Lean management connects marketing and sales with the whole company

The current moment of economic crisis and profound social transformation poses a double challenge for companies: connecting quickly to customers' new demands and becoming more efficient, delivering their products and services in an integrated way.

In this context, there are two strategic areas in which lean concepts and practices are still underdeveloped: marketing, which conceives and executes relationship and communication strategies with customers; and sales, which, at the end of the process, handles the final interaction.

It is important to understand that there is a certain historical view that “selling” is, in essence, “a gift”. There is no shortage of books, some of them best-sellers, that portray the “greatest salesman in the world” as a special being. So companies would depend on this to succeed.

Of course talent is important. However, “selling” involves a type of management that must be scientifically improved. And the lean system brings a distinct approach to this.

Traditional methodologies usually handle marketing and sales separately, without connection, resulting in a lack of integration between their processes and between them and the rest of the company.

Lean management brings about this first change: it looks at these areas from a single point of view, which is the value stream of the relationship with consumers. It makes the entire customer journey and the internal flows of interaction with the customer visible, demanding a more integrated connection. More than that, it puts marketing at the service of sales.

From this perspective, marketing is responsible for understanding customers in depth: their consumption habits, their needs, their expectations and their relevant experiences. From this perspective, it is able to identify whether there is a fit between the company's value offering and the lead, or even whether there is a value offering that addresses the lead's needs and expectations, before passing it on to be approached for a sale. Generating qualified leads becomes marketing's great mission. Understanding, grouping, segmenting, qualifying…

On receiving these already “qualified” leads, within a segmentation that reflects expectations and reasons for buying, sales can better serve each profile through the most efficient approach: self-service, personalized service, etc. In other words, the operationalization of the company's Go To Market (GTM) strategy.

These targeted actions generate faster results and higher conversion rates, and reduce the cost of interactions with leads that have no potential or for which the organization does not have a suitable value offering.

This means that all brand communication, strategies and product or service promotion must also be aligned with sales objectives, targets and criteria.

In lean management, this alignment takes place through a number of specific concepts, practices and mindsets.

For example, through visual management that manages the main metrics: communication actions, the leads and prospects worked, the conversion rates at each stage, the costs, the volume of unqualified leads (which may even generate insights for new offerings).

With this, it is possible to carry out daily management of the entire process. And to bring in other lean techniques that can help speed up results.

For example, using kanbans to track, monitor and control how many leads and/or prospects have entered the system, how long they are staying at each stage, at which phase of the journey customers are won or lost…

In this way, the entire flow can be visualized and managed. One can see whether the institutional, market and brand strategies and the value offering fit the profile of each segment and whether they bring the planned results. And understand the problems related to these processes and how to try to solve them.

Another application of lean concepts is defining the necessary standardized work more precisely. This practice, quite common in companies' operations areas, can also be used in marketing and sales. For example, by establishing standards for proactive contacts, formatting of e-mails with specific purposes, criteria for the number of contact attempts, communication cadences, etc.

All of this generates better revenue, elimination of waste and lower costs, both for acquiring and for retaining customers. As a consequence, it connects marketing and sales with the entire company, in which all areas work on the same journey, with the same purposes and targets.

Internal alignment and an ongoing relationship with the customer after the deal is closed aim to ensure that the company is generating the impact desired by (and sold to) the customer. This is what we call a customer success strategy: the company committed to ensuring that customers succeed through the use of the product or service they have purchased. This should orient the entire organization toward the ultimate purpose, which is to add value and/or solve customer problems, delivering the best experience.

When we look at this journey in an integrated way, we can allocate the right competencies to each stage and improve not only the customer experience, but also employee productivity and satisfaction.

Shared targets also help a great deal in implementing this connection. For example, if the focus of sales is only the volume of deals closed, without considering the customer success strategy, we may end up with high future acquisition costs. Generating revenue from existing customers usually costs less than bringing in revenue from new customers. Managing the metrics at each stage makes it possible to balance costs and gains.

All this avoids a series of common shortcomings found in companies that do not connect marketing and sales with the entire operation. For example, selling more or less than is produced, not delivering the product in the way the customer expects, slow and bureaucratic service processes… or even “abandoning” the consumer after the purchase, disregarding their experience.

An integrated view, from the capture of leads to follow-up throughout the customer's entire lifetime, generates loyalty and recurring revenue through renewals and repeat purchases. It also allows the company's strategic targets to be efficiently deployed into operational targets for each segment and stage of the journey.

It is an increasingly necessary evolution. Producing and delivering a product is no longer enough in these times of risk and uncertainty. It has become a kind of “commodity”. More is needed.

Today's consumers are better informed, have access to diverse experiences and compare everything with everyone. They demand agility, but also quality and personalization.

Engaging the entire company to produce and deliver a successful experience to the customer is, in essence, the lean way of managing marketing and sales.