The Lean Six Sigma Way

Welcome to The Power Lounge, your go-to place for engaging conversations in the digital world. In this episode, join our host, Amy Vaughn, as we explore the intricate connection between Lean Six Sigma and marketing with our esteemed guest, Gina Tabasso. Gina, with over 30 years of marketing experience and a background in Lean Six Sigma, shares insights on data-driven decisions, collaboration between marketing and sales, and optimizing ROI through CRM implementation. Dive into this conversation for valuable tips on streamlining operations and enhancing marketing efficiency.

Featured in the Episode

Gina Tabasso

B2B growth strategist | Marketing Guru | Massive Manufacturing Chops | Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

Gina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginatabasso/

Website: Barracuda B2B Marketing

Amy Vaughan,

Owner & Chief Empowerment Officer

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amypvaughan/

Takeaways

• Lean Six Sigma in Marketing
• Marketing and Sales Collaboration
• Lean Six Sigma Principles
• Career Journey and Experience
• Benefits of Lean Six Sigma in Marketing

Quotes

“Cutting your sales cycle significantly transforms your business potential quickly.” - Gina Tabasso

"Sometimes, you must go backward to propel forward”. - Gina Tabasso

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

03:33 - Lean Six Sigma boosts processes

08:55 - Emphasize efficiency, cut waste

13:55 - Data-marketing synergy

17:07 - Leveraging Lean Six Sigma in marketing

21:28 - Talent management inefficiencies

23:13 - Drive sustainable marketing

35:20 - Effective client communication

42:29 - Strengthen client relationships

43:19 - Passion drives sales growth

57:27 - Outro

Powered by Heartcast Media

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Lean Six Sigma in Practice"
• 12:39 Optimizing Marketing Efficiency With Lean
• 22:24 Building Strong Cross-Departmental Relationships
• 31:46 Evolving Beyond Marketing Roles

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

simple and I'll even give you an example that'll make it even easier to understand. So lean is one methodology and Six Sigma is another methodology, and when you combine them together, they're called Lean Six Sigma, and so lean is about waste reduction how do you eliminate waste? Six Sigma is how do you improve processes. So when you combine them together, you improve processes and you eliminate waste. And eliminating waste means like decreasing variation, avoiding rework, improving efficiencies and processes, and it's all data driven. So Lean Six Sigma is very data dependent and data heavy Lots of charts and graphs and all kinds of technical terms and things you have to use in your journey on a project. So I can take the principles I've learned and apply them to marketing, because a process is a process. So you want to streamline your process, you want to optimize your resources. You want to optimize your resources. You want to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns to achieve better results. So there's not much difference in a manufacturing process on a shop floor and a marketing process in the front office. Lean Six Sigma started in manufacturing but interestingly enough, it's being used everywhere.

Speaker 1: 1:27

I got my first my yellow belt at a university and I have a friend who's a master black belt. He works primarily with hospital systems, so they're using it all over to streamline processes. And I want to real quick explain those belts because people are like what does she do? Karate or something? I like that kicking butt. So it is. It was based on the karate system and so you have the same belts a white belt, a yellow belt, a green belt, a black belt, a master black belt. So if you've ever taken your kids to karate class, don't cringe, this is much more fun. So a yellow belt kind of that's where I started and you kind of review processes. A green belt you can lead projects and assist with data collection, but you usually have to work with a black belt. A black belt can completely do a project. They can train other people under them. And then a master black belt is the one who runs all the Six Sigma belts in the organization and looks at process improvement throughout an organization, not just on the shop floor but in HR and marketing and sales, in operations and how do we make the entire system more effective? So that's a little bit about the process.

Speaker 1: 2:56

If you want me to give you an example, this is extremely oversimplified, so don't try this at home, but this is the uncomplicated version, without doing all these crazy things like Gantt charts and RACI charts and Gemba walks and Kanban boards. Those are all components of Lean Six Sigma. I mean it does take a lot of training, but once you see it, you can't unsee it and you filter the whole world through that lens. So an example you had asked me we talked earlier, amy, and you talked about that aha moment when I realized this could be applied to other things. It wasn't originally marketing, it was feeding my cat.

Speaker 1: 3:38

I'm in the kitchen and my process is like most people. You go to the floor where the cat food bowl or dog food bowl is. You pick it up, you take it to the counter. You go to the closet and you get out your bag of cat food, take it to the counter, fill up your little bowl, take the bowl back to where it is on the floor and put it down for your pet. Then go back to your counter, get your bag of cat food and put it in the closet. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Once I knew Lean Six Sigma, I said, dami, pick up the food bowl and take it to the bag of food in the closet or grab the bag of food and take the bag of food to the bowl and fill it up. You don't need to keep taking these trips back and forth to the counter. That's a really simplified version of Lean Six Sigma. It's decreasing variation, decreasing waste, increasing efficiencies. You can even do it when you feed your pet. Yeah Well, when I was in college, back then it wasn't called marketing, it was called advertising.

