Better Response Rates as a result of Agile

In my podcast yesterday, I had two Agile Development experts from Xerox. Several of the key points that they made was that Agile even though perceptively may be that it is undisciplined, it actually is a methodology that is driven by metrics and therefore very disciplined. They discussed how Design for Lean Six Sigma is applied within the development team to obtain the customer information needed.

This brought my thought process back to the outline by Eric Reiss where he believes that you need both a programming and customer development team. Though I did not ask the question in the podcast directly, I believe that Eric’s explanation and the Xerox definition closely resemble each other.

The important of gathering the correct metrics and the voice of the customer seems so important in the agile method. Since, I have been testing and applying Agile methods to the marketing process I studied Eric’s diagram in the terms of a marketing funnel seeing his cycle take place as we discover, validate, create the offer and then scale the offer. Taking this approach, I can see developing a marketing campaign around this. For an easy example, I will use just simple direct mail piece.

1. Customer Discovery: You must decide who the customer is relative to the offering ; A simple procedure of target marketing or building a customer persona.
2. Customer Validation: If you are planning a 20,000 piece mailing, than you would of course get an adequate sample size and to validate the offering and see if your call to action is strong enough. You may adjust the mailing several times to improve it and see which mail piece performs the best.
3. Customer Creation: I would propose that you set your demographics tighter and determine the needs stronger for the offering. Maybe, a Mafia offering of sort, something they can’t refuse.
4. Scale Company: You should have acquired enough knowledge to scale your offering not only to meet the needs of the customer but the resources of your organization. Maybe, it is something as simple as the final number of pieces that will be mailed and/or the material that you have on hand based on the response rate that you have tested.

Nothing earth shattering in this proposal, but the true iterative process will or should change the way you look at this. As Jim Highsmith, a founding member of the Agile Alliance and celebrated author once said: “Deliver the product needed at the end, not the one requested at the beginning.” The purpose of such a relatively small project is not completing the project but the ability to learn how to adapt a process to your customers needs. As you take these relatively small steps they will turn in to large leaps as time goes on.

Usually the biggest argument that people have against a process such as this, is time. However, my argument would be that there is a huge tradeoff between time and effectiveness. Worst case scenario is If your sampling never works and you end up sampling all 20,000 what have you lost, a little time? Another scenario is that you just mailed 20,000 and were happy with a typical return of 1 or 2% because that is what direct mail gets. So if you receive 200 to 400 responses you are entirely happy. But what if you sampled 1,000 and then another 2,000 and another 2,000? If you received 1% just on these and 3 to 5% on the balance, you would have increased your effectiveness from 200/400 to 500/800.

This simple concept should actually become a foundation of your mail system. Presently, I have started to formalize a plan for my own e-mail delivery system and breaking my list into sample sizes that I rotate for feedback. This way I will be delivering the same e-mail practically every day with an adjustment to each one based on the click stream from the day before. It may be nothing more than moving one section to a higher level in the letter. The next day, maybe I would add a picture to the worst performing section and so on. What do you think I will learn? Or not learn?

Related Posts:

evaluate your Customer Needs

Using Agile Marketing in real life

Boyd’s Law of Iteration: Speed beats Quality

Technorati Tags: Lean,Ezines,Agile,Agile Marketing,Customer Feedback,Marketing Campaign

Using work cells in Sales and Marketing!

Cellular manufacturing is one of the most powerful lean tools. It will allow for smaller lot production, quality improvements, and shorter lead times and simplifies the implementation of pull. Typical manufacturing systems had the same machines all grouped together and as a result batch type manufacturing was developed. As manufacturers developed cellular systems, they found quality improved and smaller lot quantities could be efficiently handled. Many of the work cells were rearranged into U-shaped or L-shaped patterns. This allowed one worker to operate several machines which improve productivity. The benefits have been very well documented and applied to many industries.

Related Post with other pertinent links: (Why you should use Kanban in Marketing?)

Followers of my blog have seen how I use DMAIC principles in discussing the marketing funnel. And in reviewing, discussed how adding toll gates for identifying when prospects should move from one stage to the next. Inside the stages, we have different marketing programs that are taking place. But I really never talked about the personnel that were handling these programs. In most sales and marketing applications, you will have marketing assigned by the duties they do and salespeople assigned to certain accounts. I think it might be interesting to consider what we have learned in U-shaped or L-shaped work cells.

