Marketing Magic of Moses: Content, Stories and Targeting

Everyone will tell you it is about Content, Stories and Targeting (Relevance) your audience. Well, sure it is, we have been talking about that since before the days of Moses. Just look at what Moses offered:

1. He was born a Hebrew, he was one of them.
2. Evidence to lead: He was practically king of Egypt   
3. His Call to Action was a better alternative to slavery, independence.
4. During the journey at certain moments of truth he brought a few (10) plagues,  parted a few seas and received the 10 Commandments to help form a nation.

This is not attempt to discredit Moses. I could have used the “marketing” campaign of our founding fathers that resulted in the creation of the United States. It is just an attempt to demonstrate that most “marketing” campaigns have contained the same successful platform for the last thousands of years. Today, marketers have taken this construct online with the tools that exist today.

I have always operated under the philosophy that the best indicator of future performance is past performance. We could argue this point, but I am betting my evidence on a few thousand years of history. What I do believe is communication happens at a more accelerated rate which causes change to happen quicker. Once when Moses campaign may take a lifetime, we now see an overthrow in Egypt materialize and happen in a short time span. It is the speed of communication.

There is another component that I believe that is happening that couples with the speed of communication, it is influence. We construct our present day messages with more data and information than ever thought possible (I have read that data can now predict where I will be (location) a year from now). As Kaiser Fung said in a Business901podcast (Framing Big Data Transcript):

Having the data and the numbers are really important. Like we said previously, completely trusting the numbers and the analysis is also very foolish. You need human intelligence to interpret these numbers. It is really an interplay of the numbers and your interpretation because ultimately, even though the numbers will never give us cause of information – they can never really tell you with certainty that A causes B, it would tell you that A is related to B. It is human interaction that is needed that kind of tie these things all together into a credible story. Forget the notion that you will find one story that is correct, and everything else is wrong. All we are trying to look for is a story that is our best story, given our constraints of what we can and what we cannot.

Even with all the data in the world, it is the influence of the person delivering that has the most significant effect on our decision. How do you gain that influence? How do you become an influencer? Is it by the number connections? Is it by the books you have authored? Or, do we leave LinkedIn tell us?

I think it can be summed up in one word, participation. Are we participating in the conversation? Are we participating in doing the work? Are we participating helping to create outcomes? I think it goes past  the thinking of the Jobs To Be Done thinking. It goes into what I have always termed playing in the customer’s playground. It requires additional influence which equates to a cooperative structure both internally and externally.

This is what my new eBook CAP-Do (More Info) discusses, The change that is needed in the conversation between the supply and demand side. The change in structure of that overlapping responsibility. That area where we struggle to maintain balance between “whose job it is”. We must assume it is a joint responsibility versus drawing the line in the sand. It is not saying the customer is always right. It not one of assuming the blame. It is about how, we frame the opportunity to move from a solution type thinking to openness that we are willing to be influenced ourselves before asking others to be influenced by us.

Hi-Octane Innovation for your Brain

Today’s sales people are met with great challenges. They live in a world where we all talk about the importance of relationships, but few have the time to build them. Especially when, organizations are making more and more decisions as committees and the actual decision process, let alone the decision maker, is getting harder and harder to define. Your ability to be extremely focused and intuitive may be the most important assets you possess. Few sales managers or salespeople would disagree with any of the following statements:

Successful Salespeople:

• Focus
• High expectations
• Self-Motivated
• Stay in the Moment
• Intuitive

We view these as very difficult traits to be acquired. We might even say that salespeople are born with them. The truth is few of us know how to acquire them. We read self-help and how-to books, attend training sessions and receive coaching to improve these needed traits. This training  may helps us temporarily, but after time we slip back to where we were before.

Just as we need continuous improvement on the shop floor, we need continuous improvement in the sales arena. We need more than a method. We need a way to exercise and sharpen our mind.  We need to develop the skill of intuition. We need a way to develop and maintain a sales personality. What we need is to program ourselves, our minds to success.

Few of us will argue over the power of meditation. It can prove beneficial by providing us clear thought and more energy. It is a skill that needs to be developed taking many years to master. The benefits are enormous it is just a matter of practice. It comes down to the fact most people will not take the time, and if you are a salesperson, it is not even a consideration. I would like to introduce you to an area that I call, The Sales Neuro Charger or meditation on steroids. It is a combination of Brainwave and Biofield Entrainment. Review this page, How it Works, for more technical information. 

You should be cautious in buying into Biofield and Brainwave Entrainment. Brainwave entrainment has been around since 1960’s. Biofield is relatively new technology and should be approached with caution. I have followed and participated, off and on, with Brainwave entrainment and meditation for over twenty years. My recent return has been a result of being introduced into Biofield Entrainment. I have become associated with the product and feel that it offers some significant advantages for sales people. In fact, it is a great companion to Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP.

Lean more by visiting this page, Sales Neuro Charger.
It has been called hi-octane innovation for your brain.

