Power of Repeat and Referral Customers

I recently did a blog post, Turning your Marketing Cycle into a Kanban that created a basic Value Stream Map in a beginning Marketing Kanban discussion. I defined the Exit point of the Kanban as the purchase of the service or product. I purposely left out the Repeat and Referral Customers to simplify the explanation. Many people may not end their marketing strategies and tactics at this point but most do stop their budgeting at this point. Let me tell you why RE part of marketing deserves the money.

RE-peat customers: You spend less money finding them and marketing to them. You also know they already likely to buy your product and services and so the chances are they will spend more money with you.

RE-ferral Prospects: A typical referral customer is already somewhat qualified and usually enters your Value Stream further down the path than at the beginning. They also have a tendency to spend more money with you at the beginning since they have been referred.

RE-Ignite Customers/Prospects: These are former customers or maybe even qualified prospects that have been dormant for some time that you bring back to life. They may have decided it was not the time, or found another solution but they still may be a viable candidate.

A bonus RE is Re-Purpose: When you create a marketing piece, a certain call to action, a new marketing tactic, etc. that works well. Re-use (not meant to be a play on words) it till you wear it out. Remember, the old saying that when a particular advertisement starts to seem old to you is when your prospects are just starting to see it. In your marketing you now have many different ways to reach a customer. So use the good material in as many different ways as possible: Blogs, Articles, PR, Videos, etc.

I have argued for a long time that people spend way too much money at the top or the beginning of their Marketing Funnel or Cycle. I created this short video to demonstrate the power of Repeat and Referral Customers.

Related Blog Posts:
Turning your Marketing Cycle into a Kanban
Bootstrapping the Kanban
Value Stream Marketing eBook Released
Marketing Kanban 102, Work in Process

Technorati Tags: Referral Marketing,Marketing Kanban,Kanban,Value Stream

Utilizing the Theory of Constraints in Product Innovation Ebook

In the three part podcast I had with Mike Dalton the founder of Guided Innovation Group, we discussed utilizing the Theory of Constraints in Innovation, the Customer Value Lens and Alliances in great detail. This is a transcription of the entire 3-part series. 

Theory of Constraints in Innovation

In Mikes recent book, Simplifying Innovation: Doubling speed to market and new product profits – with your existing resources, he discussed the Guided Innovation’s unique TOC-based approach to rapid innovation improvement is helping companies slash time to market in half and nearly double new product profits. Whether you are struggling to get more sales impact from your new product and innovation investment or are growing strongly but still interested in taking your innovation performance to the next level. Customer Value Lens and much more. The book was just released in January and has received some good reviews.

Related Posts:
Product Relaunch – Try serving Chocolate Milk
The Hell with the Economic Stimulus Package – I’ll Lead
How to Form an Innovation Strategy

Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or a Marketing Funnel?

Do you think it is Scrum? Do you think it is Kanban? Do you think it is a Marketing Funnel? …or is it all three? Or maybe Agile? This is an empirical view of Value Stream Marketing.

The drawing is reflective of a Scrum sprint. Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management and agile software development. The sprint is typical a two to four week process with the large loop representing the overall process and the smaller (top) loop representing a twenty-four period and the daily scrum meeting. In the Value Stream Marketing Process, I use the loops to demonstrate a higher level of intimacy with a prospect. The top loop is for existing customers to nurture an even stronger relationship.

The three separate areas of the diagram will have their own Kanban board, if there are separate teams working on them, or you could visualize each as a separate swim lane. Separating these three processes apart allow you to better identify the process steps and the tools needed to facilitate the value stream flow. And, of course, using a Kanban board for this process will help you identify where the process is not working or where the bottleneck is occurring.

The Kanban board is where the actual work gets done. We want to limit unnecessary work in process to be no higher than it needs to be to match the control point or pacemaker of the process (bottleneck). We will use these boards to limit Work in Process into each stage and as a result create a smoother work flow(Heijunka) with a goal of eliminating what Lean refer to as the 3 M’s, Muda (Waste), Mura (Unevenness or Inconsistent) and Muri (unreasonable). This way we maximize your marketing efforts to the fullest extent.

Scratching your head a bit? We will develop our Kanban Boards in later posts which will clarify things a bit. Don’t get hung up on process. All you really need to do is break down your present marketing systems onto a Kanban board and start.

