Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way

Improve your Sales Process

Win more of the Right Customers

Lower Your Cost, Boos Your Margins

This is what Michael Webb, author of Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, promises on the outside cover of the book. Does he deliver? You betcha! This is one of my top reference books that sits either on my desk or my shelf immediately adjacent to my desk. I use it, deface it, bend corners or the stuff that an author would love to hear about his book.

If you have followed my blog, you can understand that this is not just a ho-hum recommendation. It is a great book, the best of any of his writings, and allows you to really study your sales and marketing process. The book is even written in a fashion that you can just sit down and have an enjoyable read. However, the charts and the procedures he recommends are really great guidelines to use and you will find yourself referring back many times to the material.

If you want to learn how to start the Lean Six Sigma Marketing Process this is a great companion book. Of course I would also recommend Duct Tape Marketing for the marketing side.

Technorati Tags: Lean Six sigma,six sigma,marketing,lean,Lean Marketing

Mystery e-mail,Good Info

I had this in my email box but did not know where it came from. I had forwarded it to myself. I think it is pretty good info: It looks like Pragmatic Marketing, so that is who I am going to credit it too. 

But if you concentrate on crisply and clearly documenting the answers to five key solution selling questions, you can save yourself a lot of time and become a hero in the process.  Those five questions are:

1. What are a few things sales people need to know to more intelligently discuss the most important customer’s needs and problems your solution solves?

2. Why should solving those problems be a high and urgent priority for your customers?

3. How should sales people identify and qualify the best prospects for your solution?

4. How does the customer use your solution to solve each need and problem?

5. What is the value of your solution’s differentiation in the context of each need and problem?

These sound pretty simple, but getting the sales force to institutionalize this knowledge sure isn’t easy.  Any experienced Product Marketer however,  should have this information down cold, so the key is to figure out a way to organize  this knowledge so sales people can get access to it and handle the 20% of the conversations that drive 80% of the solution selling process without bringing you or another product expert on the sales call. 

Cut Customer Service? You'll Lose Customers

Just about every company faces tough choices about how to improve operations in an increasingly tough environment.

Companies need to be careful that short-term cuts don't lead to long-term pain.I've clearly stated my perspective that the worst thing companies can do in the Great disruption is to stop investing in innovation. Companies might think that innovation and survival are discrete choices. They are not. Companies that stop innovating are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

The first was Hertz...

In future posts I'll present some different ways to think about cost cutting that truly allow companies to do more with less, drawing on some of the material that will appear in my forthcoming book The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times.

In the meantime, any other good stories about clear cuts in customer service that have damaged what used to be a great relationship with a company?

Read the rest of this post from Scott Anthony.

I would promote you looking at building a referral program using some creative techniques before cutting service. For a few ideas look at this web page of mine.