The Planning Cycle

I constructed this document five years ago when most of my consulting centered around project management. As I review it now, I can see where the influences of different planning instruments and schedulers such as Kanban and the Last Planner®  (Last Planner is a registered trademark of Lean Construction Institute has not changed my thinking but enhanced it.

 

The Planning Cycle from Business901

This was never meant as a presentation just a quick 27-page read.  However, it is one of my most downloaded presentations that I have on Slideshare.

Your Sales and Marketing Metrics are lagging already!

Don’t be a laggard be a leader. 

Many of us have just completed the typical Sales and Marketing plan for the upcoming year. We know the Dwight D. Eisenhower quote: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. We are ready to change it at a moment's notice. We are very agile in nature.

Most of us start with the ways that we will increase revenue in 2013? A few classics:

1. We are going to increase sales by 3, 5, 10% or whatever arbitrary number we pick. The market is healthy and we are better than our competition, so we will get our fair share.
2. Projections from salespeople, who have received feedback from key customers. Sales managers and executives huddle up which in turn results in a forecast.
3. Increase sales exposure/people and through wider penetration, we will increase sales by another percentage.
4. Product innovations into new markets or old markets
5. Increased features and benefits that will appeal to a broader audience.
6. Exploring new markets that are ripe for our products (My favorite, not that there is someone already in that marketplace serving that need).

The list is practically endless. Some are based on a hypothesis and others based on evidence. The next step in the process is setting more specific objectives by-product  line and often times, territories. We develop a collection of metrics that we will aim at. We take these metrics and shape our expectations of our sales force. We will supply them a great product with the needed features and benefits and with the necessary support and resources they will require. All that is left for them to do is close a few sales.

We know that sales can be difficult in these times and the sales people will need to hustle but the organization will do their part by supplying them with more leads and quicker turnarounds on quotes and products. We are even committed to handling more special products, since we know this is the age of the customer and one to one marketing. We have laid out a sound plan. Supplied the necessary resources. And our willing to adjust, not be hearsay but by the metrics that we have developed. What is missing?

Most measurements that are introduced to a sales force are not sales enablers rather detractors. We create measurements that sales people cannot even influence and even worse take much of their time to compile. The outcomes that you want and the objectives you are aiming for provide direction but have little to do with the activities that the sales people must do to achieve the intended results. Activities are generated at Gemba or the place of work. If you are removed from the place of work, you will more than likely develop lagging indicators. The key component in your planning process is to develop leading indicators. These are metrics based on your sales activities. 

Granted these activities must be tied to an objectives which are tied to outcomes. I relate this in Lean Terms to Hoshin planning and the action of catchball. We propose the outcomes and toss it back and forth until we come to a agreement  between outcomes and objectives. After that we toss it back and forth to determine the agreement between objectives and activities needed. It may transverse back and forth at the different levels but seldom if ever do we skip objectives and go directly between outcomes and activities.

If you do not have leading indicators as part of your sales and marketing plan, you are behind as of this moment. You will be unable to make the necessary adjustments needed as the year progresses.

Don’t be a laggard be a leader.

One of the best books on how to develop leading indicators is the Franklin Covey publication that I call Lean Simplified: The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Lean Sales and Marketing Productivity – Applying SMED

Yesterday, I discussed why we must concentrate on the quality of the leads versus automation and increasing input. Many organizations choose to spend most of their time and dollars on increasing the input, creating more opportunities more fresh bodies, instead of looking at their work in process. I have always believed that inventory is a bad thing, from my previous blog post, Work in Process is Wasteful even in Sales and Marketing. However, just as accountant looks at WIP as an asset so does marketing looks at WIP as a good sign in marketing. Flooding yourself with increased prospects is bad. WIP lowers productivity and does not create more business and even less of the right business. We end up doing all these things that may or may not be good for us. Have you noticed that you seem to be building specials or that sales are bringing you the off-beaten request? It is because your input variables are too high.

I am not going to discuss Voice of Customer and Voice of Market in this post but if you are inclined to learn search for VOC and VOM in the search box. A quick overview is contained in these posts, Lean Marketing listens to the Voice of the Vital Few and Can Voice of Customer deliver? I am going to assume that you recognize the importance of the two.

Special Bulletin: A Process for removing Waste in your Marketing

The next step is to institute SMED in your sales and marketing process. Many of us understand SMED as single minute exchange of dies. In manufacturing this tool allows us to increase the flexibility of manufacturing and decrease lot size. Traditional manufacturing increased productivity by manufacturing in large lot sizes. This way, we rid ourselves of costly changeovers and were able to have inventory on hand for production. When Lean manufacturing came along we changed all that. We were able to institute SMED and as a result our lot sizes went down, inventory in all forms, raw material, work in process and finished goods went down. And we are still arguing with accountants about productivity.

