In preparation for this Duane Butcher of the hosting organization, Lean Frontiers wrote this in a recent newsletter:

Marketing activities such as developing promotion programs, branding, developing ads and writing copy are seen as creative processes that don’t lend themselves to systematization without losing the ability to think outside the box.

Most efforts to improve Sales and Marketing so far have come from Six Sigma or Lean Office programs that largely derive their practices from the production environment. The personality style of a star salesperson or an innovative marketer clashes with the type of person who is going to embrace standardized processes and continuous, incremental improvement.

If these arguments sound familiar, they are the same ones used ten years ago to keep lean out of Research & Development: breakthrough innovation cannot be standardized, lean manufacturing practices don’t work and star technologists don’t appreciate process excellence. The solution is to recognize that like R & D, sales and marketing functions are knowledge creation processes.

Product developers add value when they deepen their knowledge about the product design and then convert that knowledge into a product that a customer can buy. Similarly, marketing and sales functions add value when they deepen the company’s knowledge about customers and market needs, and then support R & D as they make decisions that lead to products to meet those needs. They also add customer value when they deepen the customer’s knowledge about the product. In fact, the best sales people are those who take the time to deeply understand an individual customer’s needs so that they can recommend the products and services that will best meet those needs.

We will be able to conquer the final frontier for the lean enterprise when we recognize that when the value a process creates is knowledge, it must be managed as a Knowledge Creation Value Stream to maximize the value we get from the knowledge created, and minimize the wastes of knowledge loss, ineffective decision-making.

P.S. You want a fresh approach to marketing that is something other than just a new set of tools. Consider attending the Lean Sales and Marketing Summit. I have a limited amount of tickets left; please contact me to check availability.

The Lean Sales and Marketing Summit is quickly approaching. It is a two day workshop.

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.

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.

Please consider joining us.
Related Information:
Lean Sales & Marketing Summit Announced
The Other Half of the Lean and Sales Marketing Summit
Traditional vs. Emerging Thoughts on Pricing