Sales and Marketing Six Sigma - If not now, then when?

Sales and Marketing is the process of converting the efforts of the company into revenue. The Process should create value in the market place by differentiating the products and services of the company versus your competitor’s alternatives resulting in prospects becoming customers. The Six Sigma approach to improving any business process follows the DMAIC Improvement Process namely Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Organizations that are embracing this approach have realized productivity increases, cost reductions, and revenue stream enhancement. Success has been proven in operations, production, and service delivery. It is now time to rollout Six Sigma DMAIC in Sales and Marketing.

Ask yourself if your organization is facing any of the following issues:

• Competitor inroads into clients markets.
• Disappointing sales growth.
• Failure to crack key new markets.
• New product introduction difficulties.
• Unreliable or insufficient information re:customers, competitors, market conditions, etc.
• Low, static, or declining market share.
• Selling expenses growing as percent of sales revenue.
• Low sales force morale, productivity.

Any of the above issues can be tackled as a Six Sigma DMAIC improvement project.

• It starts when we Define the issue with a SMART problem and objective statement. (specific, measureable, achievable, relevant, and time based)
• Then select which Key Performance Metrics (KPMs) to Measure that establish a baseline to track improvement. Measure the KPMs and establish how big, how bad, and how often the issue impacts the KPMs.
• Next, Analyze the data and quantify the root causes that impact the KPMs.
• Develop creative solutions that address the root causes and will Improve the KPMs. Validate the solutions through pilot testing and evaluation of measurements versus the baseline performance.
• Develop and implement Control that will maintain the gains and put ownership at the source. Ramp the solutions up to full scale to meet customer demand. This is the DMAIC improvement process, namely Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.

Six Sigma DMAIC can be applied whether the improvement project scope can be accomplished in days, weeks, or months.