In Lean Sales and Marketing, we can do the same thing. If we consider service dominant thinking and understand the concepts of the job to be done. This will mean that our thoughts are not limited to our existing services and products. It is our ability to build a value proposition around the customer’s job to be done. When we start viewing the value proposition from the customer standpoint, we realize that our offerings also take a different perspective. We can now think how our products/services can be utilized (value in use) by our customer in the most effective way. Using a SMED style thinking we can bundle or unbundle our offerings depending upon the customer needs. In this way, our strengths become more recognizable and our actions clearer. Our product/service applications do not become limiting but rather the tweaks that are needed are much more specific and can be handled much more efficiently. And since we have done our homework, with the CTQs (Critical to Quality issue found in VOC and VOM) we know when to apply adjustments and more add-ons that will result in longer-term value for the customers and markets we serve.

A Lean marketing perspective is that we must create interchangeable features. We must be willing to unbundle everything that we do and re-bundle them in an efficient manner. Think of how car manufacturers, including Toyota, drove many customizations down to the dealer level. Think how the dealers have numerous items to bundle with the car. You can think of many others along this line; it is not uncommon. Bundled services and contextual pricing are very commonplace. Would you think about buying a sub-sandwich that you could not design?

Improving productivity in sales and marketing is not a matter of volume of inputs. It is a matter of offering quality outputs that pull your inputs. It is a matter of having a defined value proposition relative to the market that you are offering it to. It is creating a conversation with the customer and allowing them to customize the offering and as a result strengthen your value proposition.

Your products/service offering should evolve through market penetration. Your value proposition will strengthen and as a result your inputs will be easily more identified.

Related Information:
Mapping Customer Pains to your Value Proposition
Jobs to be Done – Explained by Dr. Deming in 1950
Lean Marketing listens to the Voice of the Vital Few

Is the first Lean Step in Sales and Marketing; Standard Work?

Many Lean Consultants or internal Lean Champions deal with the supply side of the equation. Sales and Marketing work on the demand side. So, you have to find common ground to introduce Lean. I think the first step is developing a consensus on Standard Work. It will meet resistance, but it is the one thing that will can have a significant impact.almost immediately. I am not talking about developing call scripts, checklist, etc. I am talking about characterizing how we do things or in other words, provide clarity. At that point, best practices will surface and a few bad ones will be obvious even to the naysayers.

Many people will want to jump into Lean Practices of Value Stream Mapping, Process Mapping and even Customer Journey Mapping as the first step, start improving a process. I think that is too cumbersome. If there is something easy to do and that has a high payoff by all means do, My First PDCA for Sales and Marketing. However, make sure you take that project outside of your Whirlwind, see Standard Work as your Whirlwind–Manage it!.

Taiichi Ohno: "Without a Standard there can be no Kaizen."

Dr. Balle: "Lean is not a revolution; it is solve one thing and prove one thing."

At a higher level, and in workshops, I use the Business Model Canvas developed by Alex Osterwalder and discussed in his book, Business Model Generation. This platform is used in many circles for Business Model Innovation, but I have found it to be challenging for many companies to document their current process using it. The nine blocks that make up this canvas provides the organization the necessary structure needed. It provides a one page document that highlights the entire Value Stream of your Sales and Marketing Process. You can find more about this in past blogs:

Do You Know the Right Job For Your Products?

What’s new in Business Model Generation? Customer Value Canvas and more

Steve Blank on the Lean Startup at Ann Arbor

Join the conversation at the Lean Marketing Lab.

A Service Design Thinking Primer

My blog and podcast for next few months will focus on Business Strategists, Design Thinkers, Appreciative Inquiry Coaches, Architects and of course Lean Thinkers. I could not think of a better way to start this series than having a podcast with co-author Marc Stickdorn of  This is Service Design Thinking. This is a transcription of the podcast.

Open publication

Rather Listen? Service Design Thinking Podcast with Marc Stickdorn

 

About: Marc Stickdorn graduated in Strategic Management and Marketing and worked in various tourism projects throughout Europe. Since 2008 Marc is full-time staff at the MCI – Management Center Innsbruck in Austria, where he lectures service design and service innovation. His main areas of interest are service design and strategic marketing management particularly in a tourism context. This involves research such as the development of a mobile ethnography application for mobile phones, the Customer Journey Canvas and various publications and presentations. Marc is co-founder and consultant of “Destinable – service design for tourism” and guest lecturer at different business and design schools. His Websites: http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com/, http://www.servicedesignresearch.com.

 

Related Information:
Define the Expectation, Delight the Customer
Lean Engagement Team Book Released
Appreciative Inquiry instead of Problem Solving
Prototypes provide a Pathway for Connecting with Customers

Do You Know the Right Job For Your Products?