 

Instead of the typical arrangement, what would prevent an organization of assigning the personnel and cross-training them within one of the marketing stages. This way they would become experts within the stage and be able to respond to the needs of a prospect better and more efficiently. Since they are handling the tools of the stage that particular area would have a better chance of improving the methods utilized within it.

In recent times quality has suffered in sales and marketing. Many times the customer seems to be more of an expert than the salesperson calling on them. Other times experts have to be brought in and duplication of manpower takes place. Many companies have a sale’s closer; maybe sometimes a sales manager that would come in and have the power to close a prospect when ready. If you were doing that during each stage the likelihood of passing on better qualified and more prospects would occur. Another consideration that someone may find fault with this type of thinking is geographic boundaries. However I believe that excuse is seldom the case.

The key to your thinking should be in flow rather than function. Taking each individual stage and think about creating a work cell by defining the operations that take place within that stage. The number of resources within that stage will have to correlate to the number of prospects within the stage. It must be recognized that numbers don't always work out perfectly or that certain talents may have to be utilized in several different stages. But I believe that the quality of the interaction would increase with the customer.

The goal lean is continuous flow was close to that as possible while eliminating waste of waiting and a waste of overproduction. I believe that this type of arrangement would be in organizations first step in leveling sales volume.

Do you think work cells can work in Sales and Marketing? Are they already?

Related Posts:

Bringing your Storyboard Alive!

A Little more on applying Little’s Law to Lean your Marketing!

Using DMAIC for your A3 Report in the Lean Marketing House

Value Stream Mapping

Technorati Tags: Value stream Mapping,A3 Reporting,DMAIC,Six sigma,Work Cells,Lean,Marketing

Boyd's Law of Iteration: Speed beat Quality

From the Coding Horror Blog

This leads to Boyd's Law of Iteration: speed of iteration beats quality of iteration.

You'll find this same theme echoed throughout every discipline of modern software engineering:

• Unit tests should be small and fast, so you can run them with every build.
• Usability tests work best if you make small changes every two weeks and quickly discard what isn't working.
• Most agile approaches recommend iterations no longer than 4 weeks.
• Software testing is about failing early and often.
• Functional specifications are best when they're concise and evolving.

I believe that Boyd’s Law directly applies to today’s marketing.

• All marketing should be tested quickly and in small quantities
• Your marketing cycle conversions work bests if you make small changes approximately at twenty percent of the sale cycle and quickly discard what isn't working.
• Most agile marketing approaches recommend iterations of no longer than 4 weeks.
• Marketing stages are about failing early and often.
• Functional specifications are best when they're concise and evolving.

Taking a Closer look at these principles:

All marketing should be tested quickly and in small quantities. In fact, why would you not test multiple emails one day and release an entire batch the next day. Is there absolutely any reason that we are unable to do this anymore? Another example is that headlines can be tested on twitter, blogs, etc. Small business specifically should test constantly.

Your marketing cycle conversions work bests if you make small changes approximately at twenty percent of the sale cycle and quickly discard what isn't working. I think it is difficult for put a time frame on this when we are talking in such general terms. So, what I propose is that if you look at your marketing in five stages, you would want to make modifications within one stage at a time. The important thing to remember is to keep the stages flowing and not in constant flux. Modifications should be planned, your hindrance will be doing these things indiscriminately and causing flow interruptions.

Most agile marketing approaches recommend iterations of no longer than 4 weeks. Again, we must determine what you normal sales/marketing cycle is and then plan accordingly. The secret to this is to shorten the cycle through these principles removing waste and creating value.

Marketing stages are about failing early and often. Marketing is the least expensive in the early stages. As you walk through the process your investment increases so your conversion should increase and maybe just maybe hold on to a lead a little longer.

Related Posts: Throughput Search on Business901 Blog

Technorati Tags: Boyd,Speed,Agile,Agile Marketing

Key to a Successful Event, begin with a Holy Shit Moment!

When holding a Kaizen Event have you ever really taken the time to think thru the event and how you will hold people’s interest and more importantly how you will get them engaged? Managers may think that everyone has the same level of interest and are willing to participate and share openly. I think that is what separates the professional facilitator from the average manager; the ability to engage in conversation with the entire team. Without doing this you may leave the best idea lying on the table, never to surface and be implemented.

