Lean Sales and Marketing With Brent Wahba

1/29/2017 Lean
Sales and Marketing with Brent Wahba
Search this website …
Login or create accou
Home Store Member Area Articles Podcast Contact
What is Lean? Six Sigma Videos Lean Leadership Interviews Improvement Experts What is Queueing Theory? Virtual Factory Tours
Home » Posts » Lean Manufacturing » Lean Sales and Marketing with Brent Wahba
Lean Sales and Marketing with Brent Wahba
By shmula, Last Updated September 22, 2014
0 24 3
Business Plan Example
Download Business Plan Template Fill the Blanks & Get the Job Done!
Go to biztree.com
The Sales function within a company is one of the most important. After all, if
there are no sales, there’s no revenue. To paraphrase Peter Drucker, the only
purpose for a company is to create a customer. The firm creates customers through
sales. While Lean has penetrated almost every function in an organization, the role
of Lean in Sales and Marketing is still in its infancy.
In today’s interview, we present Brent Wahba. He is an influential voice in Lean
and a recognized expert in Lean as applied to Sales processes. In this interview, you’ll learn the following:
Why explaining Lean for Sales and Marketing will be fairly easy to explain to a Lean guy on the shop floor.
What are the 3 types of sales process in sales and marketing and why Lean must be tailored to each one.
Why it actually makes sense to begin your Lean journey by applying Lean principles in Sales and Marketing,
versus the tradition application on the manufacturing floor.
Most Popular Posts
What Respect for People looks like in a Sales organization?
Lean Startup Conference 2014 Review
(56007) We thank Brent for taking the time to speak with us. We have much to learn from his expertise. Enjoy the interview
and learn more about Brent after the interview below. And if you wish to contact him to help you in your
Capacity Analysis, Cost and
Production Analysis: A Lesson From
organization, his contact information can be found after the interview. And be sure to read our other interviews in
Hamburgers (8337) the Lean Leadership Series.
Google Job Interview Questions: My
Experience and Why I Rejected the Offer Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. Could you please introduce yourself and your work to my readers?
(7199)
Lean Sales and Marketing with Brent
Wahba (6471) Thanks, Pete. This is quite a pleasure – I love your website. I have had a really interesting career up
to this point. I started in R&D at GM, worked in and managed almost every organizational function,
Neighbor Dog Pooping On My Lawn
(5035) and eventually led a global systems business at Delphi. I was fortunate enough to be able to study
and apply Lean, Six Sigma, and several other problem solving methodologies along the way, and
this led me to my current work as president of a consulting network, Strategy Science Inc., where we
About Shmula help clients learn to improve Sales & Marketing, Product Development, and Strategy on their own.
I am also on the Lean Enterprise Institute Faculty where I teach Lean Sales & Marketing, regularly
contribute to the LEI Lean Post, and have published a book titled The Fluff Cycle on solving Sales &
Marketing problems. When I am not in airports, I love to do volunteer startup / small business
mentoring through SCORE.
You’re a recognized expert in Lean as applied to the Sales function. If you were speaking to someone on a
manufacturing floor that was also a practitioner of Lean, how would you explain what you do to that person? Which
http://www.shmula.com/leansalesandmarketingwithbrentwahba/14690/ 1/20
1/29/2017 Lean Sales and Marketing with Brent Wahba
Pete Abilla is the founder of Shmula and areas would you both have in common?
the character, Kanban Cody. He has helped
companies like Amazon, Zappos, eBay,
Backcountry, and others reduce costs and
improve the customer experience. He does That is a great question and one that I get asked a lot. At its core, Lean is Lean – no matter what
this through a systematic method value stream you support. It is all about engaging everybody, every day in solving problems, adding
for identifying pain points that impact the more value, utilizing fewer resources, and ultimately achieving the organization’s purpose through
customer and the business, and encourages helping customers achieve their own purpose. Whether it is on the factory floor or during a sales call,
broad participation from the company
we all have to improve our work while changing the way we think and act.
associates to improve their own processes.
This website is a collection of his
experiences he wants to share with you. Get The difference comes in the type of work we each perform, and I help Sales & Marketing
started with free downloads >> organizations become more efficient and effective at understanding customer needs (stated and
latent, technical and emotional), aligning corporate strategies to those needs, providing useful
information to the organization so they can create valuable and competitive solutions for those
Tags needs, communicating those solutions back to customers, and then facilitating the trial, buying
decision, purchase, delivery, and feedback processes to satisfy those customers now, and
encouraging them to repeat their purchases and say good things to other potential customers later.
