Archive for Marketing Funnel
Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept
Posted by: | CommentsThe Indirect Marketing depicted in the light blue section of the Value Stream Marketing layout incorporates a wide array of marketing tools. This can be similar to the top of someone’s marketing funnel but it also to the concept of flipping the funnel(see book below) and re-using your existing customer stream that you have in place.(Book on the subject: Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones)
There are numerous marketing systems and methodologies in the marketplace but what makes all of them work is your involvement with your customer or prospect. I believe to a certain extent all systems will work or won’t work based on the level of involvement. What most systems will do is help you develop certain touch points that will identify and link your product or services to your customer base. How well you can make this authentic and even transparent can be very important. Point in case is social media. It is OK to schedule tweets and blog post to become more efficient but without some actual real-time conversation it is soon recognized by your followers that this is indeed just a platform for you to blast out your message.
I have included a description of the first two stages of the Value Stream Marketing process:
The Define(Involvement) Stage: The Define stage typically asks us to start with a problem statement. In the marketing sense, can you define the problem that you solve for your customers clearly? Where the problem statement describes the pain, the next statement should describe the relief that is to be expected. After that, we go into a process that is typically defined as Voice of the Customer. There are typically two major categories that are required; Output requirements and Service Requirements. The output requirements relate to the final product or service that is delivered to the customer. The service requirements relate to how the customer would like to be treated and served during the process. The final step in the Define stage is to document the process. Typically, this is done with a high level process map. Don’t worry about it being completely correct as we will use it and develop it further in the remaining processes. More on this Subject: The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC – Define stage
The Measure(Influence) Stage: In the DMAIC methodology we use tools such as Critical to Quality and other tools to determine what is important to a prospect. Instead of thinking about this step from an internal point of view step back and consider what the prospect would use to measure your product or service and make the decision to move through the funnel. Developing measures with customer input will certainly help a prospect move though the funnel. At this stage, do you know how a prospect is measuring you? What is the most Critical to quality standard that influences your product or service? What is more critical than others? The old saying is that people perform by how they are measured? If your company is based on how they are being measured, do you have measurements in places that influence your performance? More on this Subject: The Marketing Funnel using the Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology – Measure stage
These are a couple of the DMAIC principles that you can use to guide someone through your marketing stages. But what are the marketing concepts that you are using in these stages? These concepts are many of the building blocks in the Lean Marketing House Foundation and are the basic marketing tools that you are familiar with when evaluating your marketing. From the general terms such as; Advertising, PR, Social Media and Referrals to the more specific tools that you use such as; Public Speaking, E-zines, Blogging and White Papers.
A Value Stream Marketing Concept: The one concept that many fail to consider is the In direct marketing of “Staying in Touch” with your customer base. Many times your customers are just folded back into the above mentioned terms or with your regular prospects. I would like to challenge your thinking on how you can become involved in your customer’s communities. Becoming active in these areas will not only increase your involvement with your customers and other prospects but there is nothing more effective in making your marketing more efficient. Understanding their needs, what they are looking for, where they are being undeserved is the single greatest marketing concept that I know of. So, if I ask this question: Where are your customers being undeserved? Can you answer it? And/Or, is that a market you have the ability to take care of or build a future alliance from? (Related Book Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change)
Should work cells be used in Sales and Marketing?
Posted by: | CommentsCellular manufacturing is one of the most powerful lean tools. It will allow for smaller lot production, quality improvements, and shorter lead times and simplifies the implementation of pull. Typical manufacturing systems had the same machines all grouped together and as a result batch type manufacturing was developed. As manufacturers developed cellular systems, they found quality improved and smaller lot quantities could be efficiently handled. Many of the work cells were rearranged into U-shaped or L-shaped patterns. This allowed one worker to operate several machines which improve productivity. The benefits have been very well documented and applied to many industries.
Related Post with other pertinent links: (Why you should use Kanban in Marketing?)
