Value Stream Mapping your Sales Team

In my Microsoft Newsletter, I received the following enticement:

Find, Keep, and Grow Customer Relationships with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Start Your 30-Day Free Trial Today!

Today, businesses are asked to do more with less. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online delivers exceptional value because it combines your everyday Microsoft Office applications with powerful CRM software accessed over the Internet to rapidly improve marketing, boost sales, and enrich customer service interactions. Try it now for 30 days!

I am trying it this week but what I wanted to share is a piece of the collateral information, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Power Couple. In this PDF, MSN highlighted the Customer Decision Making Process aka Mirror Marketing( Your Marketing Funnel from your Customer’s Perspective.) but extended the concept to show the process from several other points of view.

I have always been an advocate of seeking Sales and Marketing’s response to each of the customer’s decision steps but MSN (they are selling software), highlighted the technology enabler and a team response to the Customer Value Stream process. This simple exercise utilizing a high level Value Stream Map can really get your individual departments on the same page!

In my recent work, I have been advocating breaking down the Sales Silo and making Sales a team effort. In most organizations, I have been met with strong resistance to this concept. Most sales people look at as another silly initiative and most internal people see sales as a vehicle to customer data. As a result, sales resist and rightfully so preventing themselves from becoming an extended clerk. However, the approach really should be about how to increase face time with the customer. The #1 enabler of increased sales.

Create your own sales team by reviewing who responds to your Customer’s Value Stream Map. Start having a few meetings, similar to a daily standup meeting which may not be feasible. I would recommend at first error in having the meeting to often, just cut them short. In a spirit of true collaboration, don’t automatically exclude your customer from the team. This concept really could increase face time! 

Related Posts:
Is your Value Stream Mapping backwards?
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
The Pull in Lean Marketing
Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept
Mirror Marketing eBook

Six Sigma Marketing Institute releases Audio Program

This is the audio section of the program I use to provide the basis for Customer Value in my Lean Marketing programs.  The series serves as a template for organizations needing to change from a customer satisfaction focus to a customer value focus. It has been deployed in a number of Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies and has produced positive market share growth.

Author Dr. R. Eric Reidenbach says, "For organizations that have deployed Six Sigma or other quality initiatives, the 5 Cs approach provides a user friendly bridge for moving the quality focus from the manufacturing floor to the marketplace. Those seeking to become best in market must shift their focus from a product orientation to a market orientation, from an internal efficiency focus to an external focus. Best in market companies will be those that can make this transformation and make it soon."

The Five Cs gives you excellent background knowledge on how to build an effective and efficient marketing data set based on customer value. Customer Value is the only true measure for Driving Market Share. Learn the process of transitioning to using Value as a basis for Driving Marketing Share. 5 CD program or instant download that includes the titles:

1. Customer Identification
2. Customer Value
3. Customer Acquisition
4. Customer Retention
5. Customer Monitoring

Digital MP3 Download…$49.99

 

Audio CD Package……$79.99

 

Six Sigma Marketing is a fact-based, disciplined approach for growing market share in targeted product/markets by providing superior value. The Six Sigma Marketing Institute is dedicated to the advancement and deployment of Six Sigma Marketing. At the heart of SSM is a modified DMAIC process that provides the architecture for growing top line revenues and market share.

More about the rest of program can be found at DrivingMarketShare.com.t.

Disclosure: I participated in the creation of this program and have a vested interest in the success of i

Related Information
Press Release: Six Sigma Marketing Institute releases the 5Cs of Driving Market Share
Applying Six Sigma Marketing to become Best In Market
Trainers sought for Six Sigma Marketing Program
The Bridge Between Six Sigma and Marketing
Lean your Marketing by Dominating with Customer Value
Value Stream Mapping differs in Lean Marketing
Can Voice of Customer deliver?

Who has Influenced My Thinking on Flow

Who are your most influential people on a particular subject? I started thinking of this after interviewing Don Reinertsen Tuesday’s Podcast, on the subject of Flow.

In my mind, the founding father on this subject was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (notice in the middle of his last name the word ZEN). I can remember first reading his book and later buying the tape series. I dangerously listened to it on a late night drive home. At one in the morning after driving 400 miles it was tough. That heavy Eastern European accent building a case for FLOW even though an eye opening subject it was not made to keep your eyes open. The secret of course was purchasing ice cream bars along the way!

This is not a resounding introduction to the video below but you may be quite surprised by the video it gives a good over view and if filled with background music from David Brubeck.

 

The subject of Flow is important to the marketing process. Understanding how your Customer flows through the decision making process in buying, becoming a loyal customer and recommending your product is essential. In fact, you lose the most customers when the flow stops or in between stages (Queue) of your marketing process. Understanding your Customer’s Flow should be at the root of all your marketing processes.

When I think of Flow, these our the people/books that have had the most influence on my thinking. Do you have any to add?

Amazon Links:

1. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
2. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
3. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
4. Managing the Design Factory
5. Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos
   
6. Value Stream Mapping for Lean Development: A How-To Guide for Streamlining Time to Market
7. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
8. Kanban
9. Personal Kanban(Release Date in November 2010).
   

Blog Posts:
Constant Feedback makes for Continuous Work Flow
Marketing Kanban Cadence
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
Value Stream Mapping your Marketing
Flow