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Oct 29 2009

Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way

Posted by admin in Sales Books, tags: marketing, sales, Sales And Marketing, Sales Marketing, sigma, Six Sigma
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Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way
 
Manufacturer: Kaplan Business
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Product Description
Quality management. Process mapping. Speed to production. In the past 50 years, a rigorous, measurement-based methodology called Six Sigma has brought production management to previously unimaginable levels of success and sophistication. Top corporations such as Motorola and GE have built their reputations, products, and revenues using this approach. Indeed, Six Sigma has found widespread application in every significant industry and business—except marketing and sales. 
 
In Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, sales and quality guru Michael Webb shows how to blend marketing and sales efforts with the cutting-edge methods of Six Sigma to boost their bottom lines. With Webb’s book as a guide, readers learn to engineer rapid routes to customer value, accurately predict future revenue, and ensure return on investment for their projects. 
 
In Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, you will:
* Find out why "the usual fixes" for sales problems don't work
* Meet executives who have used Six Sigma to imrpove marketing and sales results
* See the pitfalls that await the unwary when applying process improvement in sales
* Learn how to introduce Six Sigma to sales and marketing professionals
* Discover through examples and cases how to manage sales as a process
 
Webb walks readers through several Six Sigma sales and marketing projects from start to finish, highlighting the tools, decisions, and results that made them successful. He shows the practical methods managers use to translate process improvement principles to the human world of selling and marketing.
 
With his dual background in sales and marketing management and in quality improvement, Webb speaks clearly to readers in both disciplines. This makes Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way the indispensible guide for sales and marketing professionals who want to excel in today's business environment, and for quality improvement experts who want to help them.
 

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A MUST read for not only Marketing/Sales/QA managers, but for all senior executives and MBA students.
 
Review Date: September 11, 2006
Reviewer: C. T. Wu,
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
The Art and Science of Selling
 
Review Date: December 28, 2006
Reviewer: David M. Lynn, Philadelphia, PA
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.
Shows an excellent path to growth in productivity, performance and profit.
 
Review Date: December 21, 2006
Reviewer: Todd Youngblood, Atlanta, GA
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.
A super way to break through the seemingly intractable sales and marketing issues with a common sense approach.
 
Review Date: September 29, 2006
Reviewer: J. J. Laukaitis, Burlington, VT
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.
Sales & Marketing the Six Sigma Way
 
Review Date: April 3, 2007
Reviewer: Kenneth Dodd,
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.

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