Archive for Lean Marketing
Why you should use Kanban in Marketing?
Posted by: | CommentsKanban is any signaling device that gives authorization for a supplying process to know what to produce, or for a material handler to know what items to replenish. For example: a physical paper card placed in a container of parts. When stored items are actually used, the Kanban card gets “freed” (perhaps it was in the bottom of the container), and gets put back into a Kanban stand where the Kanban “requests” are fulfilled. 
Kanban is a way of limiting work in process and the amount of new work that is introduced into the process. As a result, work would be pulled from the previous stage as work is completed and levels demand. It emphasizes throughput rather than numbers. If you have read my previous posts, you would recognize the emphasis I put on throughput and the need for this to be monitored in the sales and marketing process.
The Reasons for a Kanban can be summed up in these previous posts:
Improve your Marketing Cycle, Increase your Revenue : Speed is important in the buying process. Your total cycle time can be improved. However, it seldom can be done without more feedback loops in your system. Develop process blitzes to reduce these non-value times. Go to Gemba or the customer’s place of work and find out what happens during this time. See what is stopping them from moving forward. It may be an internal constraint within their company. However, the constraint may be yours. You may not be responding to the customer’s latest needs. Your ability to focus your resources on the customer needs may provide the overall clarity he needs this to make a more rapid decision.
Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!: In a manufacturing system cutting WIP just about always will increase throughput. Why? You end up working only on what is needed and when it is needed. You also will have less waste, less material to handle and fewer mistakes. Good things happen when you are not handling excessive amount of material. In a marketing system cutting the amount of customers in half works very much the same way. You end up working on what a customer truly needs and wants. Your marketing will become more personal, more direct, and fewer mistakes.
Using the Six Sigma Tollgate in your Marketing Funnel: Have you thought of using DMAIC as a way of defining your marketing funnel? We looked at Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control and utilized these basic principles to walk a customer through the marketing funnel. In other posts, I discussed the ability to create a shorter cycle time by decreasing the non-value time in between each of these stages. One of the methods of doing this is to have a strong call to action for a prospect to move from one stage to the next. However, how do you know if a customer is ready to move from one stage to the next?
What kind of questions would you ask at a tollgate?: In a recent post, using the Six Sigma Tollgate in your Marketing Funnel I went through the concept of using a tollgate in your marketing funnel. Below is a list of questions that might help general a few ideas that you may want to consider. (Review Post)
The essential points needed in a Kanban system are:
- Stock points
- Replenishment Signal
- Quick Feedback
- Frequent Replenishment
If you would consider the typical marketing cycle as a prospect moves from one stage to another, you imagine it as step by step process and certain events taking place within that stage. With a Kanban method or a tollgate you could have certain trigger points for each stage or even a phase within that stage allowing one marketing effort to pull from the previous. The method would also limit the number of prospects within that cycle so that the proper amount could be managed or more importantly satisfied! Or, you could have an unlimited supply of leads flowing into each stage? You probably wish you had the latter. However, which would prove more effective?
Photo Courtesy of Systems2win.
Can you become Lean without Sales on Board
Posted by: | CommentsI am not sure that Lean will ever work within a company unless sales and marketing are on board. In fact, why start with production if we want to look from the customer’s eyes. Would it be tainted if we did not lean sales and marketing first?
Have you ever won a large order and watch your production department roll their eyes? You could never understand why the frustration. You wonder why they just don’t have the same enthusiasm you do. You wonder why they just can’t take the attitude of lets “gitter-done!” I would encourage you to take a little deeper look into the frustration and especially, if you’ve been trying to become a Lean operation.
Let’s face it, a manufacturing manager who does not meet the promised date or deliver quality parts does not keep his job long. There is an expectation to be on schedule. What about Sales? Is there the same level of expectation? That new order causes a wide variation in the planning. Who makes up for that change or deviation? The production department does. It is justified of course by the age old sayings; “Customers don’t know what they want” or “Our type of business is hard to forecast.” I read once where it was stated that greater than 90% of delivery dates are missed at the time the order was accepted. This double standard is unacceptable and in fact quite detrimental to a Lean Transformation. But for this not to happen, you must learn how to market and sell products differently.
First, just think about how you typically measure sales people and the incentives that you give customers. Companies usually provide incentives to their salespeople and customers based upon the volume of sales. You have pricing policies that reward customers for buying large quantities of products. Does this sound like Lean principles in action? In fact, they are just downright harmful to a lean operation.
A lean operation works best when there is a level production load. So you must try some new approaches to pricing and most particularly to incentives and measurements. If your sales and marketing understand the Value Stream of your company, they will also recognize the capacity restraints or bottlenecks that are within it. All at once they will start recognizing value over the cost of the product. If a part is difficult to get they will assess more value to it. This may induce, not to be as willing to discount that product or at a minimum hesitate to promise an unrealistic delivery.
Can you create a linear demand with your customers? Sales and Marketing could work with customers to develop processes more conductive to lean operation. Maybe setting up Kanban systems, vendor managed inventory, smaller daily orders, rather than large weekly or monthly orders, forward forecast requirements, and others. You would also expect sales and marketing to develop more appropriate incentives to increase demand for non-bottleneck products. This is especially important because these sales can be increased without increasing other costs.
The purpose of all this is to recognize the Value Stream of your operations and maximize all the components of it. BY the WAY – How much would a “Leveling” Sales and Marketing initiative cost to implement? What value would you receive from it?
Why Do You Market the Way You Do?
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever questioned the assumptions that inspire your marketing? Have you asked yourself whether there is a better way to make your marketing more effective? I believe there is a tremendous amount that marketers can learn from Lean Development process.
Dr. Robert Charente of ITABHI Corporation developed the principles of lean development (LD) in the early 1990’s as not only a strategic as well as tactical business approach for the creation of change-tolerant business software intensive systems, systems that can rapidly adapt to or help in the creation of business change. He sets these lofty targets in his developments:
- 1/3 the human effort
- 1/3 the development hours
- 1/3 the time
- 1/3 the investment in tools and methods
- 1/3 the effort to adapt to a new market environment
Why the 1/3 targets? These goals are meant to challenge status quo thinking. Without audacious goals, ones that seem impossible to reach business managers won’t bother to think about the issues of software development in entirely different ways.
Could your marketing achieve 1/3 targets? Could you achieve them while providing more value to the customer? Can you think about your marketing in a totally different way?
Bob Charente expanded the thoughts of Lean Development to these 12 principles:
- Satisfying the customer is the highest priority.
- Always provide the best value for the money.
- Success depends on active customer participation.
- Every LD project is a team effort.
- Everything is changeable.
- Domain, not point, solutions.
- Complete, don’t construct.
- An 80 percent solution today instead of 100 percent solution tomorrow.
- Minimalism is essential.
- Needs determine technology.
- Product growth is feature growth, not size growth.
- Never push LD beyond its limits.
You can read an expanded version of these 12 principles on the ITABHI Corporation website.
Lean Development focuses on the creation of change-tolerant software. Setting up this model for marketing could be quite interesting. How flexible, how change- tolerant is your marketing? Why are you marketing the way you do? Is it the way that your customer wants you too?
Photo Credit by hanneorla