Speaker 1: 4:50

So there were advertising agencies, not marketing agencies. So I graduated with an advertising degree and planned to go work for an agency. What I didn't know when I got out of college and started interviewing is that agencies paid nothing. They they were back then. It was just you needed to live at home with your parents or have three roommates to survive on the wage they were paying. So I somehow got an interview. I applied for a job I saw in, probably in the newspaper back then because there was no internet and I got an interview with a manufacturing company and they made vibration analysis equipment for large rotating machinery to predict bearing health and try to keep the machine from breaking down by replacing the bearings before they wore out. And so I worked with them and they also had a subsidiary that manufactured the life support systems for space station freedom. So it was an interesting first job and then from there I ended up going into manufacturing trade, industrial.

Speaker 1: 5:51

I worked in construction 12 years. I worked in automotive six years. I ran machining magazine, two welding magazines, a construction trade newspaper. So that's when I really started learning manufacturing and learning about milling, drilling, boring, lathing, tolerances, cobots, robots, all the equipment and started to get really fascinated because even right now, like, take a pause, wherever you are, look around the room, look at what's on your body, look at what's inside your car, look at what's inside your office, every single thing has been manufactured. Somebody made those things, somebody invented those things, somebody developed the process to manufacture them. And it's fascinating, like when you do a plant floor visit and walk through a facility. It's not like it was in our parents' age. It's not a dirty, noisy, they're so clean now and efficient you could eat off the floor. It's amazing to go into these facilities. So I started falling in love.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I did a couple deviations to get specific kinds of experience. I went to Smucker to get CPG experience, I went to PNC Bank to get financial experience and then, luckily, I landed at Case Western Reserve University to get higher education experience. And that is where I was introduced to Lean Six Sigma. They taught Lean Six Sigma and so they wanted their employees to walk the walk, not talk the talk. So everyone was required to get a yellow belt and I as a manager was required to do three Lean Six Sigma projects per year. So I was there two years. That's when I completed my six projects.

Speaker 1: 7:40

Then I kind of left the lean behind, kept trudging through distribution and manufacturing. Fast forward to a year ago, I joined another manufacturer and he wanted everybody in the company to have at least a green belt and he wanted me to get my black belt. So last year I earned my green and I'm working on my black now To get a black belt. It really is doing a black belt project, so I'm doing a process improvement project for him. And then during that time I started my consulting business. And then in May I decided to go full time with my consulting business and try to make a not do it on the side, part time, but try to make a living of that part-time, but try to make a living of that. And that's really last year when I formed my business and got that green belt. That's when lean and marketing started to really coalesce for me.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty niched, I mean I do B2B marketing, but my passion is manufacturing. I guess when I first realized it, when I was with the university, I was actually doing marketing for them. And so when I had to do those six lean, six Sigma projects, they had to be in my department. So they were. You know, decreasing paper waste, increasing efficiency with editing you know just how do I get it? Manufacture a better product if we're printing out all these materials for students, how do I find a printer that's maybe doing offset printing at digital prices with better quality of paper? And so I was looking at saving money or making a product better.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Right now, the Black Belt project I was working on for my former employer is about customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and so Lean Six Sigma. You already have to have a process. It's not for new processes, it's taking an existing process and improving it. So their process for customer satisfaction, measuring satisfaction, taking that feedback is pretty word of mouth. The salespeople hear something. They may or may not say something. Someone complains, the salesperson tries to help them. So I really wanted to put a stronger process in place and, of course, net promoter score for marketers. That's the thing, and so I'm going to do a project around that, around net promoter score improving our processes, taking that feedback and growing, looking at opportunities and then also trying to save customers who may be disgruntled by by addressing their concerns and also trying to get those reviews online to help with SEO and with your Google ranking. So it's kind of this process that can be more valuable than the way it's currently being done.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Yeah, well, what I tell people like at a very basic level, how to apply Lean Six Sigma to marketing, there's something the the foundation of Lean Six Sigma. It's called DMAIC, and DMAIC is an acronym that means define, measure, analyze, improve, control, and so in manufacturing that, of course, looks very different than in marketing, but you can take the same DMAIC tool and say, ok, I need to define to clearly define the scope of my marketing projects, my strategy, set my goals, identify KPIs. Then I need to measure that process. So I need to track and analyze my marketing data to identify areas of inefficiency and potential areas of improvement. Then I need to analyze. I need to analyze that data to understand the root cause of problems and how I can optimize that process. Then improve Once, then improve. Once I've analyzed all that and identified the root cause, then I can implement changes to my process based on my analysis and data-driven insights to improve that process. And then, of course, you don't want to just improve it and leave it, you want to control it. So monitor your improvement, ensure your process remains optimized and adjust as you go along. It's not a one and done, it's process. Improvement is a process. It is continual through the lifetime of that process. So that's kind of how I take a principle and apply it and then I also look at like the waste elimination, like there's.