From Innosight and authored by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell, Denise Nitterhouse

The market segmentation scheme that a company chooses to adopt is a decision of vast consequence. It determines what that company decides to produce, how it will take those products to market, who it believes its competitors to be and how large it believes its market opportunities to be. Yet many managers give little thought to whether their segmentation of the market is leading their marketing efforts in the right direction. Most companies segment along lines defined by the characteristics of their products (category or price) or customers (age, gender, marital status and income level). Some business-to-business companies slice their markets by industry; others by size of business. The problem with such segmentation schemes is that they are static. Customers' buying behaviors change far more often than their demographics, psychographics or attitudes. Demographic data cannot explain why a man takes a date to a movie on one night but orders in pizza to watch a DVD from Netflix Inc. the next.

Product and customer characteristics are poor indicators of customer behavior, because from the customer's perspective that is not how markets are structured. Customers' purchase decisions don’t necessarily conform to those of the "average" customer in their demographic; nor do they confine the search for solutions within a product category. Rather, customers just find themselves needing to get things done. When customers find that they need to get a job done, they "hire" products or services to do the job. This means that marketers need to understand the jobs that arise in customers' lives for which their products might be hired. Most of the "home runs" of marketing history were hit by marketers who saw the world this way. The "strike outs" of marketing history, in contrast, generally have been the result of focusing on developing products with better features and functions or of attempting to decipher what the average customer in a demographic wants.

In a discussion, I had with Alex Osterwalder this week he spent a great deal time talking about this concept and how it relates to Customer Value. Alex is the author of the Business Model Generation and next weeks podcast guest.

This is a similar concept to Service Design via Service-Dominant Logic where the foundational belief is that value is derived through the use of your product/service. Your product/service is only an enabler of value. Utilizing this concept, can your product/service be given away for free and as a result be paid for through the use of it? Let's say Xerox gives a printer and services the printer for free and gets paid on the use of it. Zipcar is another example - you only pay when you use it. There may be a minor membership fee but the real cost would be associated with the use of the product.

Does anyone have other examples where the value in use concept is used?

Is highlighting 'value in use" an effective marketing tactic?

Can you segment markets through how you use a product?

Do you have other question that this concept raises?

Join the conversation on this subject at the Lean Marketing Lab.

Related Information:
Service Design Thinking Podcast with Marc Stickdorn
Define the Expectation, Delight the Customer
Lean Engagement Team Book Released
Appreciative Inquiry instead of Problem Solving

Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution

This is part of my blog series on using the principles of Demand Drive MRP and its five primary components. I would recommend reading the blog posts in order for better understanding:

1. Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP
2. What Sales and Marketing can learn from Demand Driven Manufacturing
3. Positioning your organization to learn from your customers
4. Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps
5. Dynamic Buffer: Think Self-organized Teams
6. Systemizing the transfer of knowledge at the execution level

This particular blog focuses around Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution.

Simply launching purchase order (POs), manufacturing orders (MOs), and transfer orders (TOs) from any planning system does not end the materials and order management challenge. These POs. MOs. and TOs have to be managed effectively to synchronize with the changes that often occur within the execution horizon. The execution horizon is the time from which a PO, MO, or TO is opened until the time it is closed in the system of record. Demand -driven MRP is an integrated system of execution for all part categories in order to speed the communication of relevant information and priorities throughout an organization and supply chain

The above is from the Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning 3/E. written by my recent podcast (Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP) guest Carol Ptak and Chad Smith of the Demand Driven Institute.

Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution starts in one place in a sales and marketing environment and that is in the customers’ playground. If you want to be visible, if you want the opportunity for collaboration, you literally need to play with the customer. Even more precisely, it should be synonymous to your prime target market. This allows you to see the market swings at the same time your customer does. For example, if your customer has a downturn in business you will sense that immediately versus seeing months later. Your market upswings will also be maximized for basically the same purpose. Theoretically it sounds great but is it that easy? Again, the customer-vendor relationship and the degree of trust in one another are imperative. It is not simply something that just happens it must be orchestrated.

Not everyone wants to be your partner. As a result, other segments may produce wider swings in variability and may require different lead times or even more frequent contact (touches) than even your prime customers. It based on what your customer needs are and the resources you are willing to dedicate to the segment. This is not an arbitrary thing; it is a well conceived execution of the plan developed.

When we talk about visibility and collaborative execution, it is not just an external requirement. It is an internal one as well. You must have transparency, open collaboration and no hidden agenda that will compromise your organizational efforts and especially your sales team.

In the sales and marketing arena the ability to execute is dependent on two major themes; clarity and autonomy. On both macro and micro level clarity has to be well established to enable a team to work autonomously. When considering a particular customer segment at the macro-level a well-defined value proposition with revenue goals must be established. At that level, I use the Business Model Generation template to provide the clarity for a particular customer segment.

Within that customer segment, the micro-level will be dealing with the individual cycle that is facilitated the increase of knowledge for the customer decision making process. This individual cycle is where the sales team needs to have total autonomy to make execution happen. They are on the street with the customer and should contain the expertise and authority to complete the mission. Many would compare them to a Swat Team or even a Navy Seal Team. That being said the teams may require extensive training in these specialized areas to assist in the customer decision making process. In these Customer decision making cycles I use the Sales PDCA outlined in Marketing with PDCA as my execution template.

