After all the hard work of the previous stages, it goes without saying but you must improve on the root cause of the problems not something else. It sounds silly to say, but the people that were good at doing all the detective work in the previous two steps are not necessarily the problem solvers in the organization. Roles may shift and different agendas may creep into this stage. This is important if this shift takes place stay on task and work on the root cause.

All solutions are not equal. Typically, without too much analysis you can weed through them and narrow the good ones down to several ones that address the root cause. The remaining ones should be systematically eliminated or ranked in order of feasibility to include perceived effectiveness, ease of implementation, within budget constraints, and the ability to measure. What good is a solution if it cannot be measured on how effective it is? Another criterion that I recommend is the ability to pilot test. A sampling of your solution can be a very effective way of deciding between two seemingly equal solutions. Especially, if one requires a substantial investment. A solution matrix is a very simple and visual tool for comparison. Several other tools that can be used our Tree Diagrams and Design of Experiments (DOE).

This is also the stage that I develop a future state map using the Value Stream Mapping Tool.

Marketers are just at the stage of get someone to evaluate or try the product. They are thinking download for thirty days, use this sample, and attend this webinar and other ways of evaluation. My thinking is that after you have accomplished the other three stages of the funnel; you are ready to demonstrate that you solve ROOOT CAUSE. Can you? Most jobs are lost at this stage because of a lack of clarity. You solution must be crystal clear and be without a question on how you will solve the prospects’ problem and deliver that solution. It is also imperative that you turn your solution into dollars. What is the ROI you are contributing?

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I stated in a previous post that the purpose of the Measure stage was to quantify process performance and deliverable was to determine baseline process performance. Without these facts, you will be very ineffective in improving performance. This is the stage which is most difficult for the novice. Adequate measurements in the current state are simply not there many times and as a result we either never get out of this stage be trying to be too precise or we move on without inadequate information that causes us reduce effectiveness of the latter stages. Another common fault is that we start analyzing the data which is the next stage of the process.

Remember that this is a current state not a future state step in the process. Remember, if you think something that you are doing is not measurable, there is someone already measuring it, YOUR CUSTOMER. This brings us back to the marketing funnel and I am correlating the measure phase to the consider phase. In the consider phase, or the like stage of the funnel, prospects are aware of you but now you must prepare them to consider you as a worthy candidate. How do you do that? 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 you are performing too?

This is an area that we taking the process map to a deeper level or developing the current state in a Value Stream Mapping process?

From the Developing and Measuring Training the Six Sigma Way: A Business Approach to Training and Development book, they state that customers’ expectations have three aspects: assume, expected and desired. The assumed customer requirements are the basics and typically are only communicated when the customer is dissatisfied. The expected customers have come to anticipate, certain features from their experience or by observing them in the marketplace. The desired customer requirements, however, are not objectively communicated to the supplier. They represent what desires the customer would really like to have met but does not expect. Some call these customer delights. Could you be scaling yourself in these three areas?

Developing marketing measurements requires a mind-set for accountability. Measurements must be understandable, quantifiable, and economic. Customers objectively and clearly state these requirements and pay the supplier for meeting their explicit expectations. We must be there listening and responding to them. The more these requirements are met, the more the customer is satisfied.

Do you have listening posts built into your processes? What targets are you meeting?

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Before I go into the explanation, the question should probably be: Who Cares? Throughput or decreasing your Marketing Cycle time can have very beneficial results. If you put customers through the cycle quicker it will more than likely increase revenue. If it takes 1 person 60 days in a normal cycle time, and you reduce it to 30, you should be able to double sales for any given period. It may also reduce expenses as there would be less people in the cycle at any given period. So increasing throughput is good.

If you look at the chart below, you will see the cycle time depicted in a value stream map. The blocks represent our value added marketing efforts. The empty spaces the non-value added time or waste. I am not going to be so naive and say that you can remove all that non-value added time and close a sale in 3 days. The point that I am delivering is that: you must learn how to mange the non-value time more effectively. Most companies deliver good presentations, advertise and get good PR. Where they fall short is handing the baton from one stage to the next. Non-activity turns marketing rotten. Even with good (refrigeration) techniques our leads may go stone cold.

Taking a look at the chart, the first thing you may notice is the time span differs for certain parts of the process. If you can make an effort to understand the customer’s process during this time, significant gains may be made. Your actual processing time is insignificant in marketing. It is the lead time between the processes that are important. Consider, for example, if we would increase the offer to transfer from the Trust stage to the Trial Stage. Or maybe, you have noticed that quicker conversions happen when they attend a webinar. What would happen if we paid them to come to the Webinar? You may find out segmenting your process halfway through the cycle would allow customers to better understand the results that they may gain from your product. Many of your features and benefits may be confusing certain prospects that don’t care for them anyway.

Total cycle time can be improved. It seldom can be done without more feedback loops in your system. Speed is important in the buying process. 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 him from moving forward. It may be an internal constraint within their company. However, the constraint may be yours. Your responsiveness to the customers latest needs and the ability to focus your resources with enough but not too much material providing better clarity. He needs this to make a more rapid decision.

Create a vision of shorter cycle time, greater segmentation of your customers, it will enable you to do fewer actions in the cycle and much quicker. “It not the big that ate the small. It’s the fast that eat the slow” – Jason Jennings. Cycle times need to be addresses and improved. What methods are you using to accomplish this?

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What this template forced me to do with this customer is to identify first his product groups or services and then his marketing delivery process. Listing all the delivery processes across the top identifies the foundation in the Lean Marketing house. As I placed an “X” in the box. It is good to identify your marketing processes it of course helps you with budgeting, but it really is the first step in moving from just a simple marketing calendar to a marketing system.

Building this process allows you to discover:

1. Each Medium you are using for your marketing.

2. The overlap of the marketing message of your different products.

3. The uniqueness of several of your processes.

4. What items happen with the most frequency, the least.

5. The time it takes for the process.

6. Where a constraint may be on a resource!

However, after really reviewing the document for a while it was blatantly obvious, which of these of processes were important and were not to the customer. HOW MUCH TIME WERE WE SPENDING ON THE WERE NOTS?

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Technorati : Lean, Lean Markeitng House, Product Mapping, Six Sigma, Value Stream Mapping

However, this week the procedure took a strange turn. I completed the process but I happen to know one of the client’s customer very well. So, after constructing this hour glass with the new client, I was able to sit down with his customer and my friend and map the process from the customers’ point of view. Voice of Customer seems to an over-used word in our industry but this was one of my best experiences. We actually pulled the clients file from the customers file cabinet, reviewed the folders on his computer including e-mails and bookmarks. I then laid out all the marketing material that had accumulated, highlighted and even taking note of the bent corners in the catalog. This was all followed by an interview.

Of course, my sample size of 1 is not a good indicator. The key to this process was the awaking to the client and myself on what the customer valued and what his procedure was in making the decision. His process was simply different. We talk about going to Gemba and walking the walk from the customers’ point of view, but do we? How much non-effective marketing could you save by doing this? How much effecting marketing could you implement?

P.S. Use a larger sample size.

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