Lean Marketing House – A3 Report

This A3 report is a high level look at building a Lean Marketing System. I created this to accompany my presentation at the ASQ Columbus Conference. You can develop this A3 for a customer or a business segment. The instructions are below.

Lean Marketing House - A3 Layout

A3 Instructions:

1. Complete the customers name and date.
2. The next section is based on the 5 Cs of Driving Market Share program. This is the Value Stream in the Lean Marketing system. We identify the customer’s product/market segment, the value proposition that drives that segment, whether the customer is either new(acquire) or being retained and how they have been monitored. Without this, we will not know or will have to re-acquire critical information that drive a customer (market) decision process. For detailed information review the 5 Cs of Driving Market Share website.
3. You should use the Define Involvement step to express what prompted the increase interest.  Has something changed that initiated the inquiry? Did you solicit the inquiry? Who requested the information?
4. The next stage is to simply map the customer’s decision process. This may be difficult if it is a new customer but you should attempt to be as complete as you can. The important thing is to get a beginning and an end point for an iteration cycle that includes the involvement of the customer. Drawing a value stream map can be very effective. 
5. Next, break down each of the customer’s decision making process steps. The key is to understand what will drive them to the next step. Knowledge of the future steps are not that important at this time. Many things change as the process continues and the customer receives new knowledge along the way.  
6. As move to the right side of the A3, you will evaluate your marketing based on the process demonstrated in step 5. Mirroring your customers decision making cycle is at the heart of Lean Marketing. Who will be involved to answer your customer questions? What technology will you need to demonstrate? What content do you need to offer at this stage? This all done in short iterative PDCA cycles. Each step in the process has its own PDCA cycle. Both organizations will grow in knowledge of each other and the need and capabilities of each. This mutual respect is imperative in the latter part of the buying cycles.
7. If you fail, it is important to document the reasons why. Sharing your learning will assist you and others in defining and improving future efforts.
8. Having  proper handoffs seldom happens without accountability. Finishing the A3 this way will greatly enhance your future sales and marketing efforts.

This is the first draft for the Lean Marketing A3. Additional clarification is included in the Lean Marketing House and Marketing with A3, The Kindle versions are listed on the right side of the page and if you purchase the 2 of them on the Business901 website in PDF format we will send you the PDF of the Marketing with PDCA book when completed..

Related Information:
The Future of Marketing is Lean
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer

Social Messiness Explained

This is a transcription of a the Business901 podcast, Making Sense of Social Messiness. My guest was Francois Gossieaux is co-founder and partner at Human 1.0 (Beeline Labs), a marketing innovation strategy firm, a Senior Fellow and a Board Member at the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR).

Making Sense of Social Messiness

The Hyper-Social Organization: Eclipse Your Competition by Leveraging Social Media , Francois Goissieaux of Human 1.0 and Ed Moran of Deloitte identify how (and which) social media are fundamentally changing core business processes and the way businesses and customers interact. These changes are being driven by what the authors call the “Hyper-Social Shift.”

Related Information:
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Quality and Collaboration eBook
Online collaboration is leading the way for Lean Marketing
The Marketing Knowledge Spiral

Respect in Sales and Marketing Tool

Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. The sales and marketing team must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. If this is true, how do create new knowledge? How do we learn? Most studies show that we learn best by doing and by being forced to resolve our perspective with those of others who disagree with us. This means that you have to encourage contradictions and be willing to push the envelope with your customers.

This is a strange paradox. Disagreement with your customer can hardly be seen as a positive mechanism for sales and marketing. However, it is embracement of this understanding that will move your sales and marketing efforts to a higher level of performance.

Can you disagree with a customer? Can you purposely cause tension? You must! You must move away from the comfort zone and create a healthy tension and instability in your sales and marketing process. The first step in doing this is that you must create an atmosphere of respect. It is such an important function of Lean Sales and Marketing that I asked Dr. Michael Balle to define respect within a Lean Company. This is what he said:

The next step in the process is surprisingly easy but difficult to do. It is the process of reflection or in Japanese, hansei. There are three key components of hansei:

1. Recognize that there is a problem – a gap between expectations and achievement – and be open to negative feedback.
2. Voluntarily take responsibility and feel deep regret.
3. Commit to a specific course of action to improve.

The first step, acknowledge that there is room for improvement is not that difficult. However, putting a number to it may be a different story. When we create a performance gap we identify 2 things, one where we are at now and where do we want to go. Of course we may not get there overnight but there will be limitations. You have to determine what is realistic to achieve. A simple but effective way of looking at it is, “From what to what by when”.

The second step can simply be stated – don’t look for excuses. Take responsibility, feel a little humility and move forward. Without this, you will never fully release from the past and it may be much more difficult to bring fresh ideas to the table.

This is your action plan to move forward. However, without step 2, you will seldom be passionate about step 3. It will just be another effort and ownership will be limited. Ownership cannot be done without an emotional attachment.

The steps of Respect first, Reflection second will drive the 3^rd step of Kaizen or continuous improvement. This is the process and culture of PDCA in your marketing cycle. It is the embodiment of tension, a performance gap to send you off on a new path. This path acts as expanding spiral of co-creation of knowledge with your customer that will be truly valued. THE ABILITY TO SHARE AND CREATE KNOWLEDGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMER is the strongest marketing tool possible.

Few companies will take this path. Few companies will take the time to develop the level of respect required. Even fewer will use hansei and look at performance gaps releasing their own pre-determined reasons. Few will ever practice continuous improvement in sales and marketing.

Will you?

Related Information
Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute
The Future of Marketing is Lean
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer