All of us Marketers What is the framework

By jurvetson

A recent Blog post, We’re all marketers now in the McKinsey Quarterly discusses how engaging customers today requires commitment from the entire company and a redefined marketing organization. They say marketers have been adjusting to this new era of engagement through increased Web expertise and have simply found that to be not enough. In a quick summary of the article, they believe the marketing organization will have to change and coordinate deeper activities based on these four critical activities:

Distribute more activities
More council and partnerships
Elevate the role of customer insights
More data rich and analytically intense

They sum it up by saying:

The major barrier to engagement is organizational rather than conceptual: given the growing number of touch points where customers now interact with companies, marketing often can’t do what’s needed all on its own. CMOs and their C-suite colleagues must collaborate intensively to adapt their organizations to the way customers now behave and, in the process, redefine the traditional marketing organization. If companies don’t make the transition, they run the risk of being overtaken by competitors that have mastered the new era of engagement.

This article mimics many of my reasons for saying, “Why Lean Marketing is the Future of Marketing.” McKinsey may create a different template for the future but why re-invent the wheel? Lean is here with an established method that has proven successfully in many companies and industries to include both service and manufacturing. In fact, McKinsey even draws the similarities to the early stages of the quality movement. Let me elaborate on how Lean applies to their four points:

Distribute more activities: One of the foundational principles of Lean Sales and Marketing is the establishment of a team structure with self-organizing teams in response to the touch points of the customer. No longer are we building internal structure for marketing activities, rather our structure is created through the needs of the customer. We develop a SALES PDCA cycle that continuously adapts to the changing customer need. The Lean Sales and Marketing team resembles a support staff that sole purpose is to facilitate the customer journey through their decision making process.

More council and partnerships: Managing the Value Stream is a key component of these needed partnerships. The roles of the Value Stream Manger and Team Coordinator manage the activity of the outside influencers (council and partnerships) required by the customer via the Lean Sales and Marketing team. The Team coordinator will also organize the necessary support from the internal marketing communication staff.

Elevate the role of customer insights: The Value Stream Manager provides the oversight at a high level monitoring profitability, changing value propositions and the needs of the identified customer/market. The VSM will set direction and clarity for the Lean Sales and Marketing Team enabling them to act autonomously in the spirit of PDCA.

More data rich and analytically intense: When you think of analytics and data in an organization you first think of the quality department. In the new marketing era driven by more data than we could ever imagine, the question is not acquiring data. It is what data to look at and how to interpret that. Through the use of many of quality control tools integrated within Lean, this data can be managed, interpreted and implemented.

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. These teams must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets.

Shameless Plug: My book, Marketing with PDCA is about managing a value stream using PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). It uses the SALES PDCA Framework throughout the marketing cycle to provide a constant learning loop from customers. This can only occur if the customer is part of the process. And… the only competitive advantage that you have is the ability to learn more efficiently and more effectively from your customers then your competition.

“The fundamental idea of iteration (PDCA) is learning. To eschew PDCA is not only arrogant; it is inefficient & often ineffective,” says Shoji Shiba author of Four Practical Revolutions in Management : Systems for Creating Unique Organizational Capability.