Customer Reviews

Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way

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Most CEOs/COOs/CFOs would agree:

1. Marketing/Sales is both an art and a black box, or even a black hole as it seems to be a continuous cash guzzler.

2. Sometimes CEOs feel they are captives to the Sales VP because even though they are not happy with their sales performance, firing and replacing them with new ones is not a sure win.

3. Marketing campaigns are like shooting in the dark. If you don't shoot, you will not catch anything. But if you keep shooting in the dark, pretty soon the bullets will run out. Most CEOs feel their Marketing VPs are "addicted" to all those fancy marketing programs without assured ROI.

4. VP/Marketing and VP/Sales are like a divorced couple. The best way to pacify them is to keep them separate forever. But how can CEOs afford to do that?

Systems Thinking Guru Russell Ackoff once said that the System cannot detect its own problem and it must be from a high order system level. Marketing and Sales VPs cannot solve their own dilemmas and problems, it requires the CEO/COO/CFO in conjunction
with other functional VPs to work together in a systemic way.

However, among all the functional disciplines, Marketing and Sales are the two most mysterious and hard to understand arenas for the whole executive team. "Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way" is the first book ever that not only presents the real CORE of the respective Marketing and Sales function in an easy to understand system way, it also reconnects Marketing/Sales function with the rest of the business in a systemic manner. The introduction of "Customer Value Mapping" in the whole Marketing/Sales process is truly a remarkable contribution by the author, Michael Webb. I personally first saw that idea on Webb's business website 18 months ago and applied it to the company I worked for and realized an unbelievably rewarding result.

A side benefit of reading the book is that with Webb's superior
writing style people can easily absorb the whole idea of Six Sigma and Lean Management without going through all the terminology and jargon commonly found in other books on Six Sigma. This is a very important feature of the book as its main appeal should be for all corporate executives and Marketing/Sales managers, not just QA coaches.

Among over 100 books on Marketing or Sales that I have read since 1990 after founding my own company, this book is definitely on the top. It will also be a great companion book for MBA students to get bridged to the real challenge of the business world and get well trained with a systemic framework that has rich real world success track records, including my own company's fantastic experience.

C.T. WU, Ph.D. in E.E.
www.sohoware.com
Santa Clara, California

A few books were recently published which introduced the concept of six sigma to improving sales and marketing. At first I was skeptical about applying six sigma principles to these particular business functions. I, too, suspected that it is probably the latest fashion, the latest flavor of the month, but after reading this book I believe that some of the six sigma tools can indeed be usefully applied to marketing and sales processes.

The author, a black belt practitioner, argues that both sales and marketing functions must be examined as processes desperately in need of improvement. He pleads for the two functions to end their traditional "silo" mentality and "us/them" behavior; showing that six sigma tools can bring marketing and salespeople together and enable them to collaborate as one team.

Mr. Webb urges the use of the five Six Sigma steps (DMAIC), along with tools such as process maps, process measurement charts, fishbone diagrams, SIPOC diagrams, and so on--all of which help in finding (marketing), winning (sales), and keeping (customer service) existing and new customers. According to the author's website, process improvement techniques can also greatly alleviate some of the following typical problems facing marketing and sales:

- Developing and launching products that are not successful in the market because they fail to address real customer needs.
- Advertising and "brand awareness" campaigns that create no measurable customer response.
- Marketing campaigns and trade shows that generate large numbers of "leads" that do not get followed up by salespeople, and are not qualified prospects in any case.
- Salespeople chasing "anything that moves" in their territory, thus spending time selling to the wrong prospects.
- Proposal-generating activities that do not get customers to buy.
- Servicing repetitive customer complaints that could be eliminated if the product were improved, yet that information never makes its way into the requirements for new products. (Source: [...]).

There are two minor criticisms of the book: First, it tends to be too lengthy and repetitive, in fact it probably will not lose any of its main themes or messages if it is condensed to around 200 pages.
Second, most of the case studies cited in the book come from smaller companies. Although the cover of the book mentions that the author worked with large international companies such as American Express, 3M, and Marriott, the only six sigma case study from an international organization came from HSBC USA, whose managing director (a former GE executive) led the six sigma efforts at this bank.