5S business business disruption
Sales & Marketing processes span the entire timeline from a customer’s first exposure to a need,
business leadership change change
desire, problem, or brand to basically the end of when they could possibly influence anyone else to
agent Change Management customer
buy from you.
service Deming disruption Experiment
factory tour healthcare innovation
leadership lean Lean Call Center Sales is a process. Does Lean work the same way on a sales process as it does on a manufacturing process? What are
some differences?
Lean Consumption Lean
Culture Lean for Software
lean manufacturing lean principles One of the biggest mistakes organizations make in trying to implement Lean within Sales &
Marketing is by just thinking about it as a transactional, productionlike process or a “Sales
lean six sigma lean six sigma Factory.” This seems to be a recurring problem as I unfortunately recall the very unsuccessful push
healthcare lean six sigma tools Lean Six for “Engineering Factories” at the beginning of Lean Product Development.
Sigma Tools and Templates
Yes, there are many elements of Sales or Marketing processes that are repetitive in nature like
Downloads management
processing sales orders, creating email campaigns, or editing and broadcasting commercials, and
manufacturing Mary Poppendieck
these types of processes do benefit greatly from what we have learned in Lean Manufacturing. BUT,
quality quality improvement we also know that there are different complexities in Sales & Marketing work and some very
Queue Queues different types of processes. First of all, Sales & Marketing does not output one type of work for one
type of customer – like manufacturing a toaster.
Queuing Red Bead
In addition to serving end, paying customers, we also serve Operations, Engineering, R&D,
shmula.com shmula blog six Strategy, Purchasing, Service, etc. with critical information that they all need for their own
sigma six sigma
six sigma strategies
processes. As we know from Lean Product Development, these “learning processes,” like market
research for instance, are managed as variable learning cycles rather than standardized, stepby
tools six sigma training success toyota step, alwaysgetthesameoutput value streams.
Turnaround Management
Waiting Line Secondly, a large part of Sales & Marketing work is geared towards influencing both external and
internal customers to change their behavior. Nobody woke up one day and out of the blue needed an
Management iPhone, but rather they were educated and influenced over time to desire one because they were
valuable. And no doubt Steve Jobs was influenced through many formal and informal processes to
decide to put Apple’s resources behind creating the iPhone in the first place.
There is a lot of science behind influence processes that unfortunately doesn’t always align with our
common lean thinking. For instance we have learned that websites need a certain amount of
webpage “friction” (slowing the reader down) to maximize customer action and conversion. We also
know that the human brain rewards itself during the “hunting” process of buying something and
thus there can be tremendous value in the journey. If we just blindly pursued the “leanest” possible
website or shortest possible buying experience, we could be losing sales.
So the fact that we have 3 types of processes in Sales & Marketing makes applying Lean more
challenging, but also more interesting. There is a lot of opportunity for breakthrough improvement.
Global Six Sigma Courses :
Six Sigma Yellow Belt
Six Sigma Green Belt
Six Sigma Black Belt
Six Sigma Master Black Belt
If given the chance for a lean transformation in one part of a company and the sales function, what is a good
argument to begin in sales?
Starting a lean transformation in Sales & Marketing often makes a lot of sense. Most of us were
taught to start in Manufacturing because it is close to the customer and easier to demonstrate a
quick success. Unfortunately, Operations doesn’t often have the bandwidth to complete their day
jobs, perform improvement work, and then try to push Lean upstream into other functions like Sales
or Product Development. No matter how lean the Ops folks get, they still receive hard to
manufacture product designs from Engineering, uneven order schedules form Sales, and don’t have
a clear definition of what customers truly value from Marketing.
If we start our lean journey in Sales & Marketing, however, we not only improve our own work, but
our improvements immediately lead to less waste in the other functions – thus giving them more
“capacity” to perform their own improvement work. Sales & Marketing also typically has a better
view of what needs to change strategically and that is very critical to aligning the transformation
with the business’ needs. It is not talked about much, but there is actually a lot of waste in applying
Lean across an enterprise, and we can do a much better job if we put in a little more upfront analysis
and planning.
One of the pillars of the Toyota Production System is Respect for People. Within the context of Lean Sales, how is
Respect for People put into practice? Do you have some examples that might resonate with my audience?
In Psychology there is a theory of intrinsic motivation called the SelfDetermination Theory that not
only aligns well with TPS’ Respect for People, but is also very helpful on the social side of problem
solving within Sales & Marketing organizations.
The three key elements are basically:
1. people need to feel autonomous in their jobs – that they own both how to perform and improve
their work
2. people need to feel like they are recognized as experts in their trades, and
3. people belong and contribute to a larger group with a worthy purpose. When we use this model
along with our more conventional Lean tools, we get much better results than a simple process
improvement approach.
