Business901

For the marketing people, a lean presentation is a good time to sit back and relax because its application has absolutely no applicability to them. Their probably right, marketing people are creative, right brained thinkers with a tendency to think they are the only ones to look at the big picture. Sure they understand metrics and what is working in the marketplace but life would be better if everyone followed the plan while they ventured off on cutting-edge activities. After all, they have to be the part of the organization out on the horizon.

The sales people on the other hand are looking for reasons to exit right away. They conjure up opportunities or pending disasters to get out of these discussions. If someone is going to lead a conversation about waste and metrics they certainly want little part of that. First of all, nobody knows what they have to do to get a job so who is going to tell them what waste is and what it is not, or even come close to understanding. Secondly, every time anyone gets in these types of conversations they want to turn sale into a data collection arm and leave them performing in person surveys that either party, the customer or the salesperson wants to be doing.

So why have this conversation at all? Lean Sales and Marketing is about applying Customer Value to the Demand side of your business.

From Wikpedia: The value chain, also known as the value chain analysis, is a concept from business management that was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. The value chain categorizes the generic value-adding activities of an organization. The "primary activities" include: inbound logistics, operations (production), outbound logistics, marketing and sales (demand), and services (maintenance). The "support activities" include: administrative infrastructure management, human resource management, technology (R&D), and procurement. The costs and value drivers are identified for each value activity.

The noticeable feature that is evident in the review of Porter’s Value Chain is that Lean has been applied in every discipline/activity except for Sales and Marketing. With the development and extension of Lean into Software development, most noticeably Agile, it has given Sales and Marketing a foundation to build from. The Agile Methodology allows taking the fundamental Lean concepts of Flow and Value Stream Mapping and makes them usable in a Sales and Marketing environment.

The Lean/Agile model builds a bridge for better communication and collaboration between Sales and Marketing. More importantly, it provides the platform for the development of the “Sales Team” that is at the essence of future activity in the demand chain. I discussed this concept in a recent post on Value Stream Mapping your Sales Team. Future sales and marketing activities will be in the spirit of team collaboration with the customer being the most important member. Instead of the buzzwords of social media there will be a new set of buzz words such as co-creation and swarming.

Why Lean Marketing? Because, it is the Future of Marketing.

Related Posts:

Is Co-Creation a Trend to Watch?

Your Value Network Participants; Who are they?

Value Stream Mapping differs in Lean Marketing

Using Value Stream Mapping in Lean

Six Step Lean Marketing Process

Lean Marketing is a strategic methodology to streamline and automate the marketing processes in order to improve efficiencies through waste elimination. True lean companies strive to eliminate, not minimize all waste in the process. Most think of this as only a manufacturing or administrative function. This rule can apply when implementing lean marketing as well. In lean marketing a company should only have two components: An introduction to a new lead and the acceptance of an order. All other components would be considered wasteful and are candidates for elimination. That may be a little to pie in the sky but I do not believe that marketing should be off the hook from eliminating waste.

Here is a simple process to get started: The Six Step Process to Lean Marketing: How do you handle the critical elements of your Marketing or Value Stream and reduce waste in a lean flow?

1. Create a Value Stream Map based on your Marketing Flow.
2. Analyze each process and start asking these questions until you have eliminated all waste from the process:
   1. Why are we doing this process?
   2. What value/purpose does it serve the customer?
   3. How can we eliminate all waste from this process?
   4. Map new simplified process
3. Now determine the constraint in your Marketing Flow
   1. Identify the system’s constraint.
   2. Exploit the system’s constraint.
   3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision.
   4. Elevate the system’s constraint.
   5. If a constraint is broken (that is, relieved or improved), go back to Step 1. However, don’t allow inertia to become a constraint.
4. Implement and Test new process using the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle.
5. Simplify your Marketing Flow
   1. Eliminate all wasted activities that the customer sees little value in.
   2. Create dashboard with input/output measurements showing daily, weekly, monthly and yearly progress
6. Find the Value Stream ROI and Resource Allocation
   1. Create the Future Value Stream Map
   2. Feedback develop visual metrics showing progress of the company's lean continuous improvement program.

There has been very good books written on Lean Six Sigma Marketing but they deal primarily with channel management. I feel that a true lean approach is what is needed in Small Business Marketing. This basic structure will add clarity finding not only waste but deficiencies in creating new leads and orders in your marketing cycle.

The Makings Of A Perfect Lean Market

Beyond Lean: The Perfect Lean Market: While 80% of manufacturers have lean initiatives, less than 1% have lean practices in place. This article was written by Pamela Lopker, president and chairman of QAD Inc. She went on to say, "The Makings Of A Perfect Lean Market - There are three primary attributes to a perfect lean market. Clarity is one: The second attribute of a perfect lean market is agility , responsiveness to changes in the marketplace. But lean practices won't get information to the right place at the right time. That's where technology can introduce agility, through systems that can receive and process information quickly, even instantly, through automation. Unity is the third attribute of a perfect lean market. Getting information to the right place at the right time can fuel that kind of unity."

She was talking about the waste in supply change management practices. But when I read it, the correlation to Lean Marketing is very apparent.

1. Clarity: How many times have you looked at a marketing piece and questioned the meaning, the reason for it or maybe you just tossed it. We encourage marketing pieces to be educational or a call to action that ultimately has a benefit for the customer as a result of a response.

2. Agility: I do not mean responding to the marketing idea of the week but having a process in place that allows you to have active content. This can be easily done with a company blog and with joint participation the excuse of a time factor is completely removed. The only factor that matters now is the accountability factor.

3. Unity: This is the most neglected attribute. Your marketing to be effective is not a one-way street anymore. It is about communication. Building platforms that your organization can increase the communication with your customer is the actions we take by monitoring news about our customers, building social sites that allow our customers to post, blog and add videos on their own. Being transparent and mixing it up in front of your customers is maybe the largest selling feature you can have.

Poka-Yoke your Marketing -

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/

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 : Lean, Marketing, Marketing-Funnel, Marketing-Hourglass 6 Sigma, Excel, Lean, Mapping, Six Sigma, Software, Value Stream