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Dell is an example of this as they build computers to exact customer specifications. The advantage is that you meet customer’s demands quickly even though you minimize your work in process and your inventory levels. Some will argue the validity of this concept as it may just move those components to vendors’ further downstream form the customer. In the truest sense, pull should happen throughout the entire value chain.

When I discuss pull in the marketing concept people immediately relate it to the Lean concepts that I just briefly described above. As I worked through the Value Stream Marketing Concept over the past year, I started with the above diagram. I was calling the Blue Space, the Indirect Marketing concept and the Red Space, Direct Marketing. I went on to explain the concept of Indirect Marketing as a way of describing the value(achieve) that a prospect /customer would recognize by your involvement(access) within their communities(attract). These 3 levels of engagement evolved to a much simpler term of “Pull Marketing.”

These three levels of Pull have been wonderfully described in the recent book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. The authors defined these terms as Access, Attract and Achieve. A brief explanation condensed from the book on the three levels of Pull:

Access: The ability to fluidly find and get to the people and resources when and where we need them. It is not about “Stocks of knowledge” versus “flow of knowledge.”

Attract: Often we’re at a loss for what questions to ask, much less what to look for. Our success in finding new information and sources of inspiration increasingly depends upon serendipity – the chance encounter with someone or something that we did not even know existed, much less had value, but that proves to be extraordinarily relevant and helpful once we find out about it.

Achieve: To get better faster at whatever it is you do, you’ve got to be supported by a broad array of complementary people and resources from which you can pull what you need to raise your rate of performance improvement.

These concepts are well explained and detailed in the book with the second part of the book discussing the elements of a successful journey towards pull, they discuss; trajectory (where you are going), leverage (the ability to mobilize the passions and efforts of other people), and the best pace (the speed at which you progress). Reviewing these concepts and if you are not new to my blog, you will definitely see the similarities that I discuss of Agility, Relevance Speed and Lean. If you are trying to get a handle on marketing trends today and in the future, I believe this book is a must read: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion.

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John Mariotti of Small Business Trends wrote an interesting article titled “A Hazard of Innovation: “Falling in Love With Your Own Ideas” on the American Express Open Forum. John states:

There seems to be widespread agreement that innovation is the path to profitable growth and competitive advantage.  If that is true (I think it is true), then why aren’t more people doing it?  And why do so many new products fail.  I know of no “hard statistic” other than the generalized one “that over 90% of new products fail.”  But again, I ask, why?

Here are a few proven methods to make your idea more successful and prevent its premature failure: First and Foremost – Focus Outside, Not Inside

If such common and deep-seated beliefs that lead to new product failures, (and they aren’t limited to products—it could be new processes, new acquisitions, new…whatever), what can you do to guard against this?   How about getting some independent outside opinions?. Here are a half-dozen more “safeguard tests” that can be used to enhance the likelihood of success and reduce the chance of innovation failures.

1. Market Research
2. Focus Groups
3. Surveys
4. Consumer Panels
5. Test Markets
6. Truth Tellers

Trust, but Verify is a term used in delegation and management.  When a group of New Product, Marketing or Sales people is exuberantly proclaiming the greatness of a product, investigate more deeply.  If these proclamations are coming in the face of lackluster performance in any of the above six “safeguard tests” dig deeper, and fast.  Verify that this is not a group who has “fallen in love with their own ideas.”

Don’t give up too easily or quickly—but don’t be afraid to “cut your losses” and move on.  Innovation is wonderful, powerful, intoxicating and exciting.  Failure is devastating.  Use every means you can to prevent failure and improve the chance of success.  Often, a small change, a minor difference in pricing, promotion, features, packaging, or placement is all it takes to transform a potential loser into a winner.

This is crux of the article and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. He explains each of the 6 points and the picture is worth the click. However, this article outlines many of the reasons that has driven me to start utilizing the Agile, Lean Product Development methods in marketing. Involving, Verifying, Creating and Scaling as early in the process as possible is imperative in today’s marketing. The motto: Fail often and Fail early approach is much better than hoping that you will be in that 10% of successes. I mean, really are you batting 900? If you wait for the perfect product there may be to much invested to change. The tools are there to facilitate early customer involvement but are we utilizing them? Are we even participating in our customer’s communities that will allow us to do this?

It is very difficult to get many organizations to listen for that heartbeat. They want to monitor the process but keep it inside to the last possible moment. If you think about your organization and the marketing of a new product is it your internal structure of marketing, engineering and finance that drives the process? Should innovation and development not be more centric to sales and customers? Developing better methods to hear the Voice of the Customer is essential. Is your organization still listening to your customer’s heartbeat with a stethoscope or have you moved on to an ultrasound?

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Kiss Metrics founder is participating in the Start-up Lessons Learned Conference Friday, April 23, 2010 from 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM (PST) San Francisco, CA. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. It is also being Simulcast across many locations.

Kiss Metrics: http://www.kissmetrics.com/

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Lean Startup case study on Pinyadda, a next-generation news platform. This Case Study was presented at Boston’s second Lean Startup meetup on 3/25/10.

If you are interested in learning more about this subject Eric Ries and is hosting a Summit April 23rd in San Francisco: Startup Lessons Learned.

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Dr. Robert Charente of ITABHI Corporation developed the principles of lean development (LD) in the early 1990’s as not only a strategic as well as tactical business approach for the creation of change-tolerant business software intensive systems, systems that can rapidly adapt to or help in the creation of business change. He sets these lofty targets in his developments:

• 1/3 the human effort
• 1/3 the development hours
• 1/3 the time
• 1/3 the investment in tools and methods
• 1/3 the effort to adapt to a new market environment

Why the 1/3 targets? These goals are meant to challenge status quo thinking. Without audacious goals, ones that seem impossible to reach business managers won’t bother to think about the issues of software development in entirely different ways.

Could your marketing achieve 1/3 targets? Could you achieve them while providing more value to the customer? Can you think about your marketing in a totally different way?

Bob Charente expanded the thoughts of Lean Development to these 12 principles:

1. Satisfying the customer is the highest priority.
2. Always provide the best value for the money.
3. Success depends on active customer participation.
4. Every LD project is a team effort.
5. Everything is changeable.
6. Domain, not point, solutions.
7. Complete, don’t construct.
8. An 80 percent solution today instead of 100 percent solution tomorrow.
9. Minimalism is essential.
10. Needs determine technology.
11. Product growth is feature growth, not size growth.
12. Never push LD beyond its limits.

You can read an expanded version of these 12 principles on the ITABHI Corporation website.

Lean Development focuses on the creation of change-tolerant software. Setting up this model for marketing could be quite interesting. How flexible, how change- tolerant is your marketing? Why are you marketing the way you do? Is it the way that your customer wants you too?

Photo Credit by hanneorla