Lean Management in Sales, Service and Marketing

Lean-Management in Sales, Marketing and Service

Lean Service: It´s about the customer. It´s about providing value and meet or exceed the expectations. http://www.flickr.com/photos/guzi/2105980535/

And about companies providing services with little or no waste.

Customers don´t care about the processes of a company. The way companies organise themselves. They care about the value they receive from them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mastahkid2006/3111227128/

What are the benefits of Lean Management? What are the major obstacles and hurdles in implementing Lean Management? http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakla/499224896/

Lean Management helps to identify waste: #1: Overproduction in Sales and Marketing: Generating more leads than the sales force is able to follow-up. http://www.flickr.com/photos/9273798@N06/1305173809/

#2: Waste in processes: Not customer oriented, too many interfaces, high complexity, work-procedures not clearly defined, communicated and implemented. http://www.flickr.com/photos/22104265@N07/2141963118 /

#3: Inventory of work. Workflow is interrupted by approval procedures, undercapacity, rework, coordination. No flow. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenica26/143725085/

#4: bottlenecks and jams in processes: no pro-active planning of capacities no end to end planning of processes. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mari1008/448065754/

#5: Production errors: wrong qualification of sales leads, incomplete handling of complaints, wrong data entry… http://www.flickr.com/photos/meirionmatthias/1499449705/

#6: Waiting queues: visible to customers and sometimes invisible when work is accomplished by different departments within a company http://www.flickr.com/photos/7455207@N05/2587028270/

#6: Unneccessary movement: walking to a fax machine, moving work around… http://www.flickr.com/photos/14951111@N00/131762147/

Mistakes and errors in sales or service processes are less obvious than in a production environment. Invisible errors don´t "hurt" in the first place. http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesec/195300310/

Create Value for your customers. Each process has to be beneficial to them. Will your customers be willing to "pay" for what you do?

Eliminate all forms of waste: bottlenecks, overproduction, unneccessary movement, errors, rework, …. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hahahouser/2091553820/

Work with your staff. The power of Lean Management lies in its approach to make use of the power, motivation and knowledge of your employees. Nurture the organisation. http://www.flickr.com/photos/globetrotter1937/2691197751

Design your processes in a way to generate value for your customers. Lean without waste.

Processes, people, systems need to work together in a coordinated, synchronized way. Be aware of the complexity in sales and service processes.

Keep the work flowing. Eliminate bottlenecks, inventory of work, coordination- steps… http://www.flickr.com/photos/catryan/2274255618

Keep work places, tools, procedures, systems clean, easy to understand and follow. http://www.flickr.com/photos/eckiblue/1413763053/

Visualize your processes and your controlling. Key performance indicators need to be transparent to everyone involved in the process.

Implement visual early warnings systems. Make sure everyone knows the relevant performance indicators for value performed processes. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bexross/2636100175/in/photostream/