Lean Marketing House » Lean Marketing

Lean Marketing Game from the Inside-Out.

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:11:00 +0000

Seldom will you hear me utilize the phrase from the Inside-Out. In fact, after discussing Visioning in most workshops I pass out some (play) guns and ask to be shot if they hear those words at any time the rest of the day. However, there is a time and place to view sales and marketing from the inside-out. It is when you have never used an outside-in strategy before and at a loss on how to determine the customers decision making process.

The slideshow below walks you step by step through building a journey map from the inside – out. I shutter thinking this way!

Lean Marketing Game from the Inside-Out

View more presentations from Business901

You may also want to consider viewing the original Lean Marketing Game presentation.

Lean Marketers concentrate on SOAR vs. SWOT

admin — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:32:00 +0000

How many resources do you have? Should you be using them on your weaknesses or your strength? In a recent post Looking for a Game Changer, Start Underperforming!, I discussed not looking for areas of deficiencies and improvement but to expand on the areas we do well in. You cannot be everything to everyone and so you have to limit your resources. So why not use them on what you do well?

In the typical SWOT Analysis (SWOT analysis examines the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of different strategies), I believe most of us have a tendency to focus on our weaknesses and threats more than our strengths. Just doing the math SWOT/WT, we spend 50% of out time doing just that.

In the Appreciative Inquiry field, there has been a movement to use a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) analysis in lieu of SWOT. SOAR is a great method to use for expanding on the positive areas of an organization. It normally is much easier to gain buy-in from stakeholders with this approach versus others.

In the book The Thin Book of SOAR; Building Strengths-Based Strategy, the authors state:

People tend to look for problems and focus on weaknesses and threats before searching for possibilities. For example, one participant of a SWOT process described this tendency as follows: "Having used SWOT analysis for the previous fifteen years, I had experienced that it could be draining as people often got stuck in the weaknesses and threats conversations. The analysis became a descending spiral of energy." Or, as another described his experience of a planning process deeply rooted in a SWOT analysis, "[the SWOT approach] gave us a plan, but took our spirit. From our experience, drained energy and loss of spirit can negatively impact momentum and achieving results.

In SOAR, we focus on our strengths and opportunities, so that we can align and expand them until they lessen or manage our weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses and threats are not ignored. They are refrained and given the appropriate focus within the Opportunities and Results conversation. Ultimately, it becomes a question of balance. Why not spend as much time or more on what you do well and how7 you can do more of that? What gives you more energy to take action? What gives you confidence to set a stretch goal?

When I engage with a customer, I find the initial sequence of steps used to create a Lean Marketing System must ensure we carefully think through what outcomes we want to create, what supports and barriers we need to plan for, and who we have to involve within your organization to guarantee success. Our starting point looks like this:

(Definition) What are you presently doing and how do your clients and organization feel about them?
(Discovery) What is your present value proposition for retaining customers? What is your present value proposition for acquiring customers?
(Dream)What are your targets? How will we measure success?
(Design) Do you understand your customer’s decision making process? For each product/market segment?
(Destiny) What’s your investment strategy – not only in media, but in time and events?

The SOAR framework is the beginning step in the Defining stage and is a natural lead in to the others.

Strengths: Internal to organization; What is our core
Opportunities: External to organization; What might be
Aspirations: Internal to organization; What should be
Results : External to organization; What will be

The first steps of any Lean process is identify value and create a current state. When working on the demand side of the equation, why should we identify the process through Non-Value Activities defined as waste (Weaknesses and Threats) versus the Value Added activities of SOAR?

Moving from Product to Customer Centric in 4 Steps

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:34:00 +0000

Becoming customer centric requires an organization to understand the emotional needs and difficulties of their prospects and customers (only the term “customer” will be used for the balance of the blog post). I have recently done a series of blog posts on empathy (The Role of Empathy in Design), that goes deeper into this subject.

