Reducing Muda for Others with Kaizen

Kaizen is about involving employees to get them not only the way to do work but to help improve the way others do their work. The Friday Video Series continues with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute. This series of videos continues with a central theme of Kaizen. Dr. Balle Read More …

Change Education, Change the Sales Cycle

Though this is a well documented Ted Video, I ran across the RSA Animate video version of Ken Robinson’s discussion on education. Funny thing about it was that it really hit a chord when thinking about the typical Sales Cycle or Marketing Funnel. Not the part on Attention Deficit Disorder but when he talks about 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 …

Changing Shape of Your Funnel

These five terms form a hierarchy of value in which data have the least value and wisdom has the most. I first ran across a similar description in the The Experience Economy an article published in 1998 by Joe Pine which I discussed in the blog post, Does your Value Proposition speak of the Customer Read More …

Call it Building a Lean Sales and Marketing Machine

David Skok, a five time serial entrepreneur turned VC, at Matrix Partners presented this at a HubSpot Webinar last week together with Mike Volpe, the VP of Marketing at HubSpot.This video is 60 minutes long and well worth the time. A little promotional for Hubspot but in my opinion Hubspot is a quality product and Read More …

Kill the Sales and Marketing Funnel

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 Read More …