Aha Moments About Lean Six Sigma In Sales and Marketing

Its been a long time since my last post, partly due to a large project extending a client’s lean initiative to sales and marketing which started late last year.

Another reason is that I wanted to step back from the blog, and from SPIF! for a few weeks to think.

Many companies have “aha moments” when they realize that what the “enterprise does” impacts the company’s growth even more more than what the “sales people do.”

They start out trying to improve “what salespeople do.”  Then the logic of what the customer values leads them to realize sales productivity is hampered by systemic challenges (such as marketing, selling, and servicing departments with self-oriented goals).

It comes as a surprise, yet it is the same phenomena they’ve seen in manufacturing operations again and again (where absent the lean six sigma philosophy purchasing, production, and shipping departments often purse self-oriented goals as well).

Systemic challenges cannot be solved if management doesn’t recognize the “system” in the first place. Of course this is called “systems thinking,” and is one of the great contributions the quality movement has made to modern management theory, in my humble opinion.

Process improvement approaches (such as lean and six sigma), are supposed to help companies figure out how to improve the business. Unfortunately, they often don’t work as well as they should.

Why does that happen? What goes wrong?

You’ll have an excellent opportunity to learn about this on Thursday at 11:00am Eastern time:

Is Lean Six Sigma at a Cross Roads?

39 Companies Describe their Challenges and Strategies for Success

We’ll hear from Robert Crescenzi, who has lead numerous Six Sigma deployments and is a frequent speaker at conferences on process improvement. I look forward to chatting with you.

Michael Webb

March 2, 2010

Michael Webb

Michael Webb founded Sales Performance Consultants to create a data-driven alternative to the slogans and shallow impact offered by typical sales training, sales consulting, and CRM companies. Michael helped organize and delivered the keynote speeches for the first conferences ever held on applying Six Sigma to marketing and sales. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

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5s - September 6, 2010 Reply

The “aha moments” is huge we as a company got slammed up side our own head with this I just want to say keep up the posts….

Custom Coins - November 26, 2011 Reply

I look forward to your return!

    Michael Webb - October 14, 2012 Reply

    Thanks for your comment. A return is immanent! Doing a lot of work to prepare.

    Michael

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