Related Posts:
Pull: The Pull in Lean Marketing
Value Stream = Involve-Influence-Interaction- Intimacy-Commit: Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept
Marketing Kanban: Marketing Kanban

Indiana Lean Management Workshops

Lean Enterprise Institute Announces 6 Lean Management Workshops for Indianapolis The training sessions will help Lean Thinkers launch and sustain lean transformations in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing processes.

The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute will run workshops June 22-24, 2010, in Indianapolis on how to implement and sustain lean management methods in manufacturing, service, and office processes. The sessions, which will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis, address how to apply basic and more advanced lean concepts. I am actually torn on which one(s) to attend, I wish I could attend all of them!!

The schedule of lean management workshops is:

Key Concepts of Lean - Understanding the Toyota Production System (2 days): Individuals and teams will gain a better understanding of the components and underlying philosophy of lean, based on the Toyota Production System (TPS), and how the elements and philosophy work together to create a Lean Enterprise.

Managing to Learn: The Use of the A3 Management Process (2 days): Using lessons from the popular Managing to Learn book, you’ll learn how to write A3s and respond as a mentor to the A3s of others. You’ll examine the different types and formats of A3 stories, the role of A3s in gaining alignment with stakeholders, and how A3s function as tools for change management, general management, people development, and knowledge sharing. (Bring an A3 or a real problem from work to tackle during exercises.)

Value-Stream Mapping for the Office and Service (1 day): Learn how to apply value-stream mapping to administrative, professional, and transactional activities. Through instruction, hands-on exercises, and case studies, you’ll learn how to document and analyze a current-state map of nonproduction value streams, then design and implement a future-state map.

Change Agent Skills for Lean Implementation Leaders (2 days): Learn how the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle serves as the basis for an effective change management process for implementing an integrated lean operating system. You'll discover techniques for proposing lean initiatives and building commitment by using influence, negotiation, teaching, and the A3 report (or storyboard) as a way to present a logical business case for lean changes.

Lean Problem Solving (1 day): Harness the DNA of successful, sustainable lean implementations by learning to apply the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) problem solving method. PDCA problem solving can solve the vast majority of your problems. It also teaches clear thinking, reinforces lean concepts, and engages team members at all levels. You will also learn how to link problem solving to core management systems to create a learning culture.

Optimizing Flow in Office and Service Processes: Take the next step after the “Value-Stream Mapping for Office and Service” workshop. Through a simulated office kaizen event, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of how key lean concepts of standard work, visual management, flow, and pull apply to information-intensive processes. You’ll identify improvement opportunities, implement them, then measure the impact.

For complete details about content, instructors, discounts, and to register, go to http://www.lean.org/workshops/workshopcalendar.cfm?cureventid=66, call 617- 871-2900, or email registrar@lean.org .

The instructor list is outstanding. Drew Locher will be heading up the segment on Optimizing Flow in Office and Service Process and was a guest early this year on the Business901 Podcast.

Blog/Podcast/Ebook with Drew Locher:
Future State Map 7 Basic Questions
Using Value Stream Mapping
Using Value Stream Mapping in Lean

Kanban Lessons Learned from a Software Developer - Ebook

Recently I had Chris Hefley, President and Co-Founder Bandit Software on a special edition of the Business901 Podcast. This is a transcription of the Podcast.

Kanban Lessons from a Software Developer

Bandit Software is the maker of an electronic Kanban tools for Lean Software and Systems development teams called Lean Kit Kanban.

Related Posts:
Podcast: Lean Kanban lessons from a Software Developer
PUT THINGS OFF UNTIL THE LAST RESPONSIBLE MINUTE – PERSONAL KANBAN
HOW EFFECTIVE DOES YOUR SALES AND MARKETING TEAM WORK TOGETHER?
What happens when the factory goes away?

Sustaining your Kaizen Event Ebook

Mark was a recent recipient of a Shingo Prize. Congratulations Mark!

Do you have trouble implementing or sustaining the initiatives after a Kaizen Event? In this transcription of the Business901 podcast episode, I spent the bulk of the podcast on this subject with author Mark Hamel. Mark’s book, Kaizen Event Fieldbook: Foundation, Framework, and Standard Work for Effective Events spends a third of the book on discussing implementing and sustaining the event.

