My Pain?

Lean Process Leaders 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 #4 How Do We Implement Lean in Sales and Marketing?

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

#3: How Can Lean Process Excellence [Solve My Specific Pain]?

Everyone in every business has problems they want to solve. This is reflected in questions like “Can  Lean process excellence [ … generate leads, find new customers, show best practices, improve sales in a bank, improve sales of commodities, manage large accounts, etc.]?

Unfortunately, when improvement is presented in terms of best practices, tools, or rigid procedures (like DMAIC) it usually misses the point. The result is the Usual Fixes and the Numbers Game. You end up being on a treadmill, working hard and going nowhere.

What IS the point of process excellence? That the concepts and principles of process excellence enable your people to understand the root causes of problems – what the data and evidence mean in your specific context. Process excellence enables your people develop individualized solutions to unique local problems.

The fact is, most companies already have people with plenty of knowledge about how to attract better prospects, how to qualify them, or get them buy now and pay more. What they don’t have is the management system that allows them to implement these practices in a way that optimizes the performance of the entire business, instead of just their local department.

If that interests you, check out “Five Assumptions that Prevent B2B Sales and Marketing Improvement – and How Process Excellence Avoids Them.”

By: Michael Webb

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