Archive for November, 2009
Why does The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™ crumble?
Posted by: | CommentsIs it just poor planning? Maybe, you really did not believe in the system. Typically there are four barriers to implementation of most plans.
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Clarity, few people understand the strategies.
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People may not be directly linked or measured by the outcomes.
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Money, the entire process is not totally funded.
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Management looks for quick wins versus building a platform.
Most organizations build their pillars at the strategic business unit level, in the marketing departments within the business. However, they must include and receive buy in from customers, sales and other parts of the value chain to make it work. If it is pushed down it will seem like just another program. 
Once we have designed The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™, we need to implement it throughout the entire organization. This requires careful planning and coordination with all parts of the organization. It is beyond the scope of this post to go into an entire Product Launch but we basically should know, how to organize, coordinate efforts and establish deliverables within the organization. Also, we should have knowledge of the time, availability of data and the resources needed. Another important aspect is the degree of support and funding both in time and money that management is willing to commit too.
When completed, The Pillars provide clarity, the budgetary requirements and a platform for management to buy into and support. However, it lacks the foundation needed for implementation and measurement that is required for successful deployment. We will need to integrate the Hourglass into lower level blocks or the Foundation of the Lean Marketing House™. The blocks provide the stability to the The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™. They are made up of the tactics we will employ to move prospects from one stage to another. As we move the forward, a more formal collection and reporting system will emerge. Once we get more and more blocks working, we will begin to link the different segmented pillars together.
Building The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™. often require continuous testing and modification to see if the process is working. This can be frustrating for many who routinely expect perfect solutions. Many times you are testing something that you never had applied or had measurements before. You will revisit your pillars, adjusting and re-aligning it to fit with the organization. It is not unusual to postpone the rollout of pillars until the first pillar is well established and working. The foundation of the Lean Marketing House™ will be explained in upcoming posts.
Related Information:
Lean Marketing House – Foundation
Speed may be the biggest Determent to your Marketing Success
Posted by: | CommentsThe company that gets to the customer first, the company that releases the product first, the company that slides in and closes the sale while you are still waiting to get the final specifications, all demonstrate how important speed is to your marketing success.
Speed is much, much more than the ability to run your customer through your marketing cycle. it is an integral part of building a marketing system that responds to customers needs. Having built in trigger points to help you identify your customers readiness to proceed to the next stage in your Marketing Hourglass is imperative. I discussed handing the baton off in an earlier post and how many times that gets dropped from one stage to the next. It is similar to an athlete starting the season off and building his “speed” back up. Or a student taking the same test after summer break and scoring lower. These things happen because of the lack of activity during the non -value added time that you have identified in your Value Stream Mapping Process. The lack of speed in your marketing process equates to the lack of engagement that you have with your customer. This can be one of the most effective uses of social media and a good content marketing strategy. The engagement of your customer is driven by the needs they identify with your product. Here are some examples of items that may help in decreasing that non-value added time.
1. Attempting to late or to early to move a customer to the next stage.
2. Not building upon the previous stage by starting with different content. You effectively lose the momentum that was built by the earlier stage.
3. Reinforce the previous stage. Creating the linkages between stages is extremely important. It is a great time for a warm-up.
4. Make sure the customer is on the right airplane. You have been there, even if it is embarrassing when the stewardess says this plane is headed to Detroit, and you are not going there: you are getting off. If a customer is not ready for this stage give him a graceful exit and provide them an opportunity to get off, or you may lose him forever.
5. Make a better offer. Each stage should create a better offer than the previous. You have a more qualified customer at this stage so treat them that way.
6. Create interactive platforms or trials that the customer can use or interact with to solve some of their problems. This happens quite frequently in the construction business when someone leases a bulldozer to a contractor or online with free downloadable software.
7. A superior call to action, an offer that cannot be refused to go the next stage.
Even with these improvements, without a marketing system in place to monitor results and improve upon them, you will fall behind. Speed is not automation. Automation can be a component of developing speed but don’t mistake the use of automation. People even in the online society we have created. They still want conversation and personal connection surrounding the product and especially the service they may purchase. They want a live body behind the curtain or in our case the Marketing Hourglass.
P.S. People mistake Lean for being just about waste. It is about speed too.
Related Information:
Improve your Marketing Cycle, Increase your Revenue
Have you listed all your delivery processes? What did you learn?
Developing a Kaizen Conscious with Shingo Prize winner Michael Balle
Posted by: | CommentsMichael Ballé is the co-author of, The Gold Mine, a bestselling business novel of a Lean Turnaround, and recently, The Lean Manager, a novel of a Lean Transformation both published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. For the past 15 years, he has studied lean transformations, helping companies develop a lean culture. He is an engaging and colorful public speaker, and I think you will find in the podcast, he lives up to his reputation. Great discussion on Lean Tools, Lean Systems, Thinking Processes and their relationship to management. I have never heard this take on Kaizen and the continuous improvement process before. Maybe, because it is so simple.
As a managing partner of ESG Consultants, Michael coaches executives in obtaining exceptional performance through using the lean tools, principles, and management attitudes. His main coaching technique is the “Real Place Visit,” where he helps senior executives to learn to see their own operational shop floors, teach their people the spirit of kaizen and draw the right conclusions for their business as a whole. He has assisted companies in their lean transformations in various fields such as manufacturing, engineering, construction, services, and healthcare.