Preview of Political Campaign Marketing Podcast

At the end of the interview for my upcoming podcast with Derek Pillie, a fifteen veteran of the political campaign trail, we went over a few additional thoughts.

Related Information:
Political Campaigning – Strategy Update
What political campaigns can teach business
Lean Six Sigma for Government

Gaming can make a better world

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

Related Information:
7 Principles of Universal Design & Beyond
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing
Janet R. McColl-Kennedy: Co-creation of Value and S-D logic
Games maybe your only chance to attract the best and brightest talent

Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps

This is part of my blog series on using the principles of Demand Drive MRP and its five primary components. This particular blog focuses around Buffer Profiles and Level Determination or in the marketing sense, profiling the customer by your knowledge gaps.

Once the strategically replenished positions are determined, the target levels of those
buffers have to be set initially based on several factors. Different materials and parts
behave differently but many also behave nearly the same. Demand-driven MRP groups
parts and materials chosen for strategic replenishment and that behave similarly into
buffer profiles. Buffer profiles take into account important factors, including lead time
(relative to the environment), variability (demand or supply), whether the part is made
or bought or distributed, and whether significant order multiples are involved. These
buffer profiles are made up of zones that produce a unique buffer picture for each part as
their respective individual part traits are applied to the group traits.

The above is from the Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning 3/E. written by my recent podcast (Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP) guests Carol Ptak and Chad Smith of the Demand Driven Institute.

I think it may be interesting to group customers not by traditional segments but by the level of knowledge that we have of each other (customer and supplier). If we were to view the stages such as described in the blog post, The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota we would see a natural progression through the stages of the supplier – customer engagement. This serves as a good outline for the knowledge that we gain in participation with our customer.

I believe that this type of segmentation leads to better results than a traditional buying cycle. It may seem that many of us are already doing this. If your product groups are actually defined by customer markets and your customer defined by the knowledge gap as distinguished by a method such as the Toyota supplier relationship hierarchy you are halfway there. The first question after that, you must ask yourself when looking at the levels within those cycles is the amount of people or organizations that your company can maintained in that particular cycle. At what amount does it become it an asset or a liability? It is very similar to carry the right inventory. Too little and you miss orders and too much you have resources tied up. Your buffer zone or Work in process(WIP) between these two points is an asset.

Sounds somewhat nonsensical, but this is where we can take many of the Lean Marketing principles and scale them to a larger organization. We are not going to be able to take each individual customer and mirror their decision making paths, it would simply be overwhelming. Instead, we must review the first step in our Demand Driven Marketing Resource Plan, Strategic Position: Positioning your organization to learn from your customers and determine where we have the most customer knowledge or as I like to term it where we have the ability to play in our customers’ playground. Defining this market area allows us to market much more effectively and systematically.

There are four factors that are considered in traditional DDMRP:

1. Item Type
2. Variability
3. Lead Time
4. Significant Minimum Order Quantity

They are worth mentioning here as they correspond very closely to a DDMRP marketing system. In DDMRP the item types are designated by purchased, manufactured or distributed. Variability is designated by supply or demand component with further classification of high, medium and low. In the marketing sense we typically group customers similar through the buying channels, but why? What about grouping them through the knowledge hierarchy? Further defining them in the individual cycles that make up the knowledge hierarchy? The reasons are:

1. The level of support is readily defined within these cycles.
2. Variability is definable by rate of touch points. 
3. Lead Time is a function of their decision making process..
4. Minimum order quantities would relate to size of company.

The example for this reasoning can be found again in the 7 Step Toyota Suppler model. The 3^rd level, Control systems in the hierarchy can be used as an example. Striving to improve the measurement systems, feedback, target pricing areas and cost management structure between vendor and customer are very tangible and smart goals with defined outcomes. It is not a task that is easy but it is readily definable and as a result a method that continuous improvement can be applied.

The questions really is can a customer profile be readily applied that is not so general in nature that everyone fit sit or so singular in nature that each company has a separate profile. If we view just that cycle we can identify the support required, the customer decision process for each task and the size of the company we are working with.

What may be needed is to define the variability of these individual companies? Profiling them based on variability or high, medium and low touch companies creates an opportunity to judge the level of support and frequency required. Your higher touch companies will more than likely have a shorter sales cycle. This may be accomplished by condensing the decision making process or eliminating several steps. Going back to the Toyota example, a high touch company may disregard vendor measurement systems and require little feedback. They may be only interesting in target pricing. If you claim that a customer wants to be high touch but have the entire spectrum of services, you will probably find out that may not be a customer you would want anyway.