One example was with a client that “wanted to do Lean in Sales” because management didn’t think
revenue was high enough and Sales just needed to “get on board with Lean” to fix that. Sales was
definitely not getting much respect. By not assuming that the problems were only Salesspecific
issues, and engaging the salespeople themselves in holistic problem solving, however, the
improvement team determined that the root cause problems were actually confusing strategic
directions from above, a lack of the right portfolio of products to sell, and salesperson fear of having
to meet with customers who had overdue deliveries.
Sure there were many little improvements that Sales could and did make, but by eliminating the
blaming and then fixing the real problems, the Sales group learned that Lean really could help them
solve the entire system’s problems and they felt much more respected.
Another client had a sales manager with poor results, a bad attitude, and no apparent desire to
learn Lean. Rather than threaten or punish him, however, this client decided to use Strategy
Deployment (Hoshin Kanri) to engage him in sales planning, PDCA, and problem solving. He was
shown more respect in that he was now part of a scientific goal setting process (catch ball) rather
than just being handed “impossible” targets. His attitude and results turned around very quickly.
On a related note, when the central office coaches come in to “enlighten” Sales & Marketing about
Lean and use a lot of manufacturing analogies and Lego simulations, it almost always ends badly.
Sales & Marketing need to be engaged by solving their own problems and not disrespected because
they don’t naturally draw a direct correlation between a running production line and preparing a
quote or meeting with customers.
Let’s discuss Lean culture. What does a lean culture look like and feel like in a sales organization?
Cultures change based on shared problem solving, but there are also different subcultures within
different functions – even across Sales and Marketing. What “Lean Culture” emerges thus depends
on what specific problems an organization faces and how they eventually solve those problems.
Overall, however, I would say that a lean sales organization is more scientific, more engaged in
problem solving, and seeks to understand and improve the bigger organizational and marketwide
systems they are part of. When I say “scientific,” I mean across many disciplines including buyer
psychology, strategy, problem solving, and Complex Adaptive Systems which helps describe how
markets and organizations change in unpredictable ways. Also, many people talk about the
discipline aspect of Lean, but I have found that it is much easier to let discipline naturally emerge
from a problem solving culture than try to force it at the beginning – especially in Sales &
Marketing.
Generally, can you share how some of the better known aspects of Lean looks like in the context of Lean Sales? For
example, PokaYoke, Kanban, Andon in Lean for Sales? Do you have specific examples of each that you could share?
The typical Lean Manufacturing tools definitely have their place in transactional sales processes, but
I generally avoid teaching a lot of tools until the team has identified a specific problem that any
particular method could help resolve. A critical part of becoming expert problem solvers is wrestling
with problems to gain better insight, rather than just reaching for a book or finding a benchmark
example to copy.
For example, we only introduced Strategy Deployment at Delphi for sales planning and managing
the pipeline with PDCA after my team thoroughly defined that we needed a more efficient way to
manage both our portfolio and our limited resource salesforce (illustrative example – not real data):
I also have a client in healthcare management that
was having trouble aligning capacity with demand.
Operations would typically learn about a new
contract with only 2 weeks lead time to start, but it
Master Class:
required 6 months to hire and train the registered EL CUSTOMER JOURNEY EN LOS
nurses they needed to staff Operations. The solution RECURSOS HUMANOS
(along with value stream mapping Operations and
creating standard work) was a joint planning /
PDCA / visual controls board that showed contract
status and potential impact (illustrative example – 24 de enero, 19:30 hrs.
REGÍSTRATE
not real data): María de Molina, 4
What is so nice about their tool is that it embeds many lean tool concepts, yet it was their own
solution. Creation and ownership of tools is often a very effective means of driving more
engagement.
If we were to identify the 7 wastes in Sales, what would they be? Do you have specific examples Transportation,
Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, and Defects in Lean Sales?
Everybody has their favorite 8th or 9th waste, so let me start with mine. The biggest waste of all is a
nonvalue producing strategy because it means that the entire organization, no matter how efficient,
is headed in the wrong direction and taking their customers, suppliers, and stakeholders with them.
It is a major root cause for many of the other wastes.
As far as the other 8 go (I include Underutilized People as #8), they are so ubiquitous that it doesn’t
make a lot sense to try to change them – just give Sales & Marketingspecific examples so they make
more sense:
Spamming customers with too much email
Trying to close a sale too early
Overproduction: Making more or sooner
Too detailed proposals
than customers need
Making a sale when there is no available delivery capacity
“Where are those sales leads?”
“We need more orders – our operation is running at half
Waiting/Delays: Process is stopped until an capacity!”
upstream process step delivers “Where’s that marketing study? We need to start our
development now”
“Do I really have to walk all the way downstairs to talk to
Motion: Unnecessary people movement marketing?”