Speaker 1: 12:39

There are four wastes in Lean Six Sigma. There's time waste, resource waste, rework waste, defect waste. Look at marketing You've got the same problems. We can eliminate time consuming activities that don't contribute to your goals. Ai helps us now. Ai helps us with repetitive tasks. We can streamline workflows, we can eliminate unnecessary meetings. Resource waste Resources are budgets. So if we target the right audience, the right channels, the right content, we can be more efficient and optimize our budgets.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Rework we've all done rework and we hate it, don't we? You know, if you don't have a clear process in place, you don't standardize procedures, you end up going down a road and then readjusting and redoing and doing something over, and then defect is, of course, mistakes. And so you know that quality versus quantity thing we all are challenged by in this culture nowadays Do more with less, and a lot of times when you're moving at the speed of light, you make mistakes. And so if you use this waste elimination and DMAIC process, you can like decrease the number of errors and defects in your marketing materials and deliver desired results. Lean Six Sigma. What Six Sigma means is they only allow in manufacturing 3.4 defects per million. So if you're manufacturing a million teddy bears per million, so if you're, if you're manufacturing a million teddy bears, less than four of those can have messed up stitching or or eyes or a nose, so that's not many, and that's the goal in manufacturing is to get it down to that little defect. Yeah, we can't get the work done because we're in meetings all day.

Speaker 1: 14:48

I love what you said when you talked about the communication and also that buy-in, because in Lean Six Sigma you have what you call a project and that has to be that person at the top that is totally bought in and committed to this project, and it's that top down mentality like they're going to make sure that everyone under them is just as committed. And then your stakeholders have to own the process. It's not a Lean Six Sigma person coming in telling you how to do stuff. It's you figuring out how to do stuff, you figuring out how to make changes, so that you are part of the process. You own the process, you have skin in the game and you're invested.

Speaker 1: 15:30

And I tell people you know they say OK, if you do all this stuff, how do you make that sustainable? Like, how can I make sure my marketing is successful in the long term? And I said well, you've got four key components, and one of those that I tell people is collaboration and communication. So if you've got the data-driven decisions and you've got this analysis, this tracking, these metrics, and then you've got this culture of continuous improvement to identify opportunities and optimize and streamline processes, then to make it happen, you need to foster strong communication and collaboration, especially between marketing and sales. That's where it's always lacking and I'm a I'm a big believer in that. We won't even go that's a whole separate podcast, you know. But but sales and marketing need to be collaborative. My marketing is only going to be as successful as your sales.

Speaker 1: 16:29

And when I go in on an engagement, I look at the sales team. I do, I interview them all. I look at sales process, sales cycle, sales timeline, sales training, especially in manufacturing. Your salespeople a lot of times are brilliant mechanical engineers or machinists who are technically savvy and can talk about the product perfectly, but they may not be sales trained so they don't know how to convert. And then the last piece, which can never be forgotten, and it's the total end goal of Lean Six Sigma, which can never be forgotten, and it's the total end goal of Lean Six Sigma Customer focus, customer centric. Put the customer at the center of your marketing strategy, focus on their needs, their preferences, their journey, and I feel like with those things combined, you will have a sustainable, successful long game in your marketing program. No, no, I think I covered it on a high level and if I go any deeper, I'm going to lose people or snooze people. Lose or snooze, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 18:29

And then that second part of understanding the sales cycle. So if, if you tell me your sales cycle is a year and a half normally and then you get upset when your marketing team only brings you one qualified lead in three months, that converts. Well, I just decreased your sales cycle by two-thirds. I mean, you told me it's a year and a half, so so we have to hold our measures and how we're measured against other measures in the company, which is why we need to work with sales. We can't work in isolation. I also, you know, we have to track data and if we do that properly with our sales and marketing teams, that's the way to show ROI. And I think a lot of times marketing departments tend to be very marketing focused. Like here's the number of leads I generated, here's the number of visits to our website, here are the number of new followers. We're successful.