I believe the best way to get the team engaged is by delivering a “Holy Shit” moment. That’s right, don’t try to loosen them up with small talk or a joke but go right for the throat and bring importance to why they are there. If you can, wheel in the issue, show why the improvement has to be made but do it in a visual manner. Maybe, even start the event at Gemba or maybe even downstream from that. Add some realism to the problem by bringing in several customers to describe how they interpret or how the problem affected them. You need to set the stage, before Act 1 is over, you want everyone on the team to be muttering; “Holy Shit.”  

Below, is a slide presentation on how Steve Jobs prepares for presentation and I think it is a good template for delivering that moment.  Another great resource I would recommend is Patrick Lencioni Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business and Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators. 

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo.

I have been spending time this week updating my Value Stream Marketing Webinar and next to me, I keep the following books (These are Amazon Links below, if you buy all three, I might make $2.45 and if you do, Thanks!):

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Also another great resource, 6 tips on Remote Presentations from Nancy Duarte

Technorati Tags: Presentations,Kaizen Event,Kaizen,Value Stream Marketing

Evaluating your Customer Needs

How do you increase speed in your marketing. It actually is very easy. You must target your market. Most professionals lose jobs because they do not make their offers crystal clear to their prospect. The prospects must understand completely, without a doubt what benefits they will receive and what the outcomes will be from working with you or using your product. You must be crystal clear in your definition. However, are you crystal clear in what you will be offering?

I have recently started using the Kano model in providing a better definition for my clients of putting their product and features not only perspective but defining that clarity issue. The Kano model relates to three factors:

Basic or must be or the expected needs. Without these the customer would be dissatisfied. This sounds very straight forward but if these are not adequately defined during the marketing process they are simply deal breakers and questions that either party may ever asked.

The second aspect is the performance factor and to define that performance think about the term, “more is better.” The more this performance is met, the more the prospect is satisfied. This is the area that the customer measures the value of the product or service they are receiving. In a few cases, these features are the ones that have meaning to some clients and others could care less. They even may cause dissatisfaction to some. Herein lays a great opportunity to improve these areas which many times can be done at relatively inexpensive option. Or, you may even be able to remove them completely.

Another way to leverage the performance factor segment is to have a better definition of your target market and how it relates to these factors. You may find that making these an option or even using them in a way of further segmenting your customer base may ultimately give you an advantage over the competition either through price or features.

The third factor is the delighters. If these are absent, they will not cause any dissatisfaction at all. The customer does not even expect these. But when they are there, they cause extreme happiness. OK, maybe that is a bit much. An interesting side note that needs to be recognized about the delighters is typically they do not increase the value in the product or the service. The delighters may also in time, even become a basic need.

The Kano Model is constantly shifting but it is a great method to use to gain a better understanding of your prospects values that are critical to success and to prioritize the requirements for further development activities. Just as importantly, I think it really lends itself to understanding your market segment characteristics better. And if you divide your marketing segments better you will increase throughput and develop better budgets as a result.

By the way: Another important feature of the Kano Model is that it gives you a better understanding on what  tradeoffs you might have in your marketing cycles. You certainly could not trade off a basic need, but you might be able to reduce the level of your performance factor.

Technorati Tags: Kano,Lean Marketing,Lean,Lean Development,CTS,CTQ,Quality

Theory of Constraints Podcast with Dr. Lisa Lang

My guest this week (yes, we talked to long) and next week was “Dr. Lisa” Lang. She is considered the foremost expert in the world in applying Theory of Constraints to Marketing and currently the President of the Science of Business. She recently served as the Global Marketing Director for Dr Goldratt who is the father of Theory of Constraints and author of The Goal. Dr Lisa has a PhD in Engineering and is a TOCICO certified expert in Theory of Constraints. She is currently serving on the TOCICO Board of Directors.

This week podcast centered on applying the Theory of Constraints internally within an organization and creating a Control Poit within you system.  If you focus on what’s important and leverage your resources where they can have the largest impact, the results are quick and substantial.  Theory of Constraints is the focusing mechanism and then Lean and Six Sigma tools are used to leverage.

Dr. Lisa is the author of 3 books: Maximizing Profitability, Achieving a Viable Vision, Increasing Cash Velocity, and Mafia Offers is due out in May 2010. Science of Business specializes in increasing profits of highly custom businesses and applying Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma to sales and marketing, having developed the Mafia Offer Boot Camp, Velocity Scheduling System, and Project Velocity System.