Transportation: Unnecessary material or “The quote required how many approval signatures?”
information movement
“The quote requires how many approval signatures?”
Overprocessing: Doing more work than is Too many features or functions
necessary “I surveyed soccer dads, too – just in case”
“Did we send that quote back to the customer yet?”
“Do you think that color trends study we did 5 years ago is still
Inventory: Material or information sits idle.
good?”
Fluff
“That’s not what I ordered!”
Defects: Material or information does not
“Your graphics ideas are great, but seriously, we really need to
meet customer needs
know how far your plan can fly before refueling”
“No I didn’t call the customer yet – I spent all morning on my
Underutilized People: Not getting the most
internal PowerPoint”
out of people (wasting their time)
In working with sales organizations, what is their receptiveness to lean principles? Is there resistance? If so, what
are the main reasons for resistance?
In my experience, there is little resistance to the actual Lean principles, but resistance does form
strongly over time because of the way Lean is introduced or informally observed. Typically, Sales is
the last part of the organization to start any lean projects and that gives them a lot of time to hear
about many examples that don’t really apply to them. They fear that Lean is going to turn them into
“Japanesespeaking robots,” which of course couldn’t be further from the truth, and we’ve already
talked about the dangers of trying to create a “Sales Factory” to solve the wrong type of problem.
But if we start our Lean discussion around the things that really matter to Sales & Marketing
practitioners and achieving their goals – solving customer problems, creating products and services
that customers want to buy, making their own work and selling lives easier, and improving their
interface with other parts of the organization, the acceptance is very high.
In the sales world, there are many wellknown and accepted selling methodologies like Sandler,
SPIN, and Consultative Selling that are nothing more than standardized sales processes with
integrated learning loops. This is exactly what Lean creates for Sales & Marketing, but it is a custom
solution to a company’s particular problems which results in even more efficiency and effectiveness.
In my travels, I meet many Sales & Marketing practitioners that are already lean by their nature
and thought processes and don’t even know it yet.
Given a typical sales funnel, can you share how someone with a lean worldview would view that funnel?
I am oversimplifying here, but most organizations look at two major problems in their funnels:
1. trying to cram more prospects into the mouth – with hopes that more customers will come out
the other end, and
2. trying to prevent more potential customers from leaking out along the way to conversion.
Somehow it becomes Sales’ job to manage those customers through that funnel like they are
cattle or something.
A Lean view would provide a more holistic, enterprisewide solution. We would better understand
how our unique capabilities could provide more value to the right customers, only pursue those right
customers, and create a constant learning process along the strategy / product development / selling
/ delivery / service path so we finetune our value while simultaneously educating and influencing
our customers.
When we get to the end of something that looks more like a pipe than a funnel, there would be many
fewer surprises so we would have much higher confidence and less unevenness in what our
production requirements are going to be, and know what elements of value have the most leverage
for customer satisfaction and repeat purchase. And when we get really good at understanding the
technical and emotional attributes of customer value, our customers become our salespeople and
help spread the word for us. This is called “flipping the funnel” in the social media world.
Let’s suppose Lean for Sales can actually make the sales process more efficient. But can Lean help the sales function
generate more sales? Can applying Lean in Sales help to increase conversions? How?
Definitely! There are two major parts to this. First of all, if we better understand what customers
value, we will develop better products, services, and operational capabilities that provide that value.
This will naturally lead to higher sales. Also, within the selling process we will be providing more
valuable information to those customers at the right time, place, format, and quantity to help them
make better buying decisions that include our offerings. Secondly, only after we understand value
can we understand waste, and can thus can target our efforts towards the activities that really do
lead to more sales.
The department store magnate, John Wanamaker, famously stated “Half the money I spend on
advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” but I think he was wildly optimistic. I,
as much as anybody, love those entertaining Super Bowl commercials, but the trouble is that the vast
majority don’t lead to higher sales or even better brand perception. There is a ton of waste in just
promotion and advertising – we need to leverage that science of Consumer Psychology along with
our Lean concepts so that we don’t just streamline our waste.
How do you know if Lean for Sales is adding value to the firm? Can you share some results from your prior work –
perhaps a before and after would be instructive.
Everybody wants to measure sales $s (and yes, there are examples of how Lean helped grow sales
by 30 – 100%), but that just proves my point that most organizations aren’t looking at how Lean
helps entire enterprises perform as interrelated systems. If we have horrible products that we can’t
deliver to save our lives, then getting more efficient at selling isn’t going to help our longterm
growth or even the shortterm bottom line – we are just going to get better and faster at alienating
customers.
Sure we all want more sales, but rarely are our problems so simple that tweaking a value stream or
adding some tools is going to make a significant or lasting difference. Success in any part of Lean
comes from identifying and solving the most critical organizationwide problems and then
continuing to find the next organizational bottleneck.
