TOC and Innovation: The Sales Process

The Theory of Constraints is an established and proven management philosophy. When properly applied it has yielded consistent, dramatic and significant positive results within various types of manufacturing, project management, supply chain management, and other fields. Its success is fundamentally due to its sound foundation of cause and effect logic. This foundation also enables innovation in new fields and new applications of TOC.

Any new application of TOC should function in accordance with the Five Focusing Steps and the four principles of flow described by Dr. Goldratt’s article “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” presented at the 2007 TOCICO International conference in Las Vegas.

The four principles of flow as applied to various business operations are:

Improving flow (or equivalently lead time) is a primary objective of operations

This should be translated into a practical mechanism that guides the operation when not to produce ((in the case of the sales environment, this translates to – control the number of active opportunities sitting in the funnel on any given day)

Local efficiencies must be abolished

A focusing process to balance flow must be in place

Among the areas showing promise in new applications of TOC is sales—in particular, the application of TOC to the sales process. Of the attempts I have seen to use TOC principles to achieve breakthrough performance in this area, I have been most impressed with a company named Zero to Quota, and their intriguing software product, Attieve.

Attieve breaks down and analyses the sales process, identifying and exploiting the constraint in the system and providing actionable information to help sales people consistently meet quota. In addition it provides reporting and valuable CRM functions, making it a complete tool for the sales manager.

I feel that Attieve successfully applies both the Five Focusing Steps and the four principles of flow. When this conclusion is coupled with the outstanding results achieved so far in South/Central America, where Attieve has the majority of its installed base, it is easy to conclude that in time, it too [Attieve] will come to be seen as a breakthrough solution in the area of sales. I look forward to similar successes in North America and elsewhere.

David Updegrove

Principal, Afinitus Group, LLC

Certified TOC Consultants

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