Tag: Sales and Marketing

The Corporation of the City of Kawartha Lakes (the City), Ontario, Canada, is a single-tier municipality that covers a land area of 3,067 square kilometers and includes more than 250 lakes. In addition to approximately 73,000 permanent residents there is a large seasonal population of approximately 31,000 residents each summer. More than 77 percent of […]

Online retailer ABC sells books, DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. ABC has a strong market research unit and a seamless feedback loop for enhancing the customer experience. In the last few years, however, sales had dropped significantly contributing to a slip in the overall market share of […]

Market share depends upon an organization’s capacity not only to acquire new customers, but also to keep them. It makes no sense to invest resources to capture new customers only to lose them to competitors. This is where customer management comes in – a strategy focused on creating loyal customers by providing superior value. Unfortunately, […]

Six Sigma promises a path for a firm’s long-term success. However, a company cannot really have this Six Sigma journey without the road running through the marketing department. It is through the deployment into marketing that Six Sigma evolves into a strategic process. The synergy between “good marketing” and “good Six Sigma” creates a holistic […]

As everyone knows, myths have a way of becoming more than they are. The same is true for marketing and service. As the following list of conventional wisdom, beliefs and marketing clichés illustrates, while many myths may have a solid empirical basis, it is possible to carry them too far – and other common beliefs […]

Posts on the iSixSigma Discussion Forum reveal the common roadblocks for implementing Six Sigma in the sales department. However, the thread below also offers helpful tips for overcoming these obstacles.

Successful quality initiatives rely on understanding what quality actually means. The meaning of quality resides in the minds of those who judge it and use it to make their purchase decisions – in other words, the market. Divorced from the market, value or quality has no real meaning. Uninformed definitions of value or quality become […]

There is a battle being waged on the fringe of the Six Sigma community. The battle is over how to apply Six Sigma to one of the last frontiers of business – marketing. There are two sides to the argument: those who favor a direct application, and those who feel the method should be modified. […]

Using Six Sigma has proven highly successful in addressing internal issues where the focus is on reducing production defects and costs. One way to take the methodology to the next level is to integrate it with the marketing function. Marketing offers a portal to an organization’s external environment – the competitive marketplace – where the […]

“We’re different!” Practitioners often hear these words while attempting to deploy Lean Six Sigma. While the phrase is sometimes viewed as an excuse to avoid change, in the case of the marketing and sales function within a pharmaceutical organization, it may hold some validity. This article explores ten reasons why sales and marketing claim to […]

Process mapping is a well-known technique for creating a common vision and shared language for improving business results. It helped one management training and development firm realize that people within their sales department had been working at cross purposes, and crucial executive-level discussions with customers were not taking place. Based on sales process mapping, the […]

A quality initiative in sales – an impossible dream? With the right proposition and simple techniques, not only is it possible but it can also be a successful venture. The goal is to achieve performance improvements similar to those achieved in manufacturing and elsewhere using quality-oriented techniques. Unfortunately, these initiatives often produce nothing but resentment […]

A process can be defined as a set of ordered actions that lead to an output. In any business function, a goal is achieved through a process – paychecks are printed, orders are taken, employees are hired. How well the processes operate is the focus of this article, and the focus of process management. Process management […]

When the vice president for sales calls a Black Belt in to talk about sales, the natural inclination for the Six Sigma practitioner is to look for the “pain points” and work with a team to define the problem and build a solution. This approach will help transform the sales process, but it may not […]

“Customer winback” is becoming a common marketing practice in many businesses. The process is aimed at winning back disgruntled customers and then retaining them. Businesses restore the relationship with old customers through a combination of diligent investigations and follow-up, promotion and targeted improvements specifically addressing customer concerns. Companies willing to make the commitment to customer […]

Lean Six Sigma – like most things that continue to flourish – evolves. It grows, expands and adapts to fill new niches. Marketing professionals have identified evolutionary patterns common to many different products, services and markets – including Lean Six Sigma. Understanding these patterns is significant when considering purchase of Lean Six Sigma services and […]

Every sales force has a few outstanding sales representatives, who always deliver on or above target. What is it, in their way of working (process), which makes them so outstanding? If we identify these processes and give them as tools to the rest of the organization, our belief is that we will increase sales force […]

The application of Six Sigma to marketing should be the most obvious use in the world. Where else does there exist such a direct connection between the wants and needs of the customer and the products or services a company offers? However, at first glance, there would seem to be very little hard reliable data […]

In today’s competitive environment, companies are looking for service providers that offer a lower cost and a trusted partnership. This is a need that can turn the request-for-quotes (RFQ) process into more than a bidding war. It is especially true when companies are looking to outsource major activities and are concerned about losing control. For […]

Six Sigma can be used in every business and every department within a company – even in places where many executives might not think it can apply, such as public relations. While PR professionals focus a good deal of time and effort measuring the results of public relations campaigns, they typically spend relatively little time […]

“99.44 percent pure” “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” “The ultimate driving machine” “We bring good things to life” For recent generations of Americans, the slogans above have become synonymous with the high-profile brands they represent. But these words are not simply clever taglines. They […]

For a number of years, businesses in a wide range of industries have been successfully implementing Lean and Six Sigma in manufacturing and engineering, and more recently in the transactional processes in finance, administration and customer service. The last business area to see this improvement methodology arrive was the sales department. But already it is […]

Six Sigma is changing the way the marketing function in an organization operates today. Consider the following marketing scenario at a company which manufactures consumer-packaged goods: During an emergency marketing meeting, the market research division discloses that its Brand X, which has recently lost market share, is rated a poor value by consumers in the […]

When you think of Six Sigma, you likely think of manufacturing. But apply the operational excellence methodology to your sales and marketing departments, and an untapped avenue of improvement projects opens up that can increase sales.