Before becoming a consultant, Dr Lisa was in operations, strategic planning, purchasing, R&D, and quality while working for Clorox, Anheuser-Busch and Coors Brewing. She is known for having developed the Anheuser-Busch plastic beer bottle. In addition to consulting, Dr Lisa is a highly sought after Vistage/TEC speaker on “Maximizing Profitability”. Dr Lisa also provides professional keynote speeches and workshops for organizations like: TLMI, ASC, NTMA, MCAA, NAPM and private events for corporations like: TESSCO, Bostik, GE, Pfizer and Sandvik Coromant.

 

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Technorati Tags: Theory of Constraints,Marketing,Mafia Boot Camp,Manufacturing,Machining,Velocity Scheduling

Related Posts:

Great Resource on the Theory of Constraints: Ebook on Integrating Theory of Constraints with Lean Six Sigma

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!

Lean your Marketing thru Segmentation

Real life example of Agile Marketing

Good description of the Agile Marketing Process versus the typical waterfall method. I am really starting to love this stuff!

Jason Cohen describes how a free book transformed marketing at Smart Bear Software: objectively measuring the effect of marketing efforts, getting accurate lead information, and giving people something genuinely useful. This Pecha Kucha talk was delivered at Joel Spolsky's Business of Software 2008 conference in Boston.

 

Jason’s thought process on how to get quality leads from you e-mail subscriptions and whitepapers seems to be such a natural for industries transforming to online marketing. Remember, the old bingo cards and how your salespeople use to love chasing those three month old leads. How do they feel about internet leads? If you want quality, you may have to give up quality! What do you think?

By the way, doesn’t Pecha Kucha sound like a Pokeman Card? Actually it is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.

Learn Kaizen and Agile from Pixlar

The past few weeks I have been heavily immersed into Kaizen, Kanban, Agile Project Development and as a result Scrum. I have found it quite interesting but somewhat overwhelming along with a few other things I am doing. I have taxed my learning absorption level to say the least. 

What did I do? I took a little time off and sat back with a good book and a little Jackson Browne(Just like Bach to me). The book; Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World's Most Creative Corporate Playground. It was written by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson, the pair that wrote The Disney Way, Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company.

It wasn’t long into the book that they discussed stories and development that my mind drifted to agile and scrum comparisons. What they really brought home was the importance of collaboration and building a team. They even discussed the great lengths they go to hire people who are interested in working in a “network” type environment  in solving problems, building and supporting each other. Here is a short excerpt from the book; the definitions of a set of proficiencies by Bill Nelson of Pixlar:

1. Depth – demonstrating mastery in a subject or a principal skill; having the discipline to chase dreams all the way to the finish line.
2. Breadth – possessing a vast array of experiences and interests having empathy for others; having the ability to explore insights from many different perspectives; and being able to effectively generate new ideas by collaborating with the entire team.  
3. Communications – focusing on the receiver; receiving feedback to ascertain whether the message sent was truly understood. Realizing only the receiver can say, “I understand!”
4. Collaboration – bringing together the skills(depth, breadth, and communications), ideas, and personality styles of an entire team to achieve a shared vision. Fostering an attitude to say, “Yes, and…”, rather than “No, this is better.”

Collaboration is critical to the process of generating ideas and problems in any organization. When you review the principles of Kaizen and Agile, your ability to succeed really comes down to how good of a team you put together.  Very few times in an initial read of a book, I started reading this for pleasure, have I ever stopped so soon in a book and reread an entire chapter.

The rest of the book proved to be just as valuable and I think the authors did a very nice job of displaying the brilliance and the imagination that is taking place at Pixlar. I encourage you to read the book before you put together your next team.  

At first I was going to put a picture of the book with an Amazon link into the blog post. Sounds pretty boring. Lets figure out how to make Toys.

Related Posts:

Holding Successful Kaizen Events Part 3 0f 3
Agile Marketing – Maybe?
Start your Marketing with a User Story
A Hidden Asset of a Kaizen Event

Technorati Tags: Pixlar,Innovate,Agile,Scrum,Kanban,Kaizen

Best in Market using Six Sigma in Marketing

Eric Reidenbach author of several books on Six Sigma Marketing, the most recent being Six Sigma Marketing: From Cutting Costs to Growing Market Share, has allowed me to offer my readers a complimentary copy of his newly published book, Best in Market.