It is somewhat beyond this blog post to demonstrate calculating the buffer levels but sizing of the buffer levels for each individual component and cycle is possible. The advantage in doing this is that you start managing sales and marketing by demand. You “sense and adapt” to market changes and penetration levels. It is a continuous deployment of a SWOT analysis on a micro and macro level.

Profiling customers based on these four components would allow for a support structure to be developed and ultimately buffer levels developed. If a buffer level is developed, you start managing resources and adjusting capacity much earlier in the sales and marketing cycle. This will result in better use of capital, people and a saving in time for your customers where it is needed most.

Related Information:
The Supplier Partnering Hierarchy of Toyota is from the The Toyota Way Fieldbook
Positioning your organization to learn from your customers
What Sales and Marketing can learn from Demand Driven Manufacturing
Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP
Marketing with PDCA Book Overview

How the Toyota Production System defines the Challenge

The Friday Video Series continues with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute. This series of videos continues with a central theme of Kaizen.

Dr. Balle is a multiple Shingo Prize winner as an author of the The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager. His newest Shingo Prize was on the adaption of The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround to an audiobook that features performances by multiple readers who bring its realistic business story and characters to life.

Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute

Past Videos with Dr. Balle on the Biz901 You Tube Channel

Related Information:
Is your marketing concentrated in area that makes a difference?
Can Voice of Customer deliver?
Unclear Customer Value leads to Failure
Business Processes as Value Networks

Can you be Lucky by Design?

Beth Goldstein, Founder and CEO is an author, consultant, trainer and founder of Marketing Edge Consulting Group, she has empowered hundreds of entrepreneurs to successfully grow their companies.  We discussed her newest book, Lucky By Design: Creating Real Opportunities that Empower Your Business coming out this fall.

Beth‘s special talents is helping companies gain an understanding of how their customers think, what they value and what influences their purchasing decisions. She then applies this knowledge to create targeted sales and marketing programs that drive revenue growth while increasing profitability and customer loyalty.

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Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Lucky or go to the Business901 iTunes Store

Her first book, The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Toolkit: All the Tips, Forms, and Strategies You'll Ever Need! is used in 30+ cities around the U.S. to teach business owners the critical skills they need to accelerate growth.

Are You Lucky In Business?

TAKE HER 5 MINUTE SURVEY &
RECEIVE OVER $75 IN VALUABLE BUSINESS TOOLS FOR SHARING YOUR OPINION
(You will be re-directed to Beth’s site.)

Related Information:
Lean Thinking: Prototype early and often
Using the Media Engagement Framework as your Kanban?
What’s behind Collaboration and Value Networks?
Business Processes as Value Networks
The Role of PDCA in a Lean Sales and Marketing Cycle

Where is the path in Continuous Improvement for Sales and Marketing?

In the sales and marketing process we have always stayed away from a process. Things were just not consistent enough to enable us install a process. Very few people take on the challenge of bringing continuous improvement to sales and marketing and one of the reasons it is so difficult is that sales always has been about relationships and people. And when you are a “people person” you blame errors and faults on people not the processes. You just don’t consider a process at all. I would argue that you cannot improve a system without a process and that sales and marketing does things within the boundaries of a process.

In fact, I am going to paraphrase the Six Best Practices outlined in a book by Daniel Stowell, Sales, Marketing, and Continuous Improvement . And if you would like to know how large of a gap we have to close to bring continuous improvement to Sales and marketing read the one review on this book: “The author couldn't lead a fly to cr*p, and the book is poorly written. Don't waste your money.” Quite a significant gap because I think the author considering it was written in 1997 lays out a good guideline.

The Six Best Practices needed:

Manage for change: Change, whether incremental improvement or radical restructuring, does not just happen. It requires leadership and management based on a foundation of a lasting commitment by everyone in the organization. Of all of the best practices, management commitment stands alone at the top of the priority list.

Listen to Customers: Sales and marketing need input from their current and past customers, prospects, and competitive users on which to have their continuous improvement activities. To be most effective, they need to use several complementary listening methods tailored to their specific customer set. Although listening to customers appears to be easy to do, there are pitfalls and barriers along the way. However, the input from listening will provide the requirements and feedback that they need to implement the other best practices. Without that information, they are just guessing.

Focus on Process: Leading companies have applied all five of these process improvement techniques to sales and marketing processes. As we have seen, when process improvement techniques are focused on the most important processes and used properly, they can make dramatic improvements in an organizations effectiveness and efficiency.

Use Teams: Teams are not appropriate for everyone or in every situation, but virtually every organization can benefit from expanding its use of teams. This is especially true of sales and marketing departments. They can apply teams in almost every combination of scope, size, mission, authority, and duration. These teams build on the synergy of the team members, improve communication and buy-in, increase productivity, raise employee morale, and provide a forum for personal development. To achieve these benefits from sales and marketing teams, organizations must be prepared to address both the critical success factors and the issues unique to teams in sales and marketing. When they do, they have taken another major step toward an open organization culture.