When Delphi was spunoff from General Motors, we had a very pressing need to diversify our
customer and market bases. We knew our GM business was going to decrease, so we had to find a
way to offset it before we could even consider growth. In my product lines we started by
approaching many, many potential customers and we essentially got nowhere – despite a lot of hard
work. As we applied Lean, overhauled our strategy, targeted specific markets and customers,
developed customerspecific value propositions, and then developed new products / services / global
lean manufacturing capabilities to implement those value propositions, we quickly gained traction –
reducing our development and quotation lead times by 50 and 80%, and capturing 10 of 10 target
customers in 7 of 7 target markets.
It was almost too good to be true. Oh, and we did it with 25% fewer resources and 1 less
management layer. But these were our specific problems and solutions – “your results may vary.”
So the proof comes when a company identifies their particular bottlenecks and then solves them.
Some other examples include: 30% reduction in new business analysis lead time, implementing an
enterprisewide VoiceoftheCustomer process to capture customer feedback at every point of
contact to better understand total lifetime value, and increasing companywide capacity utilization
by 10% by just betteraligning selling with manufacturing site allocation. Greater sales will
eventually come from all these improvements, but in a complex business system there rarely is a
quick way to reliably measure only the sales $ effects of any particular actions – there are too many
other uncontrollable variables and simultaneous changes.
How can someone learn more if they want to begin applying lean to their sales process?
I would be a horrible salesperson if I didn’t take this opportunity to promote my book, The Fluff
Cycle,” or my classes and Lean Post articles at the Lean Enterprise Institute. And I would also be a
horrible guest if I ddidn’t plug Shmula.com’s focus on customer experience – a huge part of what
Lean can offer to the Sales & Marketing world. Case studies are always interesting, but I caution
people to remember that those are particular solutions to some other organization’s particular
problems and chances are fairly low that they apply directly to you. The very best way to learn is to
experiment, sometimes fail, and then experiment again and again.
Any final words you’d like to share with my audience?
In my 20+ years of Lean, my best advice comes from observing the small % of companies that are
truly successful and sustain their progress. The one thing that sets them apart is that they don’t “do
Lean,” in the conventional textbook / somebody else’s model & tools approach, but rather they
regularly solve important problems, with their own solutions, to advance their business. The goal
should never be to become lean, but rather to become a better business – no matter what methods
you need to use to get there. When companies do this, Lean naturally emerges from within the
organization, and they end up spending far less effort on a better, companyspecific solution. One
great example can be found here in my article ‘Are We “Doing Lean” All Wrong? 1
Thank you very much, Pete, this truly has been a pleasure!
About Brent Wahba
Brent Wahba learned how to apply Lean and Sigma by spending over
20 years in the automotive industry in a variety of leadership and
technical positions at the Delphi Corporation. While there, he headed
global product lines, led the creation and implementation of sales &
marketing strategies, managed R&D and new product development
organizations, and optimized operations – all while developing new
applications of continuous improvement methodologies. Today he
writes, gives talks, teaches classes, and consults on many topics
including Adaptive Strategic Planning, Product Development Process &
Culture Change, and Sales & Marketing Problem Solving. His latest
work includes the book The Fluff Cycle (And How To End It By Solving REAL Sales & Marketing Problems). Brent is
currently the President of the Strategy Science consulting network, and is also on the faculty of the Lean Enterprise
Institute where he teaches Lean Sales & Marketing. When he is not travelling around the world, he can be found
giving volunteer startup business mentoring near his home in Dallas, Texas.
Brent holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester, an MS in Materials Science and
Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an MBA from the University of Rochester, and has
authored 10 patents.
He can be contacted at [email protected] or 585.315.7051
Be sure to check out our other interviews in the Lean Leadership Series:
Lean Leadership Interviews
Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way, shares his thoughts on Toyota Kata
why sometimes root cause analysis isn't necessary, and what else he is
excited to learn even after 30 years of being a student of the Toyota
Production System.
Jeffrey Liker, NYT Best Selling
Author, Professor, and Author of
the Toyota Way
In this Podcast interview with Eric Ries, the author of The Leanstartup, we
learn about the how he's applied Lean principles to starting companies. He
also tells us about his consulting work with GE and how GE, worldwide, has
applied Leanstartup throughout all its divisions and is considering
Leanstartup as its new Operating System for the company.
Eric Ries, Author of the
Leanstartup
Michael Balle is a leading voice in Lean. In this interview, he shares with us
his thoughts on Lean, tells us about his book, and spends a good amount of
time discussing Respect for People.