I think the book incorporates the overall essence of Six Sigma in marketing today. It takes the DMAIC structure and applies it in a simple easy to read structure that will be beneficial to a Black Belt that may not be all that familiar with marketing and/or to a marketing team that has limited exposure to Six Sigma. It is a readable book that it is not filled with Six Sigma terminology and methodology that typically takes away from the message. So many Six Sigma sales and marketing books seem to labor on the point of making sure that they are what I would call a "methods" book and spend way to much time on Six Sigma versus a learning tool for people to take a practical message away. The points that are made on value and quality through out the book and on how to acquire them through proper techniques provided me some additional insights into my own marketing methods.  

An overview of the book:

Chapter 1 examines the state of U.S. manufacturing – the myths, the realities and most important, the challenges. Much has been written about the challenges from new tax laws to enterprise zones to cost cutting. These are what I call enabling factors that will provide organizations with an environment to excel. Enabling factors alone are insufficient to sustain a leadership position. Value creation and delivery are the sustaining factors – those factors that will enable U.S. manufacturing to achieve this dominance and sustain it.

Chapter 2 examines the old business model and how it must change to accommodate a new set of exigencies that populate a global market place.

Chapter 3 takes an in depth look at the element that calls for a new set of tools that will be required to excel in a global environment. At the heart of these tools is value – an idea that is not new but one that has received new attention because of our ability to measure it and manage it.

Chapter 4 provides the foundation for the new value strategy. Targeting markets will be crucial to any effective strategy in the global environment. Buyers in different countries and even different regions of different countries will define value in different ways. Identifying targeted product/markets and being able to assess their utility to the organization is a critical first step – one that will eliminate much waste and insure greater productivity.

The Voice of the Market (VOM) and how to capture it is the subject of Chapter 5. For each targeted product/market the organization will have to create a value model that identifies and prioritizes the importance of both quality and price and then identifies and prioritizes the importance of the CTQs (critical – to – quality factors) that make up quality. The VOM becomes the information platform that informs all subsequent aspects of SSM.

Understanding your organization‟s competitive value proposition, how the market evaluates your value relative to that of your key competitors is essential. Failing to do so relegates all subsequent activities to guesses and your strategic planning becomes strategic guessing – an all too often occurring activity in many manufacturing organizations. This is the subject of Chapter 6.

Since market share is the focus of this new value strategy, a tool for managing customer loyalty is provided in Chapter 7. Trying to outsell customer defections or running faster to simply stay in place as suggested by the Queen of Hearts in Alice in the Looking Glass is not an option. Customer retention is a crucial component of market share management.

Chapter 8 describes a value tool for identifying where your competition is vulnerable and how to attack that vulnerability. Customer acquisition is another component of market share and in most maturing industries, taking customers from competitors is a capability that must be mastered. Simply waiting for your competition to make a mistake is too passive and relies on serendipity rather than strategy.

Improving the three factors that impact market share gains – people, product and processes is the focus of Chapter 9. Value is delivered through the organization‟s capacity to manage these three value adding elements.

Finally, Chapter 10 offers a model of monitoring changes made to the people, product and process improvements undertaken. To simply assume that the changes are doing what they were intended to do is delusional. They must be monitored to assess their efficiency and effectiveness.

As myself, this is a subject that is near and dear to Eric’s heart and would love to see the idea migrate through the manufacturing and quality world. I encourage you to download the book and take advantage of this offer. Download the book: Best in Market.

If you would like to learn more about Eric or his company visit: 6SigmaMarketing.com

Technorati Tags: 6Sigma Marketing,Six Sigma Marketing,Lean Sigma Marketing,Value Stream

White Collar Kaizen can learn from Scrum

In my recent discussions on White Collar Kaizen, one of the issues that seem to migrate through the conversation was the need for a process owner to insure that the Kaizen initiative was carried out. In the non‑manufacturing world the teams are so cross functional and organizations are so "siloed," that the claim is that it would throw the organizational chart out of whack. As I listened to the conversation my thoughts wandered off to the description of a Scrum team. If you are doing Kaizen and looking how best to implement and sustain your next Kaizen Event you may want to review these team principles.

I have been told to think of a Kaizen Event as one large PDCA with several mini PDCA within it. Sounds like one big Iteration with several smaller Iterations… Could Scrum be similar to PDCA?

Related Posts:

Holding successful Kaizen Events Part 2 of 3

Holding successful Kaizen Events, part 1 of 3

Technorati Tags: Scrum,Agile,Lean,PDCA,Kaizen,White-Collar Kaizen,Kaizen Event

Successful Kaizen Events – Find out How

This is a transcription of the podcast that I had with Karen Martin the co-author of The Kaizen Event Planner: Achieving Rapid Improvement in Office, Service and Technical Environments. Karen shared so much new information that I had split the podcast into 2 parts. The 3rd part is the transcription of the podcast. These podcasts are a wealth of information on Kaizen Events and a great companion to her book. It was great series and there is little fluff in this content. I hope you enjoy it.