Today’s marketing is not about getting the message out – it is about bringing the message in. Most organizations struggle in their attempts as they evaluate seas of data and lose the personality of the customer using such terminology as markets or value streams. They have a tendency to view marketing as product centric rather than customer/user centric.

You don’t wake up one day and become customer centric. It is not quite that easy. However, a concentrated effort by sales and marketing with just a few priorities can start your organization on the right path and radically improve your chances of moving from product to customer centric.

1. Reduce complexity: Few companies can simply market by collecting more demographic data, psychographic or subjective information. Data should not be ignored; however, in the absence of a customer context, data will provide little value and be desperately in need of direction.

2. Establish the user experience as the basis of collaboration: Framing the marketing effort in the context of the customer allows everyone the opportunity to participate. Everyone can act as the customer and can contribute insight about how the user experience can be improved. Understanding how empowerment varies among roles and evolves over time can help to create priorities and informed decisions.

3. Use maps to guide the way: Mapping products and personas in terms of needs, desires, and aspirations fuels the marketing process with clarity and empathy from the outset. This is not only a powerful tool for understanding how to appeal to customers but it can also shape the debate about trade-offs that are an inherent part of implementation. Customer insight can reveal value and non-value added task. The visual understanding provided by mapping can provide a reality check and a benchmark throughout the sales and marketing process. The direction should he determined by the needs of customers and the particular company’s strategy. Strive for the ability to see where there is a disconnect between your offerings in the market and the desires of the customer to improve the user experience and bridge the gap.

4. Aim for a compass, not a GPS: Identifying an opportunity zone can increase the chances of success by focusing a team’s attention on a fixed number of priorities. These form the basis for experimentation during the sales and marketing process. The idea is to provide a clear direction but allows freedom to all parties to generate different approaches.

My research for this post came from the recent reading of Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business. The authors use these four interactions on How to Create a Design Strategy. I found the same principles applying directly to customer centric marketing. In the book, there is a special tool that the authors call the Psycho-Aesthetics Map. This is a two-dimensional mapping process in which the vertical axis shows the degree of need, from essential through to aspirational, while the horizontal axis shows the degree of interactivity from passive through to immersive. Existing products can be placed in their appropriate locations on the map, as can different groups of consumers, in order to identify gaps which might be suitable for the design of new products. More about this later.

Lean Sales & Marketing Summit Announced

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:48:00 +0000

I am honored to be included on the same agenda with noted author, speaker, and lean pioneer Bill Waddell. On April 17th, Bill will be presenting
Aligning the Entire Organization to Achieve the Sales Strategy. He will show you how to devise a sales and marketing strategy built around creating the most value for your customers; how to set prices strategically, rather than on the basis of standard costs, assuring that prices will not cause you to lose a sale. We will align the entire company around assuring the success of the sales strategy, with a focus on maximizing value for your customers and using lean tools to eliminate everything that is not contributing to the prices you charge. When we are finished you will see a clear and practical path to devising a practical plan to creating and accomplishing a sales and marketing strategy, and succeeding not by becoming the lowest cost and price competitor, but by becoming the highest value source in your markets.

The next day, I will be presenting Using Lean to Create Repeatable and Scalable Sales and Marketing Systems: A Customer Centric Approach Through Lean. The workshop will be two-thirds presentation and one-third interactive exercises. A partial listing of the subject matter:

Why value can no longer be defined by what the customer will pay for.
The New Rules of Marketing in a Demand – Driven World
The Marketing Gateway of EDCA > PDCA > SDCA
Lean Engagement Team
Leader Standard Work for Sales and Marketing
Achieving Mastery

All Participants will receive a Marketing with Lean workbook to include a CD that will contain the four published books in the series; Lean Marketing House, Marketing with PDCA, Marketing with A3s and The Lean Engagement Team.

