The Six Sigma Approach to Network Marketing - The Improve Phase

The Six Sigma Approach to Network Marketing – The Improve Phase

By Reginald Delaney

Previous Post Recap

In our previous post for this series of articles, we spoke of the importance of the Analyze Phase of Six Sigma and how we use the Analyze Phase to give us more insight into why the process performs the way it does. We spoke about the need to identify all the factors that have an impact on how well the process performs. Once these factors were identified, it became necessary to understand their relative importance with regards to the magnitude of the impact that they have on the process. With this knowledge, we were able to separate the critical few factors from all the other factors that were less significant.

Now that we know which few factors require our focus, we are ready to move to the next phase of the Six Sigma process – the Improve Phase.

The Six Sigma Approach to Network Marketing – The Improve Phase

The fourth phase of the Six Sigma process is the Improve Phase. If you will recall, in the Analyze Phase we determined that some of the key factors on which to focus our improvement efforts included, 1) the first words that we use when talking to prospects, 2) the body language that we convey to prospects, 3) your visual appearance as you approach the prospect, 4) your level of confidence when speaking to the prospect, 5) your attitude as perceived by the prospect, 6) your level of excitement as perceived by the prospect, 7) your preconceived notion of how the discussion will go, etc. As you can see the number of factors can be overwhelming, but as part of the analyze phase we chose the factors that we believe are the most vital factors for bringing about the desired results. When possible, we used data to test those beliefs or theories before moving on to the improve phase of six sigma. In the improve phase of six sigma we will test those beliefs further by setting up different scenarios where we apply the various factors in different combinations at various orders of magnitude to determine the impact these scenarios will have on the process. Our goal is to maximize and optimize the process’ performance to give us the desired effect each time we employ our knowledge of how the various factors impact the process.

Taking the Knowledge We Acquired from the Analyze Phase and Applying It to the Improve Phase

Let’s say that our activities from the analyze phase yielded that the 3 most important factors to determining the number of new people that we sign up each week with our network marketing opportunity are 1) the first words that we use when talking to prospects, 2) your level of excitement as perceived by the prospect, and 3) your visual appearance as you approach the prospect. Now we will take this information to get better control over the variability in the outcomes generated by the process. Remember that our ultimate goal for the problem that we chose to tackle from the define phase of six sigma is to increase the number of recruits that we bring on board. This means that in order to improve our numbers we have to control the variability in the process. One of the metrics that we will use to demonstrate the variability that we wish to control is our hit to miss ratio. In other words, how many people do we talk to versus the number of people that actually join our team? The metrics that we use to track our progress should be meaningful and informative. We may look at data such as: 1) How quickly do the prospects access our webpage after we speak with them, 2) How quickly do the prospects return our call after we speak to them, 3) How many prospects contact us after 3 months, 4) How many prospects join our team after speaking to us more than once, etc. The data that we are tracking should give us insight to how effective our improvement attempts are, and the data should give us insight on how to continually improve upon our performance. We must also apply the principles that we spoke of in the measure phase of the six sigma process, so that we are sure that our data is valid and accurate. This is important because we will be making decisions based on this data.

The All Important DOE or Design of Experiment

Now that we know which factors we will be using to better control our process, we will set up the scenarios that will allow us to test and to prove our theories. We will utilize a tool that is known as a DOE or design of experiments. Here we will look at all the factors that we want to test and determine the number of levels at which we would like to test them. For instance, let’s consider factor 1 (i.e. the first words that we use when talking to prospects): we could choose to test this factor at 2 levels. The first level could be to speak only of the business opportunity when we initially address the prospect. The second level could be to speak only of the products and services offered by the company when we initially address the prospect. We would do this for each of the other factors to set up our design of experiment. We could label the levels as low and high to designate the varying orders of magnitude. For our network marketing example, we will let the low level for each factor be the level that we think is least likely to give us favorable results and let the high level for each factor be the level that we think will give us the best results. In this example, since we are looking at only a few factors and a few levels, we will perform a full factorial DOE. We won’t go into a full-blown explanation of full factorials and partial factorials or discuss when it makes sense to use one versus the other, but we will say that a full factorial is designed to test all combinations of the factors and the levels considered. In this case there are 2³ possible combinations. The DOE combinations will appear as follows:

The table above shows all the combinations of factors that we will use in testing our assumptions about how these factors impact the desired outcome. In this case we could define levels L and H for each factor as follows:

Once we have defined the terms of our DOE, we would then put our DOE into action by first determining how many data points we must generate. For instance, we may decide that we want to approach 30 prospects each day. We might agree to complete our DOE in 8 days with each day being set aside for only one setting. For instance, on day 1, we would approach 30 prospects, start our conversation by talking about the products, we would speak unenthusiastically, and we would have on a polo shirt, jeans, and loafers. This could present a problem if the day of the week was found to be important. In other words, if people were found to be more receptive on Mondays as opposed to Saturdays, we may miss this importance if some of the conditions were not tested on each day of the week. These are things to keep in mind as we determine how to conduct our DOE. Hopefully, the knowledge that we gathered in the analyze phase will have told us whether or not the day of the week has any bearing on our process’ performance.

As we conduct our experiment we must be sure that we are collecting all of the data needed to help us analyze the results. Some of this data might include: 1) the test scenario or factor settings, 2) the prospects’ first and last names, 3) the place where you met the prospects, 4) the time of day, 5) the date, 6) the number of website visits for the day, etc.

Now That We Have the Data, What’s Next?

Upon completion of the DOE, we must analyze the results. We will use this information to help us to improve our process going forward. Once we understand which set of conditions yielded the most favorable results, we will continue to use this information to build our network marketing organization more rapidly. In addition, we will share this information with all of our team members to help them build their organizations more rapidly. And of course, as our organizations grow our financial success grows, as well!

In the next post, we will discuss the Control Phase of Six Sigma and find out how we can apply it to our network marketing efforts.

…To Be Continued…