I liken that to the Marketing Funnel or Hourglass concept used by so many Info Marketers. When you look at that concept you will see people placing marketing products next to the different stages of the funnel. Each one depicting the opportunities that they have or the marketing action they use in that particular stage. An example is included in a previous post of mine. It is the way I was taught. The marketing funnel concept is just a step by step progression through the marketing process. When you review that concept, does it not seem dated? Is that not just another way of pushing products?

Reviewing many of my own writings from yesteryear (I have always liked that word), I notice the lack of customer pull that I think is required for successful marketing. The marketing process was based on continuing funneling a person through stages to get to the ultimate buying stage. After that, referrals and up-sells were initiated. Though the concept makes it easier to explain, it really serves little purpose in defining what works in today’s marketing and is in fact downright misleading. I use an hourglass as a way of demonstrating a constraint but as an extension of the marketing funnel, I find it is misleading as referral strategies should be introduced much earlier and often in the typical marketing cycle. Think about it, how many of your referrals come from customers? Most come from people that you associate with that may never be a customer.

I really prefer looking at marketing in a much more cyclic fashion and somewhat more of an iterative process. Spending time defining your customer needs and how your organization reacts to those needs is the essence of marketing today. This approach can make your marketing more effective and reliable by reducing your marketing variability. Marketing is simply becoming more about problem solving and addressing customer needs, not what I call the caveman approach; “You need to buy this!” Instead I like to use the term Value Stream Marketing!

Back to Seth Godin’s Post: Now it doesn’t matter where you sit. Now it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re adding to the efficiency or productivity of the machine. Now you don’t market to sell what you made, you make to satisfy the market. Now, the market and the consumer and idea trump the system.

Suddenly, the power is in a different place, and the organization must change or else the donut collapses.

Is your Marketing Funnel or Hourglass working?

Related Category:

Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept

Marketing Funnel

Inventory lowers organizational effectiveness because the time and money spent taking care of the inventory could have been spent making the company more successful. Therefore, Lean organizations tend to receive the things they need to operate at the last responsible moment, this is called “Just in Time” (JIT). A JIT organization does not take on inventory until the moment they need it and therefore spends as little as possible maintaining inventory, greatly reducing the risk of having overstock.

But inventory isn’t just “stuff.” Inventory for us as individuals includes anything we have that requires maintenance or on-going attention. We have responsibilities, they aren’t going away. We will have a yard, it will need to be mowed. Dishes need to be washed. Children need to be raised.

Inventory for sales and marketing is prospects! As you think about what stops your marketing from being effective it is all about trying to appeal to the masses and as a result losing effectiveness both in time and money. As Jim said above, you should be taking the time making your company more successful and working on ineffective or wasteful leads is not going to do it.

The past several years the buzz word has been Inbound Marketing. Though I am a advocate of the basic approach and an advocate of using Social Media I have found that it really has resulted in a failed marketing strategy for many companies. Though it has increased the number of prospects it has done little to increase qualified buyers. That is why there has been push back from many organizations. It just has not been effective as the principle seems to indicate. Just because we automated the process does not mean we are managing Work in Process better.

So what happens if we limit work in process or the numbers of leads that we receive? Marketing to a targeted audience results in a cost savings and time savings. Would you need to hire more salespeople? Would you be able to use more experienced people at the right time and in the right place more often? Would you nurture and promote to a better qualified prospect? I believe the most important part of limiting Work in Process is that your message would simply be better. Not only would your information packet be much more targeted and information rich, it would also have a better chance to be delivered on time or in other words when a prospect is ready for it. Giving a prospect what he needs, when he needs it and how he wants it is a pretty important factor in today’s market. If you look at what vehicles prospects and your customers use to acquire the information they need, you will notice one important factor: they are just about all different. Multiplying that number by the number of prospects should certainly give you reason to start narrowing your field.

Why is now, the best time to convert to this strategy? The market itself has caused a constriction for most companies. This constriction has narrowed your market that should enable you to readily identify your target market. What are the last minute adjustments or concessions you make (JIT) to capture the sale? These are the present value drivers of your business. Are these the value drivers that you are willing to live with in the long term? How do they help you in identifying your present and future market?

Work in process is wasteful. It is wasteful in your personal life when not managed well, it is bad in manufacturing, it is bad from a sales and marketing perspective. Quit marketing at the top of your funnel. Instead learn how to manage your Work in Process!

P.S. By the way, I don’t even believe in a marketing funnel anymore. I will tell you more about that later!

Related Posts:

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!

Lean your Marketing thru Segmentation

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)

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?

Related Posts:

Bringing your Storyboard Alive!

A Little more on applying Little’s Law to Lean your Marketing!

Using DMAIC for your A3 Report in the Lean Marketing House

Value Stream Mapping

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.

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:

1. Stock points
2. Replenishment Signal
3. Quick Feedback
4. 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.