Holding Successful Kaizen Event -

Related Posts:

Holding successful Kaizen Events, part 1 of 3
Holding successful Kaizen Events Part 2 of 3

Technorati Tags: Kaizen,Lean,White-Collar,Office-Environment,Kaizen Event,Kaizen Template

Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept

The Indirect Marketing depicted in the light blue section the Value Stream Marketing layout incorporates a wide array of marketing tools. This can be similar to the top of someone’s marketing funnel but it also is similar to the concept of flipping the funnel and re-using your existing customer stream that you have in place.

There are numerous marketing systems and methodologies in the marketplace but what makes all of them work is your customer or prospect and your involvement with them. You have to develop certain touch point that will identify and link your product or services to your customer base. How well you can make this are authentic and even transparent can be very important. Point in case is social media. It is ok to have scheduled tweet sand blog post to become more efficient but without some actual real-time conversation it is soon recognized by your followers that this is indeed just a platform for you to blast out your message. I include several stages within this process:

The Define(Involvement) Stage: Tthe Define stage typically asks us to start with a problem statement. In the marketing sense, can you define the problem that you solve for your customers clearly? Where the problem statement describes the pain, the next statement should describe the relief that is to be expected. After that, we go into a process that is typically defined as Voice of the Customer. There are typically two major categories that are required; Output requirements and Service Requirements. The output requirements relate to the final product or service that is delivered to the customer. The service requirements relate to how the customer would like to be treated and served during the process. The final step in the Define stage is to document the process. Typically, this is done with a high level process map. Don't worry about it being completely correct as we will use it and develop it further in the remaining processes. More on this Subject: The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC – Define stage

The Measure(Influence) Stage: In the DMAIC methodology we use tools such as Critical to Quality and other tools to determine what is important to a prospect. Instead of thinking about this step from an internal point of view step back and consider what the prospect would use to measure your product or service and make the decision to move through the funnel. Developing measures with customer input will certainly help a prospect move though the funnel. At this stage, do you know how a prospect is measuring you? What is the most Critical to quality standard that influences your product or service? What is more critical than others? The old saying is that people perform by how they are measured? If your company is based on how they are being measured, do you have measurements in places that influence your performance? More on this Subject: The Marketing Funnel using the Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology – Measure stage

These are the principles in place that you guide someone through your marketing stages. But what are marketing concepts that you are using at in these stages? These concepts are many of the building blocks in the Lean Marketing House Foundation and are the basic marketing tools that you are familiar with when evaluating your marketing. From the general terms such as; Advertising, PR, Social Media and Referrals to the more specific tools that you use such as; Public Speaking, E-zines, Blogging and White Papers.

A Value Stream Marketing Concept: The one concept that many fail to consider is the In direct marketing of “Staying in Touch” with your customer base. Many times they are just folded back into the above mentioned terms. But I would like to challenge you into thinking on how you can be involved in their communities. Becoming active in these areas will not only increase your involvement with your customers and other prospects but there is nothing more effective in making your marketing more efficient. Understanding their needs, what they are looking for, where they are being underserved is the single greatest marketing concept that I know of. So, if I ask this question: Where are your customers being underserved? Can you answer it? And/Or, is that a market you have the ability to take care of or build a future alliance from?

New book on the subject: Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

Technorati Tags: Referral,Vocie of Customer,DMAIC,Six Sigma marketing,Lean,Value Stream,Value Stream Marketing

Value Stream Marketing Webinar

Value Stream Marketing

This webinar will discuss utilizing the Value Stream Marketing Concept and how to apply Lean Sigma Principles to your marketing process. I found using Lean techniques not only improves the process but offer a substantial cost savings.

You will receive the E-Book "The Lean Marketing House!"

EVENT REGISTRATION : http://valuestreammarketing.eventbrite.com/

Time: 1:00 PM on March 11, 2010

Business901 introduces the Value Stream Marketing Concept as it is the first actionable step with the Lean Marketing House; we want our participants to learn how to utilize a Sales and Marketing Value Stream which is an entire different procedure than your typical Marketing Funnel. A few of the ideas are so radical from your present day thinking that we will ask you to try them only on your worst performing marketing segment. Joe Dager, a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Marketer will present these topics.

