Dropped in to visit a few customers last week, and realized that the power of an on-site visit extends beyond any contact in a trade show, email, phone call, fax, or any form of advertising. It also provides valuable information with respect to lean.
By dropping in to visit your customers, and being ready to talk about them, not your own company, you learn about what their needs are, what situations they are facing and what current activities are at the top of their minds, and you learn about their culture. This helps you identify how your service or product may fit a customer's needs. If you have regular visits, you can also start to identify trends and ongoing needs versus situation specific needs.
With respect to Lean, you can take the things you learned above, and start to identify what the true value to the customer may be. And after all, that is what Lean is all about: identify the value according to the customer, then strip everything that is not of value to them. All that other stuff...the stuff they are not willing to pay for... that is waste.
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