Traditionally, sales people and sales executives have been suspicious of six sigma and other quality process tools and approaches for several reasons. First, they don't really understand them, at least not well enough to discern what does and doesn't apply to thier world. This means they deal in broad assumptions and symbols. They are left to interpret thier own limited experience or exposure to six sigma thinking and struggle to see how it will help them sell more effectively. Second,they are skeptical, and rightly so, about the ability of many quality or process experts to apply these principles and tools it in a way that works for them and for thier customers. Too often, the projects selected have been focused on "cost" issues or "waste" without getting at the heart of the matter - improving real sales results. Third, underlying all of this is a fear that the art of selling; the social intelligence, and communication/persuasive skills that remain essential to success, will get lost or under-valued. In short,they know that effective selling is both art and science and while they may over emphasize the art, they worry that the art will be over looked or misunderstood by the process experts.

This is the challenge Mike Webb has taken on in writing Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way. Webb is one of the few people who seem to truly understand not only the importance of both art and science in selling, but, more importantly, how they must be integrated for success. His book is the first I have seen that moves beyond the "it works everywhere else, why not in sales and marketing?" attitude toward a true integration of the art and science of selling.

Finally... a firm voice with quantified proof that six sigma applies to every business process, including sales. Too many sales executives take a quick glimpse at the methodology, see the mathematics and conclude that it only applies to manufacturing or other more "tangible" functions. They miss what might be the single greatest opportunity for driving growth in productivity, performance and profit.

My own company has worked with many firms on measuring the quality of their sales funnels. Our analysis shows that the average rep's pipeline scores less than zero on a six sigma scale. One of our clients, an industrial distributor, calculates that "getting our funnel to zero sigma would result in at least a three-fold increase in sales."

Applying Mike Webb's approach is a "must do." As he correctly points out, a sales team need only learn the basics of six sigma. While injecting accountability and additional discipline is necessary, developing a corps of black belts is not. As a sales leader, you owe it to yourself and your team to read this book and get started on implementing its message.

As a team leader for a diversity and marketing sales project, I was challenge with preparing a powerpoint presentation to our executives that demonstated what the team had accomplished through three pilot sites in 90 days. We followed the Lean Six Sigma improvement process and this book helped me to translate our sale leads and events accomplishments into meaningful charts and graphs. The presentation was well received, we are now at the control phase of the project ready to launch the project area wide.

I found this book invaluable. As a brand marketing consultant I face a barrage of misguided engineers and production minded individual who deam marketing as puffery. This book provided me a greater insight in turning these folks into marketing partners. Engineers and marketing consultants have more in common than they know - Sales & Marketing the Six Signa Way identifies how these two can and should come closer together to seek and implement the voice of the customer in establishing and marketing superior customer value.

Process improvement efforts often bounce off or go around sales and marketing functions because it is not obvious how to apply process thinking here. Yet this is precisely where a substantial portion of the headcount and expense is for many high tech and service companies. Improving sales and marketing processes, even incrementally, is the biggest opportunity to make a measureable difference to the bottom line. Mike Webb uses clear thinking and layman's terms to show how sales and marketing can be managed, grown and expanded by incorporating the basics of Six Sigma thinking: fact-based decision making and a focus on the customer's actions. The result is sales and marketing programs that stick, selling methods that produce and customer relationships that endure.

If your salespeople aren't getting the results you want, check out this book. Flawed sales processes may be the root cause. Michael Webb shows you how to apply a rigorous analysis to your sales methodology to help you discover the disconnects, bottlenecks and dysfunctional processes that are limiting your ability to be successful.

I especially like his points on leveraging the Voice of Customer to develop powerful value propositions and his insights on how marketing can create tools that drive every single step of the sales process. The strategies are very aligned with what I recommend in my book, "Selling to Big Companies."

If you're in a sales leadership position, make sure you read this book.

Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way is a great conceptual introduction to Six Sigma.

Six Sigma is most known as a quality control system for reducing manufacturing defects at companies such as Motorola and General Electric. This book explains how it can also be used to improve processes in marketing, sales, and customer service. The author emphasizes the importance of delivering value to both the company and the customer.

The five steps of Six Sigma are Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC). By analyzing data, you can identify causes of problems, and thus fix them. It's all about making decisions based on data, rather than assumptions.

Additional tools include voice of the customer, SIPOC diagrams (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers), and value mapping.

The author also mentions Lean, another quality system used by Toyota. I've added The Toyota Way to my reading list.

Michael Webb has done a fantastic job with merging the six sigma methodology with the sales & marketing disciplines. This book takes the six sigma practice, that has long been used in the manufacturing circles, and applies it to the sales function in a way that is both concise and understandable. Six sigma promises to change the future of sales just as it has manufacturing, and this book is the road map for that journey. I would not only highly recommend this book to anyone in the sales and/or marketing arena, but consider it a must read.