Implementing Kaizen Event Ebook

Related Information: Business901 Kaizen Blog Posts

Kaizen Event Fieldbook on SME

Amazon: Kaizen Event Fieldbook: Foundation, Framework, and Standard Work for Effective Events

Technorati Tags: Kazen Event,Kaizen,Shingo Prize,Standard Work

Using Stories to explain your Marketing Efforts

In Scrum, work is expressed in the backlog as user stories. A team may write its user stories in a number of ways as long as they are written from the perspective of the end user. Put another way, team members are encouraged to think of their work from the perspective of who will use it, hence “user” story.

In the Scrum Methodology blog they stated:

Many Scrum teams have adopted the user story template developed by Mike Cohn, which identifies who the end user is, what the end user wants, and why in a single sentence. This model of the user story is most often written like this: “As a [end user role], I want [the desire] so that [the rationale].

They also defined it further in a contest that they had by asking for these requirements:

• The Problem. What was going wrong at your organization that made you decide to implement agile or Scrum?
• The Application. Once your organization decided to use Scrum to surface dysfunction and transform its processes, how did you go about doing it? What were the first steps you took? Was it an organization-wide adoption or just on the team level? Did you use training or tools?
• The Solution. What was the result? Can you quantify the improvements that Scrum and agile helped realize? Have other teams at your organization begun adopting agile management techniques?

Stories are used because they make it easier to understand,  remember and use. The limitation is that you do not know if you have been given all the facts.  A short clip from a training class Paul of ThinkSticky teaches on the content of the book, Made to Stick. This hands-on training illustrates how those qualities can be leveraged in your daily work.

I have started to use stories in explaining the outcome that is desired in a marketing campaign or event. I  plan on further developing this topic in a series of blog post. This is the first blog in this series.

Related posts:

Agile Marketing – Maybe?

Start your Marketing with a User Story

Further reading:

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

 User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development

Technorati Tags: Stories,stroyboard,Scrumban,Agile,XP,Marketing stories

Kanban Scheduling for Marketing

Kanban scheduling can be simply stated as demand scheduling. In Kanban, the products are produced based on actual usage rather than a forecasted usage. Therefore, a Kanban scheduling process to be considered a true Kanban the production process it controls must:

• Only produce product to replace the product consumed by its customer
• Only produce product based on signals sent its customers

The Kanban schedule replaces the traditional weekly or daily production schedule most of us have become familiar with in manufacturing operations. This schedule is replaced with visual signals and predetermined decision rules that allow the production operators to schedule the line. Think of Kanban scheduling as an execution tool rather than a planning tool. Kanban replaces the daily scheduling activities necessary to operate the process and the need for supervisors to continuously monitor scheduled status to determine the next item needed. This is done all through visual signals within the Kanban.

Why would you want to implement Kanban?
Kanban is a tool that controls your work in process. In marketing that would be your number of prospects within your Value Stream. Most organizations fail to recognize the hidden costs in overhead, effort, lost prospects that were never prospects, support material, and other service related activities. Work in process reductions together with these factors can make Kanban a competitive edge in today's business environment. The benefits of Kanban can become a driver for creating a culture of continuous process improvement when the improvements are translated directly into work in process.

Just reducing the work in process forces you to better understand your marketing value Stream. It forces you to recognize how that marketing value stream relates target customer and how they need to be segmented for more focused efforts. When you are forced to constrict the numbers of organizations or individuals that you are dealing with, you will be reminded of the comfort levels and informal walls that allowed these levels to be build up over time. An added plus is that you will start using much more realistic data to formulate these decisions. It is not easy to say that you will stop marketing to a certain segment or group.

In many marketing processes it is more about growing the sales funnel with leads, which in lean terms is overproduction. The very nature of Kanban scheduling process sets up maximum and minimum work in process levels. These levels should be controlled by setting up control points, setting up for better sales channels (segmentation) provide directions for moving the process forward. The Kanban also gives individuals much better guidance on what is needed and just in its nature will allow better utilization of your human resources. It will also readily identify the constraints and bottlenecks within your process.

These levels can also signal for when and when not to accelerate marketing actions. You avoid the issue of should you or shouldn't you increase targeted efforts in very various stages of your marketing process.

As a result of this, it will improve the flow of the entire sales and marketing process needed and who it needs to be directed at. Controlling these levels should also create shorter flow cycles that will prevent you from working on activities or creating material that is becomes dated or obsolete.

