1. Why VOM instead of VOC?
2. Why is VOC/VOM so important to manufacturers?
3. What is the state of VOC/VOM in SS today?
4. What are the impediments to using VOC/VOM in SS?
5. How do you overcome these impediments?

Dr. Reidenbach is the author of over 20 books on marketing and market research. His most recent books include, Amazon Links:

Listening to the Voice of the Market: How to Increase Market Share and Satisfy Current Customers
Six Sigma Marketing: From Cutting Costs to Growing Market Share

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MARKETING YOUR BLACK BELT

This is part 1 of a 2-part podcast.

• Getting Started in Social Media
• Marketing your Black Belt
• Get Clients NOW!
• 7 Steps to Small Business Success aka Duct tape Marketing
• Become Employable
• Becoming Self-Employed
• Lean your Marketing with Referrals
• The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House
• Get Hired NOW
• Lean Marketing Assessment
• Funding your Nonprofit
• Etc.

The reason I list them is that there is a common theme that is in all of them and in Seth Godin’s Blog today he mentioned it in a slightly different way:

Seth’s Blog: First, organize 1,000

In Summary: What’s difficult? What’s difficult is changing your attitude. Instead of speed dating your way to interruption, instead of yelling at strangers all day trying to make a living, coordinating a tribe of 1,000 requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value. You don’t find customers for your products. You find products for your customers.

He also mentioned Kevin Kelly’s blog The Technium discussion on 1,000 True Fans.

In Summary:  The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

So what was my common theme: Most people know approximately 300 people on a casual basis. In fact, when not knowing, many wedding planners, funeral directors will use than number as a figure.  So if you know 300, does that mean your wife or husband will know 300 probably not but maybe a 100. What about both of your parents, your siblings, your cousins and people that know you well? Everyone knows 300 people. If you start working with just the people you know in a short time period you can effectively  be marketing to a 1,000 people. If you are a professional service provider, looking for a job or even a nonprofit. Getting to that 1,000 people plateau can be very effective.

1,000 is not that big of number! And it is a great goal for the New Year,  Go for it!.    

Related Post:

Where do you start your job search?

Using the Theory of Constraints in Marketing

Another word for Marketing – How about Voice of the Customer?

Marketing needs to do a better job of using statistics and especially variation. When I start talking numbers to people, and what they mean, I get looked at like someone that is just trying to complicate a creative process. Improvement is about numbers. Measurement is about numbers. The truth is, marketing is about numbers. So why not employ more of the Six Sigma methodology? I understand that achieving the quality that Six Sigma represents may be difficult but the principles and tools should, nevertheless be utilized.

Your present marketing data more than likely is flawed and ineffective. Comparing one number to another is just ineffective. Comparison is limited because numbers are subject to variation and without variation taken into account the data is distorted.

Don Wheeler starts his book by saying that comparing numbers to specifications will not lead to improvement. Specifications are the Voice of the Customer. The specification approach will not reveal insights into how the process works and as a result will not tell you where you are, how you got there and how or what to improve to get out of it.

Defining this a bit: Voice of the Customer defines what you want. Voice of the Process defines what you will get from the system. Management job is to bring Voice of Customer in alignment with Voice of the Process.

Don uses examples of Control Charts,X-Charts, XmR Charts and a few other graphs. He does a nice job of mixing practical stories and making a statistical book as easy of a read that it can be. He sums up one story by saying:

1. Optimization of the parts does not equal optimization of the whole.
2. Traditional cost accountings can hide or miss the essential figures.
3. Analysis by osmosis is very ineffective.
4. Graphs communicate the data better than the tables.
5. It is dangerous to confuse a target value with the voice of the process.

Can you start using proper data in your marketing process? The book recommends starting tomorrow by:

1. Begin to collect the right data
2. Insist upon interpreting within their context
3. Filter out the noise before considering any value as a potential signal
4. Cease to ask for explanations of noise
5. Understand that no matter how the results may stack up against the specifications, a process which displays statistical control is
   performing as consistently as possible.
6. Always distinguish between Voice of Custom and Voice of Process.
7. Help others take action on assignable causes.

P.S. I typically find that most companies are not ready to start a Six Sigma project because of the lack of measurement in their processes. Having the working knowledge of Black Belt can greatly enhance getting started down the path. It is a journey and depending upon the scope of the project, one not to hastily jump into.

BTW: I recommend reading the book first.

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Another word for Marketing – How about Voice of the Customer?

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Six Sigma Marketing

Technorati : Black Belt, Marketing, Methodology, Six Sigma, Voice of Customer

The purpose of Hoshin Kanri is to make it possible to move away from the status quo and make a major performance improvement. Policy Deployment deploys top management policies and targets down through the organizational tree. At each level, the policy is not only implemented but translated into policies, targets and actions for the next level down. This way top management vision can be set into a coherent, consistent, understandable and attainable policies and actions that can be applied at all levels of the company and in all functions of the company.

Policy Deployment aka Hoshin Kanri

News Release

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Ready for Operational Excellence, How to get started!

Technorati : Black-Belt, Hoshin-Kanri, Lean, Op-Ex, Policy-Deployment