What is lean selling?

Lean selling is figuring out how to sell your product or service with the least amount of sales effort and the least cost while still being effective.

The idea of lean selling came to me when I was thinking about how I might sell the wine made on our farm property. I don't want to hang around all day selling our wine as I can't afford, at this startup stage, to devote too much time to selling while other things need to be done around the farm. So, I thought about selling all the wine at designated events that we will host at the farm. Easy as that sounds it involves commercial insurance, proper liquor licensing, building inspectors and jumping some other hoops but it seems like it could eventually be a lean way to sell wine.

The idea of lean selling is also tied into marketing as it is difficult to sell stuff, especially events, if you don't have good marketing. This year we sold out all the tickets to our second annual outdoor concert (socially distanced version). We only used facebook advertising and word of mouth and were able to sellout easily and quickly. I paid $0 for facebook marketing and it was more effective than the $1300 I paid for more traditional advertising last year. The point I want to make here is that lean selling also takes into account the cost and effort of the marketing aspect.

Many have heard of the term "lean startup" or "lean manufacturing" or "lean farming". In this blog I propose that lean can also be used to describe an approach to selling a product or service that minimizes the operational and financial costs associated with the sales aspect of your business.