What Sales and Marketing Asks About Process Excellence – #1 How to Get Buy-In?

Sellers and marketers 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 #2 How Does Lean Process Thinking Work In Sales And Marketing?

This week, we deal with the most popular question (by a wide margin):

#1 How Do I Get Support And Buy-In To Apply The Lean Process Approach?  

This implies not only do most visitors to this website already have some idea what “Lean process” means, they actually want to try it. Their greatest concern is getting other people to buy-in to the idea.  

Process improvement usually starts with one or two individuals who then attempt to pull the rest of the company along. This is reflected in questions like, “How can I get my salespeople to trust another initiative?”,  “How can we get sales managers to pay attention when they have so many other objectives?”, “How can we get senior management to support this?”, and “What is the typical ROI on doing this?”

The best answer to this question is to recognize Lean process thinking begins with the data, which it uses to diagnose what is going right – and wrong – in your sales production system.

Once you implement a few systemic changes that improve things for customers, employees, and shareholders you are on your way.  Then, all you need to do is make this a daily occurrence.

What prevents YOU from implementing sustainable improvement in YOUR sales organization?  

By: Michael Webb

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