Little Bets – The Way to take an Affordable Risk

Start Small, Iterate a lot, Scale – that’s the advice from Peter Sims, the author of the new book Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. When reading the book, you can’t help but think about Eric Ries of The Lean Startup fame. Eric characterizes his Little Bets with the description of the Read More …

Does Success Always Start with Failure?

This book had an impact on me this week and needless to say, I recommend it. In my first reading, it was not the main message of the book that sparked my interest. It was the parallel path it runs with PDCA and the importance of sampling or pilot programs that so many of us Read More …

Improve your Sales Cycle, Work on your Feedback Loops

When I start talking about speeding up the sales cycle the initial reaction is that the sales cycle is controlled by the customer and there is just not much we can do about that. I usually counter with, most companies understand that there is an average sales cycle time and if we just agree that Read More …

The Little PDCA Sales Loop

The fundamental goals of your sales cycle should be one of discovery, learning and adaptability with a shared responsibility for a successful outcome. That implies that it is all about engaging both organizations into effective problem solving and learning. In applying this, think of the sales cycle in terms of a series of iterative loops Read More …

Lean Marketing House in Paperback

A few reasons to consider the Lean Marketing House book: Is there a reason to use Lean in Sales and Marketing? Do you have to be practicing Lean in the rest of the company? Is Lean Marketing the same as Agile Marketing? How does A3 problem solving relate to Marketing? Why is Social Media so Read More …

The Role of PDCA in a Lean Sales and Marketing Cycle

In Lean Marketing, I discuss the use of a Sales and Marketing team as a cross functional group whose number and expertise is derived from the decision making path of the customer. The team is first and foremost the listening post for the customer (prospect) that enables them to provide the customer with the information, Read More …