Michael Balle, Author and
Respected Lean Thinker
Michael Jones is the Head of Content at eBay and is the son of Daniel T.
Jones, the coauthor of The Machine that Changed the World the
watershed book that first brought awareness of the Toyota Production
System to America.
Michael Jones, Head of Content at
eBay
We caught up with Akash Trevidi, a product manager at Kiva.org, the
microfinance company that aims to help entrepreneurs worldwide in order to
alleviate poverty through selfreliance and entrepreneurship.
Akash Trevidi
We caught up with Hugh Molotsi at the Lean Startup Conference. Hugh is the
VP of Innovation at Intuit Labs. In this interview, we discuss how to
encourage everyone's voice in innovative product development and in
solving problems.
Hugh Molotsi, VP of Innovation at
Intuit Labs
Zetdi Runyan Sloan leads the startup and entrpreneurship events at the New
Mexico State University. Learn about how use of Lean Startup.
Zetdi Runyan Sloan
Al Dupree is the head of innovation at the National Institutes of Standards
and Technology. In this interview, he discusses his use of Lean Startup
principles in the world of research and innovation.
Al Dupree
Cory Strong first learned Lean by learning the Kawasaki Production System.
Many years later, he finds himself in the exciting and high impact world of
Lean Healthcare as a Lean Leader at the Nebraska Health System.
Cory Strong, Lean Leader at
Nebraska Health System
We interview Kaizen Institute (Kaizen.com) CEO Jon Miller. In this interview,
we get a glimpse of Jon's balanced and thoughtful approach to learning,
teaching, and the application of the Toyota Production System.
Jon Miller, CEO Kaizen Institute
Jonathan Escobar Marin is a Lean Leader and practitioner who first learned
of the Toyota Production System while he was on a benchmarking trip to
Toyota while employed at Procter and Gamble. In this interview you learn
Jonathan Escobar Marin about his journey and how he blends the High Performance Organization
Model with Lean.
Global Head of Lean Management
at Hartmann Group
Interview with Daniel Debow, Senior Vice President at SalesForce.com; In
this podcast, we discuss Deming, Lean at SalesForce, and the SalesForce
Wearables Initiative.
Daniel Debow, SVP at
Salesforce.com
Matt Long, VP of Continuous Improvement and 24 year veteran at Herman
Miller Inc. shares with us the history of Lean at Herman Miller, their
association with the Toyota Supplier Support Center, and about the Herman
Miller Performance System.
Matt Long, VP of Continuous
Improvement at Herman Miller
Inc.
This interview with Dr. Bob Emiliani covers several aspects of Fake Lean
versus Real Lean. There are real insights here from the "Lean Professor".
Bob Emiliani, Author and
Professor of Management
Michel Baudin is an author, highlysought after consultant in the Toyota
Production System. In this interview we learn about his distinctions between
LeanLite versus LeanDeep and how he understand the Respect for People
Principle versus Respect for the Human as is used internally at Toyota.
Michel Baudin, Author and
Respected Voice in Lean
Manufacturing
Lean Branding is an application of Lean principles to branding. Read her
provocative and practical approach to brand branding using the principles of
Lean.
Laura Busche, Author of Lean
Branding
Robert Martichenko is the Founder and CEO of LeanCor a lean logistics
and supply chain company. He is also the author of the book "A Lean
Fulfillment Stream", published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. In this
interview, he shares with us how Lean can be applied effectively beyond the
4 walls of manufacturing and outside the office, but infused into the entire
supply chain.
Robert Martichenko, Founder of
Leancor
Leanpub is an innovative approach to book publishing, where Peter believes
that lean principles apply. He claims that writing a book is essentially a
startup. And, the worst waste of all is writing a book that nobody wants. Read
more to learn how to apply lean to the world of book publishing.
Peter Armstrong, CEO of Leanpub
(Lean Publishing)
Keith Sparkjoy is the Culture Officer at Pluralsight, a Utah company that
raised $135 Million in 2014 an unprecedented amount of venture capital.
And, here's the really cool part, as the culture officer, he's trying to transform
his company using Dr. W. Edward Deming's teachings.
Keith Sparkjoy, Chief Culture
Officer at Pluralsight
David J. Anderson is the pioneer of the application of Kanban for creative
knowledge work. His methodology and approach has had widespread
acceptance and adoption and in this interview he shares results from
companies that have tried his approach and other lessons learned.
David J. Anderson, Author of many
books on Agile, and inventor of
Kanban for Creative and
Knowledge work
Dimitar Karaivanov is the CEO of Kanbanize, a visual kanban system
designed for creative and knowledge workers. In this interview, we discuss
the product and its many uses and how it embodies the principles of Lean.