Speaker 1: 19:31

And a lot of times, after an MQL is handed off to the sales team, it's kind of like, okay, we're moving on to bring more people into top of funnel and nurture them, but we're not looking at those conversion points. And how many, how many qualified leads do you need to get to quote how many projects and of those, how many projects you quote, how many of those convert? And then that's going to inform me about what I need to do in my marketing process. So you've almost got to work backwards and usually we're working forwards. So that's that's kind of how I approach ROI and and making sure that what I'm doing is converting.

Speaker 1: 20:13

Well, I I'm not. I'm not necessarily applying it to a marketing campaign per se, because Lean Six Sigma is more project-based, more process-focused I mean. So it's more the components. You know the components. So, as I'm looking at elements of a marketing strategy, like I said, how do I increase efficiency with printing? Or how do I increase efficiency with revision processes? How do I increase efficiency with printing, or how do I increase efficiency with revision processes? How do I increase efficiency with customer feedback and customer reviews? And so I've been doing it more on elements of the process, rather than like, yeah, and and I'm not, and I've got to say I'm not doing a Lean Six Sigma project every single day of my life. It's not something you do all the time. You know it's like you identify those opportunities. So if a process isn't broken, so if a process isn't broken, you don't need Lean Six Sigma on that process. It's more, when you identify that root cause problem, you have to have a problem that needs to be solved and then you bring the Lean Six Sigma in to solve it. It's not applying it to every process that exists.

Speaker 1: 21:44

Uh-oh, my screen just froze, but I I got the gist of that. No, I did. I just thought I lost you for a minute a a few days ago. I my internet kind of blipped out and I lost a call that I was on and I was like please don't let that be happening now, because this is a very important call. I understand that you said that trends are changing fast and how can Lean Six Sigma help us stay agile? Yeah, now, agile is a whole nother framework.

Speaker 1: 22:24

That's another methodology. There are so many of them out there. There's so many. There's 5S and there's Agile Agile. I've used Agile more. I've seen it more used in the IT tech space with, like scrum masters and managing developers and things like that. But they're very compatible systems.

Speaker 1: 22:51

So I think we're always asked, usually in our cultures nowadays, to get better right. Usually in our jobs. It's all about growth. It's not about status quo or stagnating or staying put. It's about constantly growing and improving. So I think that we all do different kinds of professional development. You know, one person may want to learn how to edit video. Another may want to learn how to do in design. You know, one person may want to learn how to edit video. Another may want to learn how to do InDesign. You know, this was my geeky thing for manufacturing. I don't know how to edit video and I don't know how to use InDesign, but I know Lean Six Sigma and so it's helped me be agile in a different way because of the clients I work with.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Marketers love to go into manufacturing companies and talk to them like a marketer, and you can't, you can't you go in there with SEO and PPC and SEM and blah, blah, blah. These manufacturers don't understand that. They don't speak that language. So if you have Lean Six Sigma, I can speak their language. I'm not trying to force them to speak my language, and so it helps me when they know that I have a manufacturing mindset and that I really on their shop floor. But they blow it away with their other processes. So they love to get me to do rework and they love to, you know, change things up and to start at the end of the process. They all want to hire you to do lead generation. Well, you have no CRM, your website's a piece of poo poo, you have no SEO, you have no content, but you want me to do lead generation. Wait a minute, time out.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Lean Six Sigma, would you dream up a new product you're going to manufacture tomorrow and just go start making it? No, you're going to do the research, the people, the pricing, the budget. You're going to put all that process in place. Why would you do different with me? Why would you set me up for failure? And you're not going to go to the end of the process. You're going to start at the beginning and then they might send you.

Speaker 1: 25:08

All of us marketers know it. We've had clients, we've started a lead magnet and they decided on the topic with you and you do all the research and you write it and they have six people review it and they make their changes and their edits and then they say, put the brakes on changes in their edits. And then they say, put the brakes on. We decided we're not going to do that, we want to do this instead. And so in my world that's called a change order, that's that's called rework.

Speaker 1: 25:31

You don't like. You don't like rework on your shop floor because it costs you time and money. I don't like rework either. It costs me time and money, and when I can talk to them in those terms, the light bulb goes off. They're like oh yeah, so there's agility for you, amy. I mean I think the way I see it and and what you said is so powerful because a lot of times we can't help it, like the same way that I said once you see Lean Six Sigma, you can't unsee it and I filter everything through that lens. Well, as marketers before I knew Lean Six Sigma, my lens was marketing. I filtered everything through that lens. So with my clients, I had to realize I have to filter through a different lens. I need to take off my glasses and put on their glasses, and so I put this tool in my toolbox to try to address that need. And you know, kind of like you know, you move to another country, you learn the language so that you can speak the language. It's just a vocabulary and I had to learn their language to get their respect.