How do you start?
One of the best ways to learn and start implementing Kanban if it does indeed have all these fantastic benefits is to do it on a personal level first. My guest tomorrow on the Business901 Podcasts is Jim Benson, the founder of Personal Kanban. I blogged about it last week and he has some great suggestions. In addition, this week's blogging will talk about implementing a Marketing Kanban.

Therefore, a Marketing Kanban scheduling process to be considered a true Kanban the marketing process it controls must:

• Only produce material/services to add value to the customer decision making process on a established need.
• Only produce material/services based on signals sent its customers

Related Posts:

Wasteful even in Sales and Marketing

Kanban, A Great Organizational Idea

Why you should use Kanban in Marketing?

Background for this post came from the book Kanban Made Simple

Value Stream Marketing eBook Released

Joe Dager of Business901 just released a 27-page eBook which provides an overview of the Value Stream Marketing Process. The book is an overview of applying Lean principles to the marketing process. It also serves as an introduction to the Business901 Marketing Kanban and the Value Stream Marketing 28 day program.

Short Excerpt:

Value Stream Marketing is not about developing a repeatable process. Repeatability means doing the same thing in the same way to produce the same results. Though repetition will allow you to convert your inputs to outputs with little variation, it also implies that no new information can be generated and used. Repeatable processes are not effective because precise results are rarely predictable in the marketing process. Reliable processes focus on outputs, not inputs. Using a reliable process, you can consistently achieve a given goal even though the inputs vary dramatically. Reliability is results driven.

Marketing cycles are not completely stable. They are subject to variations caused by new knowledge. They are constantly being improved. The emphasis of activities changes during projects from more emphasis on understanding the customer at the beginning to more constructing and testing marketing functions at the end. We are trying to eliminate variation caused by new knowledge. A marketing process that does exactly the same thing every time is useless, but we are trying to eliminate variation that we cause for no good reason. 

The eBook is available through my Ezine registration or part of the participation in the VSM 28 day program.  These can be found on the Business901 website.   

Related Posts:
Value Stream Marketing Registration
Marketing Kanban 101

Picture was Adapted from a Lean Product Development Diagram by Eric Ries of http://www.startuplessonslearned.com

Technorati Tags: Marketing Kanban,Value Stream Marketing,Value Stream,28-day Program,Agile Marketing

Lean lessons from a Software Developer

Recently I had Chris Hefley, President and Co-Founder Bandit Software on a special edition of the Business901 Podcast. Bandit Software is the maker of an electronic Kanban tools for Lean Software and Systems development teams called Lean Kit Kanban.

This conversation starts with a discussion of where Kanban stands today in the software community and soon after we dive into…

1. Why use an Electronic Kanban?
2. What advantages will a project manager gain from the use?
3. Understanding the importance of handling the que?
4. What is on the horizon for Kanban?

Chris offers a perspective from not only a producer of a product for Kanban but as an software developer himself. This is not a consultant or an author of an how to book but someone that is in the trenches living it day and day out. I encourage you to listen as Chris will give you a fresh perspective of not only Kanban but Lean in Software Development.

The Bandit Software team will be sponsoring a booth at the upcoming Lean Software and Systems Conference in Atlanta, April 21-23. (http://atlanta2010.leanssc.org/)

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Related Posts:
Kanban made easy with Coveys 4Disciplines
Marketing Kanban
Kanban too simple To be Effective?

Kanban, A Great Organizational Idea

I have been using Scrum and Kanban for a while now and have been finding them very useful. In fact, I like it so much that I am even practicing it on a personal level. Where I picked up the idea of Personal Kanban is from Jim Benson, an Expert in Personal Kanban. He states this:

Unlike other personal productivity tools, Personal Kanban is a pattern – it is not an edict. You can mold it into whatever shape or form works best for you at the time. Personal Kanban is also scalable – it can work with just you, or with your family, or even with work groups.

There are only two real rules with Personal Kanban:

1. Visualize your work

2. Limit your work-in-progress

It’s just that simple.  After you’ve used this “introductory’ kanban for a little while, your understanding of the nature of  you work will evolve. As it does, your kanban will likewise evolve.

InfoPak3 Personal Kanban Design Patterns

View more presentations from Jim Benson.

You can really formulate some great ideas from such simple beginnings. My hat goes off to Jim!

Personal Kanban 101 is a great page to visit.

Technorati Tags: Kanban,Scrum,Scrumban,Agile,Personal Kanban