Practice an open Organization Culture: To be effective, all the elements of the open organization culture must be used together. Gathering information by practicing awareness and taking a global view is of no value if the organization does not share the information or take informed action. Reserving action for the top of the business does not support fast response or take advantage of the skills of the people who really get the work done. Taking action without questioning the organization's underlying beliefs and assumptions may lead to repeating mistakes. It is when all the elements of an open culture work together that an organization becomes more effective and efficient, whether that organization is an entire company or a sales or marketing function.

Apply Technology: Of all best practices described in this book, applying technology is today’s most visible. It has reached this status within the past five years and it appears that it will continue to revolutionize the way customers buy and companies sell in the future. That makes it important to stay aware of changing technology, looking for ways to use it to address opportunities and resolve problems. It is the companies that find ways to use technology, frequently ways it was never intended to be used, that will create and maintain their competitive edge. The others will just be playing catch-up.

His book lays out a good foundation for the above practices. Granted it may be dated but it reinforces not so much the ideas that I have been writing about but just how wide of a gap that we have bringing continuous improvement to sales and marketing. To have a chance resides in the power of Deming's concept and its simplicity. The concept of feedback in the Scientific Method is firmly rooted in education and well understood. The tools used in PDCA process are very visual and deceptively simple to start with (as you understand them, they tend to get harder ;)). And for the “people person”, Lean is all about people; training, empowering and respecting.

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The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota

I have to preface this as saying that this is pure conjecture on how to sell to Toyota. I have no product or client at this time considering doing this. If you do have a product or service that would like to try this approach, please feel free to contact me. My door is open.

I would like to thank co-authors Jeffrey Liker and David Meir, co-authors of The Toyota Way Fieldbook where this material was derived from. The co-authors discussed the Supplier Partnering Hierarchy of Toyota that consisted of 7 steps:

One of the first steps in Lean Marketing is to understand the customers buying process. Mapping this out and detail and defining the resources, people, budget and marketing collateral to match each of these steps is imperative. This exercise can save you a tremendous amount of time and money in just determining if you are ready to attempt this undertaking. Selling to a company like Toyota could be a complete marketing channel in itself.

Toyota’s first step in the process is Mutual Understanding. They base this on the key elements of trust, mutual prosperity, respect for each other’s capability and Genchi gembutsu (actual part, actual place). Till we achieve this in our sales and marketing efforts there is little reason to proceed. We will stay in that first iterative PDCA loop till we achieve their respect and they invite us to the next step, interlocking structures.

Our sales and marketing efforts should go through the planning, do, check and act stages to achieve each of the key elements as defined. In the act stage we will arrive at a control to see if they are indications that Toyota is interested in initiating discussion about an alliance structure, interdependent processes and parallel sourcing. If there is no interest we must continue our efforts in another cycle of gaining mutual understanding. At some point and time, such as Seth Godin discussed in The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) , you must decide to quit or continue on.

I hate to make it sound this simple. Of course understanding what Toyota means by trust may not be. But I think you would be surprised that it really is not that difficult as long as you do not get the cart ahead of the horse. The authors go on to lay out this chart describing the key elements of each partnering characteristic. I believe your marketing should facilitate the decision making process of the customer. As you create your material, presentations, etc. each one should fulfill the need of that step in process and nothing more. Using the thought process of MVP, minimum viable product will allow you to respond quicker and more accurately to their needs. More than this will complicate your message and may reduce the likelihood of gaining acceptance. More interactions, increase face time with a customer is a winning proposition.

Mimicking the customer buying process is at the heart of Lean Marketing and more specifically the Value Stream Marketing concepts. This marketing channel or Value Stream would equate to one of the pillars in the Lean Marketing House. The pillars are built with the iterative PDCA loops as depicted in the drawing above. As you build the relationship with the customer the cycles typically get smaller and faster. In Toyota’s and many others companies when you reach the top of the pyramid, you start sharing PDCA cycles.

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Linking to Customer Value

Customer Value seems old hat and so un-marketing like in this day of Social Media, Analytics, Inbound-Outbound, Trending and Buzz. However, the successful companies that are not necessarily writing about marketing, they are doing it and relying on a simple term, Customer Value.

As Christine says,

These are not flash-in-the-pan companies. They are the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Fidelity, Cisco, Walmart, Amazon, Apple, IKEA, Philips, Texas Instruments, Becton Dickinson, and Tesco. These companies approach strategy from the outside in. They begin with the market, not their own capabilities. While that may sound easy, it is incredibly difficult. In the vast majority of companies inside-out thinking dominates practice and inevitably leads to eroding customer value and company profits. * These companies invest in generating and deploying unique market insights to inform and guide their outside-in view. They don't guess or fly blind. * These companies focus every part of the organization on achieving, sustaining and profiting from customer value.

