Visual Management Eliminates Barriers to Sales

I found this picture on my iPhone this weekend.  I took this picture in the Summer, while buying lunch at Quiznos.  It didn’t take me long to remember why I took this picture and the principle it teaches – and how simple visual cues and simple visual triggers tell us something.

This simple artifact of visual management accomplishes several things:

1. It eliminates questions – no more: “how big is a toasty bullets versus a toasty torpedoes?” or “how big is a quiznos small sub, medium sub, or large sub?”
2. Based on the customer appetite at the time or order, the customer can make a quick decision, with less friction points.
3. Both (1) and (2) means fewer barriers to sales, it frees-up the cashier time to do more value-add activities (such as assembling a sandwich instead of answering questions), and provides the customer with confidence about what they are ordering and what they should expect to receive.

Effective Visual Management can help businesses generate more sales and can improve the customer experience.  Not to mention, visual management can help a business operate more effectively and efficiently, thereby reducing complexity and costs, which are often hidden.

It’s Your Turn

Have you seen effective applications of Visual Management?  Is this example effective?  How might it be improved?