Learn how Lean Sales and Marketing is essentially a knowledge transfer system; it’s a training system on how to define knowledge gaps and close them. Not from the perspective of educating the customer but from the perspective of learning from the customer and understanding how your customer uses and benefits from your product or service.
Learn how to let your customer be the professor, the Sensei, who will take you through their decision making steps and how to improve your reactions to these steps in a systematic way.
Learn how to apply the Marketing Gateway of EDCA to PDCA to SDCA.
Learn how Leader Standard Work is the foundation of Lean Sales and Marketing and the fundamental process that replaces the "Silver Bullet" found in most typical marketing jargon.
Learn how to take responsibility for finding and creating demand.
Learn what makes Lean Sales and Marketing so incredibly powerful.

Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. Your Lean Engagement Teams must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. Successful Sales and Marketing departments are no longer just responsible for getting the message out but also for developing strategies to get the customer’s message in. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer has become the strongest marketing tool possible. Lean Thinking is the fundamental process needed to achieve this but it must be viewed from the demand side of the supply chain. We no longer live in a world of excess demand and supply side thinking is no longer valid. Learn how to change your mindset and bring continuous improvement to your sales and marketing through Lean. Join me in Indianapolis on April 17th to listen to Bill and stay the following day to participate with me on April 18th.

The host of this event is Lean Frontiers. They provide high-quality, laser-focused events aimed at integrating organizational silos in support of the lean enterprise. These focused events provide an ideal venue for like-minded professionals to explore the common issues they face in supporting lean. Upcoming Workshops will held in Fishers, IN (Indianapolis Suburb).

P.S. If you buy the book series before the event and attend, I will refund the purchase. Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack.

This event will sell out!

Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:40:00 +0000

Special Offer

It is even more special for a limited time, if you visit the Business901 website and wait 30 Seconds!

Lean Marketing House (More Info): A starting point for creating true iterative marketing cycles based on not only Lean principles but more importantly Customer Value. Recommended 1st reading of series.

Marketing with PDCA (More Info): Targeting what your Customer Values at each stage of the cycle will increase your ability to deliver quicker, more accurately and with better value than your competitor. It is a moving target and the principles of Lean and PDCA facilitates the journey to Customer Value. Recommended 2nd reading of series.

Lean Engagement Team(More Info): The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Recommended 3rd reading of series.

Marketing with A3(More Info): Enables sales and marketing to use the Lean tool of A3 as a structured approach for their problem solving, strategies and tactics. Recommended 4th reading of series.

Save when buying all 4

This series of books are about developing a continuous improvement culture in your sales and marketing and re-positioning your customer as the center of your organization. The further we are from our customers’ knowledge base the more effort has to be made to create a larger and larger supply of prospects. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Successful Sales and Marketing are no longer trying to get their message out but developing strategies to get the message in.

Disclaimer: There is no silver bullet introduced in these books.

Lean Engagement Team Book Released

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:55:00 +0000

Sales and marketing can no longer operate in a vacuum. It has become a process output that intertwines across many of the departments within the organization. As companies have become flat, their decision making is increasingly being done by committee. As a supplier, you must mimic your customer decision-making path and as a result your sales and marketing will also be done by committee. Our highest priority is to deliver to the customer content that he deems valuable to his decision-making process.

Lean is the future of marketing and one of the main reasons is the development of Agile under the Lean umbrella. Using the Agile Manifesto as a basis for Agile marketing or Lean marketing is a good start. In summary they are based on these principles:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Content-rich material over elaborate promotion
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Response to changing customer needs over following a plan

The further we are from our customers’ knowledge base the more effort has to be made to create a larger and larger supply of prospects. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Successful Sales and Marketing Teams are no longer trying to get their message out but developing strategies to get the message in.

Table of Contents

The Path
Positioning your organization from your customer’s viewpoint
Only the Customer Determine Value
PDCA from the Outside-In
The iCustomer and iTeam
New Lean Thinking
Lean Engagement Tools
Lean Engagement Team
Marketing Gateway of EDCA, PDCA, SDCA

The book is available as a PDF download on the Business901.com website or on Amazon:

Lean Engagement Team (Marketing with Lean, Volume 2) [Ring-bound]

Lean Engagement Team (Marketing with Lean, Volume 2) [CD-ROM]