Lean Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers

Studies show that up to 90% of all work done in a business office is waste. Locating files, looking up data, manually generating reports, retyping the same emails - all that is valueless wasted motion.

Bring the Principles of Lean Manufacturing to Your Marketing and Sales Operations

To combat the degree of waste in the office, the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center-Northeast and Inbound 281 have a unique solution. We've teamed up to bring the methods of lean manufacturing to business office operations, specifically to sales and marketing activities.

We call this approach Lean Sales and Marketing (LSM). LSM helps companies:

• Remove Waste
• Gain Efficiency
• Reduce Costs
• Maximize Value

Problems Solved by Lean Sales and Marketing

Lean Sales and Marketing solves the following problems:

• Sales and marketing time wasted on redundant manual tasks
• Sales reps spending too much time on office work, and not enough time selling
• Sales and marketing teams out of sync
• Sales and marketing using disconnected systems and processes
• Lost files, lost data, lost efficiency, lost opportunities
• Everything taking too long, costing too much, and not achieving targeted goals

What is Lean Sales and Marketing?

Simply put, Lean Sales and Marketing are lean manufacturing principles put into play in a business office, specifically with regard to sales, marketing, and customer service activities. LSM is a subset of Lean Office. Lean Office and LSM follow all the best-practice mandates of the lean methodology to eliminate waste, reduce inefficiency and maximize value.

For those who do not know, the lean methodology emphasizes eliminating waste in a production process. Lean is usually applied to manufacturing environments, but it can be applied to any business operation.

How Does Lean Sales and Marketing Work?

LSM automates sales, marketing, and even customer service processes. These days, sales and marketing activities are mostly digital. You wouldn't think there's a lot of waste in that. But there is. Redundant data entry, manual reporting, and manual customer follow-up - these all contribute to waste. LSM removes that waste to improve efficiency and do all the things for your non-factory office operations that lean manufacturing does for your shop floor.

Examples of How Lean Sales and Marketing Can Help

Here are some specific ways LSM can help marketing, sales, and customer service teams.

Marketing

• Schedule email & social media campaigns weeks in advance
• Easily repurpose creative elements across all channels
• Accelerate review & approval processes
• Get better aligned with the sales team
• Access performance metrics all in one place

Sales

• Automate follow-up so salespeople can focus on priorities
• Eliminate manually typing the same email over & over
• Create a central shared database of customer information
• Automate contract renewal reminders
• Reduce time spent emailing prospects by 90%

Customer Service

• Automate Customer Support and Help Desk responses
• Create a self-help knowledge base for customers
• Access customer history information from a central database
• Automate NPS and customer satisfaction processes

Are Lean Sales and Marketing Right for You?

LSM is affordable and adaptable. Just as the principles of lean manufacturing can be applied to companies of all sizes, so can LSM. Whether your sales and marketing teams are large or small or consist of just yourself, LSM can help.

Flexible solutions are available in all shapes and sizes.