Dimitar Karaivanov, CEO of
Kanbanize
Chris Hefley is the CEO of LeanKit, a company that provides Virtual Kanban
software for software development teams and knowledge workers. Reah his
interview and learn what led to the development of LeanKit and the role Lean
and the Toyota Production System plays.
Chris Hefley, CEO LeanKit
In this interview with Dan Markovitz, we learn why he believes that everything
is connected to the customer through the office. Based on this belief, he feels
that Lean for Office makes the most sense. Read and learn how he's
implemented Lean for the Office.
Dan Markovitz, Noted consultant
and expert on Lean for Office
Jason Yip is a noted thoughtleader in software engineering. As a consultant,
he helps software engineering organizations get better. In this interview, we
learn the state of software engineering and the role of Agile, Lean for
Software and Kanban.
Jason Yip, Consultant to software
development organzations
Matthew May is an author and influential voice in Lean and also Design
Thinking. He worked close to a decade at University of Toyota to help codify
the Toyota Production System. In this interview, he shares with us his
thoughts on his experience and what we can learn from it.
Matthew May, NYT Best Selling
author, consultant, and expert on
Toyota Production System
Lean Healthcare expert Mark Graban stops by and share his thoughts with
Shmula readers on how Lean can be applied to arguably the most important
industry in the world, healthcare.
Mark Graban, Best Selling Author
and expert on Lean for Healthcare
Art Smalley is one of the most honest and influential voices in Lean. He was
the first American to work in Japan's Kamigo plant, the plant where Taiichi
Ohno began the Toyota Production System. He shares with us his thoughts
on the Lean Movement and where it is going wrong.
Art Smalley, 15 Year Toyota
Veteran and authority on Toyota
Production System
Lean is being applied to every facet of business. Jeff Gothelf shares with us
his thoughts on applying Lean for user experience, or Lean UX.
Jeff Gothelf, Author of Lean UX,
applying Lean for User Experience
Cecil Dijoux shares with us his thoughts on applying Lean to IT, definitely a
mustread if you are in the information technology space.
Cecil Dijoux, Expert Consultant on
applying Lean for IT
Brent Wahba is a fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute and shares with us
his thoughts on Lean for Sales and Marketing.
Brent Wahba, Author and Expert
on applying Lean for Sales and
Marketing
Interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
In December 2008, I was fortunate enough to interview Tony Hsieh, CEO of
Zappos. In a 5 part series of interviews, we discuss the Zappos strategy and
Tony answers questions on why he chooses to focus on the customer and
how he sees that as strategic.
Interview Questions from shmula.com blog readers
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, Part 1
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
Interviews with Customer Experience Experts
Rackspace Interview on Customer Experience: We interviewed Mark
Roenigk on June 10, 2013. We discussed the Net Promoter Score and also
topics around process improvement and how Rackspace places the
customer first.
Mark Roenigk, COO of Rackspace
and Board Member at the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation
Shep Hyken Customer Service Interview: We interviewed Shep Hyken on
June 3, 2013 and discussed topics close to his heart the customer. We
focused our discussion on customer service and how focusing on the
customer is strategic, not just tactical.
Shep Hyken, Author and expert on
Customer Experience Strategy
Annette Franz Gleneicki on Customer Experience Strategy: Annette
Gleneicki is a customer experience thought leader and Director at Confirmit,
a voice of the customer platform. We discuss her thoughts on customer
experience and the direction of the overall field.
Annette Franz, Customer
Experience Strategist and Survey
Design Expert
Michel Falcon on Improving the Customer Experience: Michel Falcon is a
former executive at 1800GOTJUNK and was the person who propelled
1800GOTJUNK to become a customer service powerhouse. In this interview,
we discuss what he did and the lessons he learned.
Michel Falcon, Customer
Experience Strategist and Author
Adam Ramshaw, a customer experience consultant with Genroe, explains
the relationship between continuous improvement and customer experience.
Adam Ramshaw, Consultant to
fortune 500 companies on
Customer Experience
Leadership Interviews
This is a multipart Interview with Aza Raskin, on the Humane Interface.
He discusses Agile Software Engineering.
Then, in a later interview Aza Raskin discusses the "infinite scroll"
approach to Google search results.
In part 3, Aza Raskin shares his thoughts on Feature Bloat (aka,
"Featuritis") and how to overcome it.
In part 4, Aza Raskin describes the concept of Quasimodal Design and
Aza Raskin, Author, Startup how to implement it in our software projects.
Founder, and Son of Mac Inventor Finally, Aza Raskin explains the role of Poka Yoke in the User
Jef Raskin Experience and why Lean should be applied to software engineering and
knowledge work in general.
In this multipart interview with Mary Poppendieck, the preeminent
evangelist and teacher for Lean for Software, explains Lean Software
Engineering.