Dager says, "Marketing Segmentation is an integral part of the Lean Marketing House concept. Applying Lean and Theory of Constraints to this practice opens up a completely different understanding of the Marketing Funnel, so different that we had to call it something different. It opens up and simplifies it for many individuals and companies that have difficulty looking at marketing as a system. And as many of us know most marketing systems don’t work. We will take the Value Stream created and walk you through the theory and into practice. I have not found a quicker and easier method from converting a stagnate and non-systematic marketing effort into a flood of increased sales. Not only will this method increase sales but typically it will decrease your marketing cost in a relatively short period. The end result also includes a continuous improvement process to keep your marketing ahead of the competition.”

Implementing Value stream Marketing is a 60-minute webinar based specifically on addressing these issues:

1. Lean Sigma Marketing Principles
2. Creating a Current State Map
3. Simplifying and removing waste in your marketing
4. Segmenting your Customer Base
5. Creating a Customer Centric Budget
6. Creating the PDCA Cycle
7. Determining your Constraint
8. Why your Marketing will fail without this!

Reliable and Measurable Marketing! 

Technorati Tags: Lean Makreting,Agile Marketing,Lean Sigma Marketing,Six Sigma marketing,Value stream Mapping

Business901 Webinars for the Month of March

How Good are you at Marketing Yourself?

Marketing your Black Belt: Every 2 weeks  on Friday. Marketing your Black Belt is based specifically on addressing these issues: Customer Acquisition, Marketing, Customer Retention and Communication & Collaboration.

Get Clients NOW - 28 Day Program: Program starting on first Monday of every month: 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM (GMT-0500).Program Structure and Agenda: During the first three sessions you will receive all the tools and training needed to design your individual 28-day marketing action plan. The listing above is the starting date for the program. You have signed up to start on that Monday this listed and for the following 28 days.

Lean Marketing Assessment: First Wednesday of every month. This program will allow participants to gain a clear snapshot of their present marketing conditions and practices. The participants can use the assessment to determine areas in need of improvement and develop a plan accordingly.

Value Stream Marketing: Thursday, March 11, 2010 from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (ET) (New). We want our participants to learn how to utilize a Sales and Marketing Value Stream which is an entire different procedure than your typical Marketing Funnel.

Lean Your Marketing thru Referrals: Monday, April 05, 2010 at 12:00 PM (GMT-0500). These groups are the most affordable way for you to crank up your marketing and build your business. Learn new techniques, create a Referral Message that will resonate with your Customers, Not other Marketers!

How many times has a good idea failed because of a poor plan or execution? For start-ups and established organizations alike, Business901 provides effective but easy to use methodologies. It is flexible enough to allow you to apply your own ideas, while giving you guidance before, during and after. We will provide practical, information-rich, immediately applicable direction that can have immediate impacts on the success of small and mid-sized businesses. Our experience includes numerous start-ups, several turnarounds in variety of industries to include manufacturing, retail, and professional services to include marketing.

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Using Kanban in Marketing?

Kanban is any signaling device that gives authorization for a supplying process to know what to produce, or for a material handler to know what items to replenish. For example: a physical paper card placed in a container of parts. When stored items are actually used, the Kanban card gets "freed" (perhaps it was in the bottom of the container), and gets put back into a Kanban stand where the Kanban "requests" are fulfilled.

Kanban is a way of limiting work in process and the amount of new work that is introduced into the process. As a result, work would be pulled from the previous stage as work is completed and levels demand. It emphasizes throughput rather than numbers. If you have read my previous posts, you would recognize the emphasis I put on throughput and the need for this to be monitored in the sales and marketing process.

The Reasons for a Kanban can be summed up in these previous posts:

Improve your Marketing Cycle, Increase your Revenue : Speed is important in the buying process. Your total cycle time can be improved. However, it seldom can be done without more feedback loops in your system.  Develop process blitzes to reduce these non-value times. Go to Gemba or the customer’s place of work and find out what happens during this time. See what is stopping them from moving forward. It may be an internal constraint within their company. However, the constraint may be yours. You may not be responding to the customer’s latest needs. Your ability to focus your resources on the customer needs may provide the overall clarity he needs this to make a more rapid decision.

