According to Masaaki Imai, founder of the Kaizen Institute, kaizen means improvement in one’s personal life, home life, social life, and of course, work life.
It is most often associated with production process efficiency and improvement, lean concepts, just-in-time logistics and, of course, Toyota. But it is applied to all aspects of business these days and has grown a large army of devoted practitioners that makes crossfitters and pickleballers look subdued.
But I rarely hear marketing and sales professionals speak about continuous improvement strategies or their six sigma credentials. Why is that? We cannot deny that just-in-time marketing collateral is a common practice!
Think about adding a bit of kaizen to your B2B marketing and sales operations and you need to go no further than the first principle, know your customer.
I know, that seems obvious for marketers and salespeople, but we often order the know-your-customer Happy Meal when we should be going with the Big Mac Combo Meal and a large shake.
And that means knowing:
-what is important to your customer.
-what they value most.
-what they want to accomplish professionally and personally.
-what they want to accomplish with their business.
-how they plan to do it.
-and what is standing in their way.
And then, help them overcome the last point to achieve everything else.
I hope you have a great week!
--Perry
Perry Rearick
Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer
prearick@followyourbuyer.com
