Our epiphany in applying lean thinking to the sales and marketing process came with the recognition that organisations need to focus their attention on understanding and satisfying their prospect’s buying process before they can hope to improve their sales and marketing performance.
The consequences of failing to focus on facilitating the prospect’s buying process are all around us and - unfortunately - frequently extremely painful:
- Marketing generating leads that salespeople fail to follow up
- Unpredictable returns from sales and marketing activities
- Apparently promising deals ending in “no decision”
- Deals getting stuck in the pipeline for undiagnosed reasons
- Significant revenues being booked under incredible pressure the last few days/hours of the quarter
- Forecasts being missed - sometimes significantly
Eliminating waste and creating customer value...
The idea that companies can fight their way out of the current recession simply by “selling harder” has been comprehensively discredited, and few companies are of a mood to throw more money at marketing in the vain hope that they can spend their way out of the problem.
Lean thinking can help turn the tide. Organisations need to identify the key steps and stages in their prospects typical buying process, and develop a deep understanding of who their best prospects are, what really matters to them, and how and why they choose to buy.
In our experience - and with particular regard to high value B2B sales - the stages and milestones prospects go through are remarkably consistent - but the tactics required to facilitate the buying process naturally vary across different products/services and markets.
Sales and marketing alignment...
Organisations must recognise that all their sales and marketing activities need to be aligned around:
- Connecting with prospects that have significant issues they cannot afford not to deal with, and for which the vendor has a superior (and profitable) solution
- Facilitating these prospects buying processes and eliminating any sources of delay or wasted effort - including early disqualification of unfavourable opportunities
- Emerging as the least-risk of all options available to the prospect, including a decision to simply do nothing and accept the status quo
Note the focus on least-risk. There is abundant evidence that prospects are more concerned with minimising risk than minimising cost when they make buying decisions.
The voice of the customer...
It’s critical that organisations take pains to listen to the voice of their prospects and customers. Even that minority of organisations who conduct systematic win-loss analyses typically miss valuable learning.
Of course, it’s important to understand how and why prospects made their buying decision, but in our experience it is equally valuable to understand what caused them to start searching for a solution in the first place, where they searched for solutions, who they trusted to advise them, and how their buying process unfolded.
The lean sales and marketing toolkit...
Lean thinking can help address all of these issues, elevate customer value, and eliminate wasted effort. Key elements in the lean sales and marketing toolkit include voice of the customer surveys, kaizen events, value stream mapping, the hoshin kanri planning process and an organisation-wide commitment to continuous improvement and the search for perfection.
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