Followers of my blog have seen how I use DMAIC principles in discussing the marketing funnel and the discussions about adding toll gates for identifying when prospects should move from one stage to the next. Inside the stages, we have different marketing programs that are taking place. But I really never talked about the personnel that were handling these programs. In most sales and marketing applications, you have marketing assigned by the duties they do and salespeople assigned to certain accounts. I think it might be interesting to consider what we have learned in U-shaped or L-shaped work cells.
Instead of the typical arrangement, what would prevent an organization of assigning the personnel and cross-training them within one of the marketing stages. This way they would become experts within the stage and be able to respond to the needs of a prospect better and more efficiently. Since they are handling the tools of the stage, that particular area would have a better chance of improving the methods utilized within it.
In recent times, quality has suffered in sales and marketing. Many times, the customer seems to be more of an expert than the salesperson calling on them. Other times experts have to be brought in and duplication of manpower takes place. Many companies have a sale’s closer; maybe sometimes a sales manager that would come in and have the power to close a prospect when ready. If you were doing that during each stage, the likelihood of passing on better qualified and more prospects may occur. Another consideration that someone may find fault with this type of thinking is geographic boundaries. However, I believe that excuse is seldom the case.
The key to your thinking should be in flow rather than function. Taking each individual stage and think about creating a work cell by defining the operations that take place within that stage. The number of resources within that stage will have to correlate to the number of prospects within the stage. It must be recognized that numbers don’t always work out perfectly or that certain talents may still have to be utilized in several different stages. But I believe that the quality of the interaction would increase with this type of system.
The goal in lean is continuous flow or as close to that as possible, while eliminating waste of waiting and a waste of overproduction. I believe that this type of arrangement would be an organizations first step in leveling sales volume. I’ll save that discussion for another blog post.
Do you think work cells can work in Sales and Marketing? Are they already?
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Bringing your Storyboard Alive!
A Little more on applying Little’s Law to Lean your Marketing!
evaluate your Customer Needs
Posted by: | CommentsHow do you increase speed in your marketing? It actually is very easy. You must target your market. Most professionals lose jobs because they do not make their offers crystal clear to their prospect. The prospects must understand completely, without a doubt what benefits they will receive and what the outcomes will be from working with you or using your product. You must be crystal clear in your definition. However, are you crystal clear in what you will be offering?
I have recently started using the Kano model in providing a better definition for my clients of putting their product and features not only perspective but defining that clarity issue. The Kano model relates to three factors:
Basic or must be or the expected needs. Without these the customer would be dissatisfied. This sounds very straight forward but if these are not adequately defined during the marketing process they are simply deal breakers and questions that either party may ever asked.
The second aspect is the performance factor and to define that performance think about the term, “more is better.” The more this performance is met, the more the prospect is satisfied. This is the area that the customer measures the value of the product or service they are receiving. In a few cases, these features are the ones that have meaning to some clients and others could care less. They even may cause dissatisfaction to some. Herein lays a great opportunity to improve these areas which many times can be done at relatively inexpensive option. Or, you may even be able to remove them completely for a few of your target segments. If you can, are these segments really your target customer?
Another way to leverage the performance factor segment is to have a better definition of your target market and how it relates to these factors. You may find that making these an option or even using them in a way of further segmenting your customer base may ultimately give you an advantage over the competition either through price or features.
The third factor is the delighters. If these are absent, they will not cause any dissatisfaction at all. The customer does not even expect these. But when they are there, they cause extreme happiness. OK, maybe that is a bit much. An interesting side note that needs to be recognized about the delighters is typically they do not increase the value in the product or the service. Seldom will you get paid more because of them. The delighters may also in time, even become a basic need. What is a delighter today, may be an expectation tomorrow.
The Kano Model is constantly shifting but it is a great method to use to gain a better understanding of your prospects values that are critical to success and to prioritize the requirements for further development activities. Just as importantly, I think it really lends itself to understanding your market segment characteristics better. And if you divide your marketing segments better, you will increase throughput and develop better budgets as a result.
By the way: Another important feature of the Kano Model is that it gives you a better understanding on what tradeoffs you might have in your marketing cycles. You certainly could not trade off a basic need, but you might be able to reduce the level of a performance factor.
