Lean for Sales : Bringing the Science of Lean to the Art of Selling

This groundbreaking book describes the Lean journey as it extends to a business area that is mission critical, yet has been virtually untouched by the Lean transformation. Lean for Sales: Bringing the Science of Lean to the Art of Selling provides sales professionals, and their management teams, with a structured, fact-based approach to boosting sales close rates and delivering improved business value to customers.

The time-tested Lean selling techniques described in this book have been proven to deliver profound results. In fact, it is not uncommon for sales close rates to see a threefold increase over current rates as a result of using the techniques described in this book. After reading the book, you will understand how to integrate the science of Lean with the art of sales to:

• Create winning sales proposals
• Use Lean selling storyboards to confirm what is truly valuable to your client and their business
• Improve sales team collaboration
• Define and qualify a client’s unique business problems and goals
• Manage sales process performance using a multi-dimensional measurement system that looks beyond sales revenue to include client value and process effectiveness

This book outlines an innovative and proven approach to creating a common language with your customers that is based on waste elimination, root cause analysis, and time to value. Making the management of the sales cycle fact-based, rather than leaving it to intuition, this Lean selling manual presents tools that will enable sales professionals, and their managers, to collect sales opportunity data early and discard those leads that will ultimately waste valuable time and resources.

• Identifies a structured, fact-based approach to improving sales close rates and delivering improved value to customers
• Explains how to create winning sales proposals using Lean selling techniques
• Describes how to use Lean selling storyboards to confirm what is truly important to your clients
• Outlines a proven approach to creating a common language with customers that is based on Lean waste elimination, root cause analysis, and a faster time to value

Preface

Chapter 1 : Traditional Sales versus Lean Selling
Chapter 2 : What is Value; Lean Selling Principles
Chapter 3 : The Lean Sales "Funnel" Framework Explained
Chapter 4 : Client Capability Study and Identifying the Eight Deadly Forms of Lean Waste
Chapter 5 : Getting to the Root Cause of a Client’s Problem and Proposing the "To-Be" Process
Chapter 6 : The Cascade Effect and Lean Selling Balanced Scorecard
Chapter 7 : How to Build a Time to Value Proposition
Chapter 8 : Bringing It All Together with the Lean Selling Storyboard

Conclusion and a Call to Action
Index