Christine Moorman is the T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor and founder of The CMO Survey at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Professor Moorman is the author of over 60 journal articles, reports, and conference proceedings. She has co-edited the book Assessing Marketing Strategy Performance (with Don Lehmann) and has made over 100 presentations of her work at companies and universities all over the world.  Her primary areas of activity are marketing strategy and customer-focused innovation

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About the Book: How do these firms bring the outside in and profit from it? In Strategy from the Outside In: Profiting from Customer Value , the authors unveil four guiding principles—the customer value imperatives—that distinguish market leaders from other companies just muddling through. They argue through hundreds of examples that without constant attention to these four imperatives from the very top of the organization, any firm will quickly succumb to the centripetal forces pulling it toward an inside-out approach, and its position in the market will soon erode.

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Who has Influenced My Thinking on Flow

Who are your most influential people on a particular subject? I started thinking of this after interviewing Don Reinertsen Tuesday’s Podcast, on the subject of Flow.

In my mind, the founding father on this subject was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (notice in the middle of his last name the word ZEN). I can remember first reading his book and later buying the tape series. I dangerously listened to it on a late night drive home. At one in the morning after driving 400 miles it was tough. That heavy Eastern European accent building a case for FLOW even though an eye opening subject it was not made to keep your eyes open. The secret of course was purchasing ice cream bars along the way!

This is not a resounding introduction to the video below but you may be quite surprised by the video it gives a good over view and if filled with background music from David Brubeck.

 

The subject of Flow is important to the marketing process. Understanding how your Customer flows through the decision making process in buying, becoming a loyal customer and recommending your product is essential. In fact, you lose the most customers when the flow stops or in between stages (Queue) of your marketing process. Understanding your Customer’s Flow should be at the root of all your marketing processes.

When I think of Flow, these our the people/books that have had the most influence on my thinking. Do you have any to add?

Amazon Links:

1. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
2. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
3. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
4. Managing the Design Factory
5. Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos
   
6. Value Stream Mapping for Lean Development: A How-To Guide for Streamlining Time to Market
7. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
8. Kanban
9. Personal Kanban(Release Date in November 2010).
   

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Great discussion on Content Marketing

Jason Fried is the founder and CEO of 37signals. Fried is a passionate leader in the field of simple, clear, and elegant web-based user interface design. He spearheaded the concept, design, and development of Basecamp, 37signal?s web-based project management tool for designers, freelancers, and creative services firms. Fried is also the co-author of Defensive Design for the Web.

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Linking the 4Ps to Lean Marketing

This week I was challenged that I had spent little time creating the linkage between Lean Marketing or the Value Steam Marketing concepts and the classic 4 P’s. The reason why is that I believe marketing has changed from the 4 P’s to a demand driven or pull type of marketing that is fundamentally based on value. Or even more specifically Customer Value (Price).

In discussions during the development of the 5Cs of Driving Market Share Program, I asked Dr. Reidenbach similar questions to what you raised and he said,

“Another point is that the 4Ps is a functionalist approach and value is delivered through people, products and processes. We live in a process world and not a function world and the organizations that understand this are the ones that are going to dominate. The old world is a functionalist world - the new world is one that is ruled by processes. The latter is not accommodated by the 4Ps. The 5cs puts value at the heart of the issue and subsequent Cs talk about how to use value to accomplish what marketing is all about - to grow the business.”

A copy of the program content of the 5Cs for your reference.

This program is a great companion to my Lean Marketing efforts. Dr. Reidenbach extension of the 5Cs program was built into a modified DMAIC approach that enables us to approach Six Sigma driven organizations. The truth is that the tools could be used just as well in a PDCA structure as they can a DMAIC structure. The Value Stream Marketing concepts in conjunction with the Marketing Kanban come into play for segmentation and managing the content and delivery (Promotion) of it for the client. Provided when and how they want it.

The Product is an interesting animal. Several years ago, I would have said the Product or Service could be associated with customers need for a solution. Provide the solution, you have the job. However, savvy buyers have found that many times solutions are provided at a relatively low price or already known internally. The days of the manufacturer having the only solution or the best solution because of the other 3 Ps are non-existent. A customer can practically find the product for their price and their terms. The only determination left for most companies to differentiate themselves is value and not the value from their point of view but the viewpoint of the customer. That identifies the markets to participate in, how you go about acquiring and retaining customers and how you will monitor your Value Streams (Channels).

Another word about Product is since a customer can obtain it the way they want and on their terms, you can hardly afford to build inventory. Companies are extending themselves into being part of the solution such as Xerox’s takeoff on freeing customers to do their real business. So in essence, we have evolved from product to solution to “being part of determining the solution(Collaboration).

Lean Marketing is about Pull and when a prospect enters your “Value” Stream Flow you provide him the content he needs. Being a recognized thought leader within your Marketplace (Community) or being thought as Best in Market. I am not sure you have read the VSM Guiding Principles but that may help.

Related Information:
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Pull: The Pull in Lean Marketing
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Expert Status
5 Cs of Driving Market Share