Then, Shmula.com readers were able to ask her questions of their own
read them here as Mary Poppendieck’s Answers to ALL Readers’
Questions, which includes questions such as Should Lean be Topdown
or Bottomup?.
Then, another Interview with Mary Poppendieck.
Then, Another interview with Mary Poppendieck where she
Mary Poppendieck, Author and
explains Lean Software Engineering to a Lean Six Sigma audience. Plus,
codifier of Lean for Software
here's the Original Article to Ask Mary Poppendieck Anything.
Engineering
Finally, Mary considers the idea of "handoff" and how that's such a big
problem in software projects Mary Poppendieck on the Handoff and
Waste
The inventor of Clocky, Gauri Nanda, shares with us her thoughts on
innovation and the birth of Clocky
Gauri Nanda, Entrepreneur and
inventor of Clocky
In March 2010, I held a 2 part series of interview with Gretchen Rubin, the
author of the Happiness Project. Her answers to reader's questions on a
variety of topics centering on happiness will enlighten you. Gretchen Rubin
the author of The Happiness Project, shares with us here thoughts on how to
be happy and what our part is in choosing to be happy.
Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project,
answers questions on happiness.
This is Part 1 of 2. And, In part 2 of 2, Gretchen Rubin, the author of
Gretchen Rubin, Author and the Happiness project answers more questions on how to be happy.
evangelist of Happiness
Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Zillow, shares with us his thoughts on
this interview with Zillow back in June 2006.
Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow
Josh Coates, the founder of Mozy, shares with us jokes and the innovation
behind Mozy.
Josh Coates, Entrepreneur and
Startup Guy
Lloyd Hildebrand describes Diabetic Retinopathy and how his company,
Inoveon, a Telemedicine Company, aims to eradicate diabetic retinopathy
Lloyd Hildebrand, Physician,
Entrepreneur, and Enemy of
Preventable Diseases that cause
Blindness
Ryan Kiskis of xFire, the developer of World of Warcraft, explains his
thoughts on innovation.
Ryan Kiskis, Gamer, Product
Director, World of Warcraft
Kaboodle, was clearly the predecessor to Pinterest. We learn about
Kaboodle and the innovation behind it.
Brian Hansen, Product Director,
Kaboodle, the first pinterest
Mark Jen, VP of Product Management at Plaxo, a Contact management
company, the predecessor to Linkedin speaks to us about innovation and the
business of business networking.
Mark Jen, Product Manager, Guy
who was fired from Google
Bzzagent, the word of mouth marketing company, explains the power of the
buzz.
Samuel Adams, Community
Director and expert on all things
word of mouth

1. http://www.lean.org/LeanPost/Posting.cfm?LeanPostId=231
Wing Chun Techniques and Air Pillows Shipping is Waste Lean Six Sigma and Business An Efficient Process Uses High Performance

Applications to Lean as Usual Less Energy Organization Model and Lean:
Interview with Jonathan
Escobar Marin
Filed Under: Lean Manufacturing
Comments
Jayadeep Purushothaman says
September 23, 2014 at 7:29 am
Do you need Sales if it is a complete pull model ? especially with online portals enabling a “direct” path to customers ?
Reply
Brent Wahba says
September 23, 2014 at 9:11 am
That’s a good question, Jayadeep, and the answer depends on your definition of “Sales.” In your example we wouldn’t need
traditional facetoface or telephone salespeople, but we would need Sales experts to design and set up the portal to begin
with (there is a ton of Sales Science in doing that well), run the system, optimize pricing, coordinate selling activity with
Operations / Delivery, and let’s not forget performing continuous improvement. It may overlap with “Marketing,” but we also
need some type of process for attracting customers to our portal, as well as a process for determining what exactly is for
sale (even in really good pull systems, there is never complete customer pull for the definition of the product or service to
begin with). So even if we automate the transaction, there are still many, many Sales & Marketing activities that still need to
occur.
Thanks for the question,
Brent
Reply
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Comment
Name *
Email *
Website
Post Comment
© 2017 Shmula LLC | Terms of Use | Refund Policy | Privacy Policy | Resources | Archives | Comment Policy and Disclosures | Contact

Lean Sales and Marketing With Brent Wahba

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Lean Sales and Marketing With Brent Wahba

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Lean Sales and Marketing With Brent Wahba

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1/29/2017 Lean

What is Lean? Six Sigma Videos Lean Leadership Interviews Improvement Experts What is Queueing Theory? Virtual Factory Tours

Wing Chun Techniques and Air Pillows Shipping is Waste Lean Six Sigma and Business An Efficient Process Uses High Performance

You might also like