Speaker 1: 26:48

Manufacturers notoriously do not see the value of marketing. A lot of times they see it as a cost center rather than a revenue generator. Because they're not doing it right, they're hiring agencies to take their money that aren't doing all the other things they should be doing, or they're starting at the end of the process instead of the beginning. And because they don't understand it, they don't understand marketing. So they completely rely on outside experts to guide their process, and sometimes they get good outside experts and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get people who don't understand their industry well, and so I really try to have that sensitivity.

Speaker 1: 27:26

And the other thing that I do is I'm very authentic and I talk to them. I, you know, I don't go into a manufacturing facility wearing a skirt and high heels. I go in wearing jeans, hard toe closed toed shoes, my safety glasses. You know I become one of them, I'm not the other, and a lot of times in certain industries, marketers become the other and and I feel you need to be one of them and that that gains trust. You know, they, they, they. They work with people they trust and like. And that authenticity and knowing that you put them first, that you're going to do the right thing and that if I do the right thing, the money will come, and that I'm going to take care of them, and in taking care of them, they will take care of me. But it's not about me first, it's about them first. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean I did touch on, you know, having to work in lockstep with the sales team.

Speaker 1: 28:38

I mean it can't work if you don't. I. I've been and've fought it. I've been in companies where it doesn't want to happen and it has to happen. Some of that's a top-down mentality. You know it's got to come from the top. I've been blessed to work with some CEO and company owners that get it, that get that. The two need to inform each other and not work at cross purposes.

Speaker 1: 29:02

I think one of the challenges and I think marketers need to have a sensitivity for sales and I think a lot of times there's this animosity like sales think all we do is sit around and write blogs and play on social media and marketing thinks, oh, all sales does is care about themselves and they don't want to help us and they don't care about what we do. But you know they're they're usually commission based and so every action they take does or does not put food in their family's mouths, and so a lot of times they it's hard for them, I think, to make the space to do things like review a blog or give you information when they don't see the value of it. And so I do go in as an educator and I really have to talk to the sales team about how we can work together. I also think that they're the wisdom, you know, they're the interface with the customers, they're the boots on the streets and they bring back very valuable information. So when I go into an organization, honestly, one of my first goals is not marketing, it is becoming part of the sales team. You know, I ask to come to the sales meetings. I want to know that team inside out, the sales meetings. I want to know that team inside out. Sometimes it's hard to get them to use the CRM, and they do need to, because I can't show an ROI if they don't, and so sometimes some training is needed and sometimes I initiate that. So marketing is more powerful than you think you are and you have a lot to offer other departments.

Speaker 1: 30:44

Um, and I think it's just a matter of of getting buy-in, being good at that and and getting them, giving them the wisdom you know give's not about what's in it. For me, it's about how can I, how can I know and support you? And one little tip that came out of what you just said that I wanted to share with the audience Think about stretch goals and expanding yourself beyond marketing. Like, as marketers, we want to put new tools in our toolbox. Oh, I need to learn about AI and I need to learn how to do video editing and I need to learn how to do this. And it's all marketing related and, yes, it makes us better marketers.

Speaker 1: 31:46

But I think what leveraged me and made me something different was when I started putting non-marketing tools in my toolkit, and one of those examples is I got my Sandler sales training. So I have a Sandler bronze certification and I did a year of Sandler sales mastery. I know how to do budget steps and upfront contracts and pendulum theory and questioning strategy. So again, I speak the language of a salesperson. I can go into my sales team and boy do they respect you when you're not just a marketer and you get sales and you can drop those terms and you can understand their process. So I pulled in this thing to understand manufacturers. So I pulled in this thing to understand manufacturers. I pulled in this thing to understand sales. So then I become more than a marketer. I used to.

Speaker 1: 32:32

Years ago, I used to demean myself.

Speaker 1: 32:34

I used to say, oh, I can't do that. I don't know anything about strategic planning, I'm just a marketer, I'm just a content person. And I had a salesman tell me one time stop that. Stop that. You are not just a marketer. You have proven yourself to be more than that, and what the hell is wrong with just being a marketer? Like, be proud of that. You're good at what you do and you know I was always the cringing marketing girl and you know the sales team and the CEO and everybody's doing their thing and they don't respect me and I'm losing my job and I'm not valued. So you know what I did. I went out there and got value. I have value. Now I step up to the table, they hear me and they respect me because I'm more than just a marketer, and so I would encourage people to think about your industry and how you can blow yourself up. How do you become even greater? Blow yourself up, like how do you become even greater and more than you ever thought you could be?