In our Master Black Belt Class today, when we were wrapping up, three students stated that their biggest take away from the week related to their ability to sell their organization on the use of Lean Six Sigma and the Integrated Enterprise Excelence system. We had a guest speaker, John Daly of the University of Texas at Austin, who spoke a the need to sell the problem needing fixed rather than selling lean six sigma to your organization. It was part of our course that is intended to provide the soon to be Master Black Belt insight into their new leadership role.

This is a technique that I learned during my attendance of a sales training program. When you lead a discussion with the benefits of your lean six sigma, the listener is wondering why they should care. A more successful approach is to initiate the discussion with a discussion of their work issues. Lead them to bring up a chronic or long standing issue that they have been dealing with. You may already know what it is, but you let them bring it up.

Ask questions like:
How the issue is going?
What are they doing to work the issue right now?
Do they expect these current efforts to succeed?
Is that frustrating?
How big a drain on your recourses and budget is it?
etc.

Some where at this point, ask if they have tried the LSS tools, since you know the are quite effiicent in diagnosing chronic and common problems. Discuss the lessons you have learned about. Bring up a similar issue that you or your peers have diagnosed and solved. Do not make sound easy, make it sound methodical and dependable. Ask if they could use any extra help.

Your hope is that they accept your help and then you can use them for a reference in a later effort in the organization. If you use this method, to sell the problem – before the solutions/benefits of Lean Six Sigma, you will be surprised in your success.

It works for me, It works for my company, and it will work for you.