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!: In a manufacturing system cutting WIP just about always will increase throughput. Why? You end up working only on what is needed and when it is needed. You also will have less waste, less material to handle and fewer mistakes. Good things happen when you are not handling excessive amount of material. In a marketing system cutting the amount of customers in half works very much the same way. You end up working on what a customer truly needs and wants. Your marketing will become more personal, more direct, and fewer mistakes.

Using the Six Sigma Tollgate in your Marketing Funnel: Have you thought of using DMAIC as a way of defining your marketing funnel? We looked at Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control and utilized these basic principles to walk a customer through the marketing funnel. In other posts, I discussed the ability to create a shorter cycle time by decreasing the non-value time in between each of these stages. One of the methods of doing this is to have a strong call to action for a prospect to move from one stage to the next. However, how do you know if a customer is ready to move from one stage to the next?

What kind of questions would you ask at a tollgate?: In a recent post, using the Six Sigma Tollgate in your Marketing Funnel I went through the concept of using a tollgate in your marketing funnel. Below is a list of questions that might help general a few ideas that you may want to consider. (Review Post)

The essential points needed in a Kanban system are:

1. Stock points
2. Replenishment Signal
3. Quick Feedback
4. Frequent Replenishment

 

If you would consider the typical marketing cycle as a prospect moves from one stage to another, you typically imagine it as step by step process and certain events taking place within that stage. With a Kanban method or a tollgate you could have certain trigger points for each stage and even a phase within that stage allowing one marketing effort to pull from the previous. The method would also limit the number of prospects within that cycle so that the proper amount could be managed or more importantly satisfied! Or, you could have an unlimited supply of leads flowing into each stage? You probably wish you had the latter. However, which would prove more effective?

Photo Courtesy of Systems2win.

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Your Sales Cycle – Should you change it!

John Holland and Tim Young have just co-authored a book titled Rethinking the Sales Cycle: How Superior Sellers Embrace the Buying Cycle to Achieve a Sustainable and Competitive Advantage. This book contains a detailed explanation of the three phases of the buying cycle popularized by Mike Bosworth in Solution Selling  and had been created in a dinner conversation with Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling. If anyone has ever discussed sales and marketing with me for any length of time; the buying cycle, Spin Selling and Solution Selling has crept into the conversation. In fact, the buying cycle I include in just about every presentation I give on marketing. I have depicted a copy of it below that I use instead of the more common graph.

An Excerpt from a presentation I recently did with this slide:

The next thing that I want to take a quick look at is the actual buying phases of a customer. This is from the book, Solution Selling. The slide is particularly interesting and I've used it for a very long time. Just think of someone that goes into a store to purchase an item. What they need for their solution and the cost of it is a primary concern as they walk in the door. The salesperson greets them and discusses their needs and price range. They suggest the proper solution. The prospect gets excited about the solution. You know this is the solution you need and the cost is not a primary importance. The risk factors start becoming a concern on whether this store, company can deliver the product. Are they trustworthy? Can they do what we need them to? And now a decision needs to be reached. Price again becomes a factor and risk starts climbing up again? What can you take from this? You must provide value statements during the early phases and reduce the risk and price issues that will certainly surface. You have to have very specific value points and they must have been very clear to the prospect throughout the buying phases. Just as importantly, you have to be a safe choice. Fear (Risk) will break or make the decision at the end of the buying cycle. Many times, you will lose to larger competition or a better brand name and at the final hour, just because of the risk.

Rethinking the Sales Cycle takes this concept and it is used as the bases for the book. However, they go much further in discussing modern day concepts as they apply to this cycle. What attracted me most about the book is their ability to bridge that online to offline gap that I believe that has been developing. Crossing that Chasm, a meaningful pun attended, will be interesting course of events in the next few years.

This is first and foremost a sales book with marketing in the supportive role. It is line of thinking that I enjoy reading. From that viewpoint I typically gather more direct actionable ideas that are pertinent to my customers and theirs. From the book:

Let’s Make Deal

• Eliminate the use of deal from your vocabulary
• Eliminate the use of phrase sales cycle (I have started a crusade today on getting rid of the Marketing Funnel)
• Refrain from using the term buyer objection
• Do not focus on a close date; focus on when a prospect will be ready to buy.

This book also goes over what I have written about and called Mirror Marketing. The old saying about marketing: It’s not about you, it’s about the customer. I think salespeople understand that so well. Read the book!

P.S. The question I have for the authors is if I should eliminate using the phrase sales cycles, why did they use it?

Related Search: Mirror Marketing

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