Your People Are Not Set Up to Succeed
Overview: In an age where Google is pioneering driverless cars and Amazon
is prototyping drones for delivering packages to your doorstep, it’s easy to
imagine automation systems the don’t require human intervention. Marketing
Automation platforms that effortlessly execute demand generation programs,
score leads and seamlessly pass MQLs to CRM systems without any intervention.
Just like the web site and demo promised. Right?
Last week we used a hammer factory as a simple
example to illustrate the importance of process. This week we will use the
hammer factory to demonstrate how that dream of a driverless Marketing
Automation platform is still a bit of science fiction.
Can
automation replace your demand gen staff? Not a chance. Can a properly designed
and managed Demand Center greatly improve efficiency and effectiveness to
reduce your need for staff? Absolutely.
When
manufacturing hammers, we looked at the importance of a properly designed and
implemented process in efficiently producing predictable high quality at a high
volume. Sequence, testing and logistics
all play critical roles in the successful execution. There are tasks in the
manufacturing process where the speed, precision and repeatability of machines
are irrefutably the best ways to accomplish the task. For other tasks, a
thinking human with the ability to make decisions based on changing parameters
in the only way to go. The key is to understand which types of tasks are best
suited to humans and machines, and aligning your mode of accomplishing specific
tasks to those task requirements.
It sounds
simple and seems obvious. How, then, do so many organizations seem to have the
wrong people in the wrong process?
Match Skill Sets to Your Process
Let’s again
use our hammer factory analogy to examine the three high-level tasks required
to manufacture a finished product.
1.
Build a
hammer head
2.
Build a
hammer handle
3.
Assemble the
hammer head to the handle.
How might we
approach these individual tasks? First, we need to understand the parameters of
the requirements, such as:
1.
How many
hammers do we need to build in a unit of time (a day, for example?)
2.
How many
variations of a finished hammer product are we manufacturing?
3.
What are the
performance parameters of the finished product?
4.
How will we
measure the finished product against those performance parameters?
When we
start digging into the specific attributes required to answer each of these
questions, we begin to uncover the detail necessary to define the tasks. These
requirements, in turn help us define the mode of accomplishing each task which,
in turn, leads us to the specific parameters defining the resources required to
accomplish it. In the case of a machine, those are specifications and in the
case of humans, those are skill sets. And we are always balancing the three
pillars of production:
We can see
the issues involved in determining required resources by examining the
manufacture of the hammer head. Volume, precision and performance
characteristics help us determine whether we need to employ a semi-automated
casting facility requiring skills sets including cast designing, manual casting
and quenching, tumbling, de-burring, non-destructive testing and assembly. Or
do we require a fully automated forging facility requiring form designing,
press operation, CNC programming, automated non-destructive testing and
assembly process engineering? Hammer head manufacturing with two very
different skill set requirements.
Are you
thinking of your Demand Center skill sets in this way?
Notes:
Commit to your process first. Process drives
the skill set requirements for your organization. You can hire or train the
skill sets necessary to successfully implement your “Marketing Factory.”
The more detailed your planning, the more
your skill set requirements can match the tasks required to successfully execute
in your Demand Center.
There is no such thing as a single skill set
requirement that fits every organization. Yours is unique, and the way you
execute is going to reflect the uniqueness of your go to market strategy.
People,
Process and Platform – the Three P’s. Next week’s edition is dedicated to
organizations who have already implemented a MAP system only to find it is not
the “magic wand” solution everyone expected. If you have been reading the
series, you probably have an inkling of where we’re going, because your
platform is not the problem!
Tags:
Marketing Automation, Lead Management, Lead Process, Marketing Data, Sales and
Marketing Process, Marketing Operations Skills, Marketing Automation Skills,
Marketing Automation ROI, Marketing ROI, ROMI
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