Marketing Funnel :: Lean Sales and Marketing thru Service Design Thinking

Archive for Marketing Funnel

Feb

Kill the Sales and Marketing Funnel

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

The Sales and Marketing Funnel is a theory that needs to be laid to rest. A linear approach to predict, plan, and proceed is a precarious way to advance. This approach prematurely foresees a solution for the customer without ever understanding their problem. And if you consider addressing the application of social media, it does nothing to support inbound marketing. As we work our way down the funnel, it is just as likely evidence will mount that the proposed solution is wrong. However, we have so much invested we attempt to sway the course of action in our favor. Linear planning will increase the risk for a customer to engage in an inappropriate course of action.

A more correct way of customer introduction is utilizing a problem solving cycle such as PDCA (Deming/Shewart – Plan/Do/Check/Act Cycle). PDCA should be repeatedly implemented in spirals of increasing knowledge of the customer’s situation and converge towards the correct solution. Each cycle will become closer to this goal than the previous. This approach is based on the belief that both our customer and our knowledge and skills may be limited at the beginning but continuously improving.

It is very common as a customer goes through a decision making process that their minds will change. At the start of a project, key information may not be known. The PDCA provides feedback to justify our hypotheses and increase our knowledge. This allows both the customer and us not to be perfect the first time. It allows us flexibility in our course of action and with improved knowledge, we (also meaning the customer) may choose to refine or alter the needs. The rate of change or the speed of the improvement is a key competitive factor in today’s world. PDCA allows for major jumps in performance not through massive breakthroughs but through frequent small improvements.

Another approach recently popularized is the OODA Loop introduced by Colonel John Boyd that describe how combatants observe a situation, orient themselves, decide what to do, and act, before observing the changed situation and moving through the entire loop again. Viewing combat as a series of successive loops underscores the importance of reassessment and readjustment as circumstances change, and the cumulative benefits of many small wins in successive iterations. Boyd’s OODA loop is a vivid example of an iterative loop to guide action under uncertainty and much can be learned from its study.

I am not advocating thinking of your customer in the sense of a combatant as the OODA Loop suggest. However, the strength in the OODA loop is the series of successive loops and small wins that is introduced. Few homeruns are in the market place today. It is more of a singles and doubles game. In fact, few of us can afford the strikeouts and must maintain a high enough batting average to survive.

PDCA is the fundamental concept behind Lean thinking. It is not just a problem solving method but a holistic approach to knowledge creation and improvement within an organization. Establishing a PDCA culture within your company will enable you to embrace this way of thinking with your customers and prospects. It will develop an outside-in approach to your organization that will allow you to really understand your role with customers and in the markets they participate in.

Seldom do you find a competitive advantage or a real break through in a service or product. If you do, it is only short-lived and commoditized rather quickly. The leverage it brings is an influx of innovative customers that are willing to be risk takers, the early adaptors. People that you can learn from and develop new knowledge and new products. PDCA allows for them to enter your cycle of learning easily and allows you to maximize that new knowledge.

The only competitive advantage that you have is in how quickly you develop new knowledge. Maximizing that through the use of PDCA is essential for your business survival.

This is why I believe the Future of Marketing is Lean!

The Marketing Knowledge Spiral

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

When most think of a marketing funnel or Marketing with PDCA, they tend to think of a stage by stage progression. I contend that the successful processes operate in a more spiral like progression. You would start with an identified product/market and some type of interaction from a prospect to identify them at the entry point of a cycle. As we go around the PDCA circle, we improve our knowledge relationship with the customer to a point that they either continue down the funnel in quicker and tighter iterations. If the increase in knowledge and collaboration does not take place then momentum is lost and the customer/prospect drops out of the existing funnel. Repeated use of PDCA makes it possible to improve the quality of the communication, the methodology itself, and the results.

Once set in motion, this process should be an ongoing one, allowing constant interactions between the parties involved. In a learning arena, individuals expand their own knowledge through a “knowledge spiral” (Osterloh and Wubker. 1999). This process has the
specific intention of fostering a collective vision among the participants. This vision can assist the development of new solutions for problems in specific subject areas – in this case, the ways in which we deal with the problems are customers are facing and are ability to adjust lo new goals and objectives.

During the first stage (Plan) of the PDCA Cycle, the participants interact to appraise the customer needs and information on the subject is made available lo all participants, who add it to their own knowledge and experience, and alter this in the light of the new information. During the Do Cycle second stage, the “influence stage”, participants make critical analysis of their own products/services in the light of the new knowledge they have acquired, This broadens their understanding of each others needs and abilities. The aim of this stage is to make individuals receptive to new ideas and action. This is maybe the most difficult stage because you have to be receptive to each others views and be willing to accept a fresh understanding to solve problems in a new way. The third stage (Check Stage) is the intimacy stage. An explanation or demonstration of participants’ new level of understanding is essential. The results that are produced actually can be used and adapted in for other situations. The fourth stage (Act) is the act of either continuing down the spiral to another iteration of tighter focus and a more intense cycle or deciding that moiré knowledge is required at this level. Many times it can be determined that at this time the proper fit for this particular value stream does not work for the participants.

Think of the Marketing Spiral as a continuous puzzle of interactions building through PDCA the knowledge of each other – customer/supplier.

Online collaboration is leading the way for Lean Marketing

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

Businesses and individuals are becoming exponentially more productive and efficient thanks to the innovations that connect them. Between email, Skype, and telecommuting, the landscape of business communication and collaboration is vastly different than it was even a few years ago. We will see just how many of these technologies are helping businesses today, and how quickly people are now able to collaborate and innovate together.

Our organizational structures are getting flatter every day. Technology is not making us less personal, we are getting more personal through technology. We buy less from companies every day and more from people.

Technology actually has evolved to a point that it is becoming anti-technology. The new business models are about communities and organizations must understand what makes them tick. In the book The Hyper-Social Organization: Eclipse Your Competition by Leveraging Social Media, the authors discuss the 4 pillars of Hyper-Sociality:

Tribe vs. market segment
Human-centricity vs. company centricity
Network vs. channel
Social messiness vs. process and hierarchy

The funny thing about all of this is that there will also be a rapid increase in exceptions, more of the anti-technology stuff and more people interactions. This change has invaded both customer service and marketing. Traditional print media, PR and advertising are gradually fading out. Even referrals have shifted from word of mouth to more of a tribal type relationship. If your organization is not already part of the tribe you are overlooked.

Just having a great product is not enough. Sure Apple looks like they are banging out innovation after innovation. But are they? Or is it more of the “Apple Tribe” that devours each new innovation with Steve Jobs as the head of the kingdom.

The next facet of business to change will likely be innovation, if it has not already. Co-creation is upon us and as our tools get better there will be more and more interactivity with our customers. Those exceptions that many of us dread will even become more normal and part of everyday innovation.

Sound like a lot of fun! Learning to market and innovate through iterative cycles is what Lean Marketing is all about. Using Lean on a project to project basis to reduce waste and make marketing and innovation more efficient is hardly effective. Empowering our people for a more human approach within the tribes we choose to network or participate in is the differentiation Lean provides. Lean provides the structure we need to provide value to this social messiness. Without, we lose our relevance and speed that is needed in the collaborative world that we are entering. I look forward to the great journey ahead.