George Negus, who actually isn’t all that fond of being referred to as an aging sex symbol, gave a presentation in Perth at the wonderful venue of the Royal Perth Yacht Club.
He was discussing many things and was thoroughly entertaining, and at the conclusion of his speech answered some questions. I had my hand in the air to ask a question, and before he got to me, he launched on a tyraid about information technology:
“Ask yourself, what has information technology actually done ever done for anyone? Absolutely nothing..”. George proceeded to let rip and then asked for my question.
“Hi George, my name is Justin Davies from Ross Technology, a technology services company……”
Pause, and some general laughter….
“Well, now you mention it, the internet is pretty useful for research and I actually use it everyday…..”
George wasn’t at all wedded to a view that Information Technology and computers are useless; he just wanted a debate. He wanted to get stuck in and argue a point to get a better understanding. He particularly wanted people to think - he most certainly didn’t want people to just nod their heads. And he was also most generous, and I now have a signed copy of one of his books.
How does that relate to The Smell of Good Business?
In my view, not enough decisions or widely held points of view are actively debated enough. A bloody good heated debate, and judicious use of the F word does wonders in quickly test driving a proposition. But you must ensure it is the best idea and not the most strongest personality that wins.
So, I also invite debate. Let me know what you think….
Having discovered your strengths, it is time to think about what your point of difference. In advertising parlance, this is the unique selling proposition - and the difficulty is trying to refine the many things you offer into a simple phrase of about 4 words.
A good place to start is thinking about your friends and colleagues, and the positive things they bring to your business and personal relationship. Once you start doing that, you can get a good sense of how you would like people to talk about you.
Let’s take an example: we have a really great bunch of project managers in our team at the Consulting Division of Ross Human Directions, but each brings a difference nuance and skill to this particularly difficult role. One absolutely prides himself on delivering projects on time and on budget. He has never delivered a project that wasn’t delivered on time and on budget. He also particularly delights in his ability to be able to project manage, team lead, undertake business analysis and cut code - basically every role in a team. We have another that is particularly good at really, really difficult projects - those with complex requirements, tricky stakeholders that can be a bit vague with their requirements. He is particularly good at nailing these requirements down and ensuring nothing is vague prior to build.
We have another that is great at delivering projects - but also particularly strong at mentoring staff. Another is particularly good at bringing parties together, being flexible and meeting all parties needs.
As you can see, all sorts of different skills sets, and what we work on matching our clients and project managers for best result.
Have a think about the people around you in the same way and pretty soon - at least in a business context - you will have a great idea how you would like people to think of you.
I was chatting with Bill Wallace about marketing ideas, particularly given he has recently joined a new consulting business, and I wanted to understand what it was all about. More on that later, but one of the many key points that came out of the conversation was that it is really is necessary to pay attention to yourself as a brand. In other words, how would someone else articulate your value or understand your personal traits in a business and social context.
I read in Harvard Business Review an interesting article, and it suggested asking some colleagues for some frank feedback on things you do well. It suggested not asking about the things you don’t do well - primarily because human nature can easily tend towards the negative and focussing on improving those things you don’t do well. Chances are you will waste your time and you are much better spending the time working on being the best at the things you do well. If you are interested in this, see Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham - a very good read.
It is a good place to start, but expect that:
1. People whom you think would respond to that sort of request often don’t
2. You will be surprised - generally pleasantly so - about strengths you didn’t realise you had.
If you can concentrate on really working hard on those things you do well, you are bound for success.
One of the things that I found interesting in the way we conducted presentations to clients was Bill’s uncanny nack of teasing out and confronting the hidden issues that someone that he had never met before would open up to him. It really was a case of drawing on a lot of experience.
The essence for our approach was drawn from Spin Selling. The Spin Selling Fieldbook and Major Account Sales are required reading if you want to understand the process of creating opportunities and realising them in sales.
If you have not come across it before, SPIN covers 4 key parts to a sale:
Situation: what are the facts you need to know about a customer and their environment to determine if your product will be a fit for their business. In application development terms, this might be a question like, “are you a J2EE or .Net shop?”. Best to do your homework prior to seeing a customer if you can, so that you don’t spend the meeting like an interrogation.
Problem: Having established the environment, the trick is to explore problems that the customer might be experiencing. You must have thought about your product and service, and the types of problems it solves for customers. Again, such a question might be (again, in application development terms..), “Have you been having trouble implementing the latest flavour of .Net?”
Implication: Generally this is where the probing is really starting to add some value for the customer - as much as it may be causing a bit of discomfort. For example, the above question might have yielded a response such as, “yeah, a little but we will be ok and just grab a book or google it..”. You then need to be able to ask the question, “If you do that and it doesn’t work out, what is implication on service levels for your customers?” or other similar question that probes the next level of depth - the aftermath of the course of action going pear shaped.
Need - payoff: At this point, a great outcome is the client saying, “I hadn’t thought of that, I need to get that sorted out. At this point, the next question is, “well, if we able to eliminate that as a problem for you, what would that do for you?”
Notice that during this process you have not been selling or even talking about your product at all? This is the hard bit for most salespeople who get trained up in the product, grow to love it, and want to share their passion about their product to the customer. The customer, of course, is only interested in their own problem. If you focus on closing in a complex sale, chances are you will be nowhere near as successful as you could be. So, grab those Spin Selling books, I highly recommend them.
Some shortcut key points:
1. Business Development Processes if you can systematise you process, you have a more rapid way of fulfilling on customer enquiry. I have found that by responding with a solid proposal quickly, you stand a much better chance of success. Many companies do not really track the time from enquiry to delivery of proposal, conversion rates, or the time to develop a proposal and aim to shorten it.
2. Market Segmentation - you just simply can’t sell to everyone, but the question becomes who to really focus on, and in depth.
3. Analytics - Looking at what data you capture and making sense of it
4. Database clean up and management - and integration. In your business you probably have a bunch of people referred to in different parts of your business as customers, clients, debtors, creditors (if they both buy from you and sell to you) - and probably all in different databases, accounting systems, and email clients.
5. CRM - the big question here is “what does CRM mean to you?”. Technologies have been fantastic at undertaking demos on product that seem to solve all of the problems - it is the implementation of the technology AFTER people and process issues have been resolved that delivers success. Our experience is that this needs to be very much customised to the individual company rather than trying to the meld the company to the software. As I run a business specialising in application development, I do have a bias here - but in many cases is cheaper and more effective to build software for purpose as a core business system rather than buy something with features you will never use.
I once had an interesting experience in a meeting with Bill and a top tier consulting firm, in a very impressive office. We called in to see a mid-level manager and explained what we were doing in the consulting arena around ebusiness - strategy, web enabled application development, portals - enhancing the online user experience. This guy’s response was, “we don’t need you. We have a partnership with Cisco.”
“What? The people that supply routers and switches?”
Interesting enough our very next meeting was with a Partner of one of their competitors, again a top tier firm. The response was entirely different - he was pragmatic, client centric and with an emphasis on solving problems and really interested in how we could help. He wasn’t interested in pushing his own ego and importance - he just had a job to get done well.
At the end of this second meeting Bill exclaimed, “The world is a wanker! People hide behind egos and the protective veil of large corporations, but put them out into their own business and they wouldn’t last 5 minutes. They are just not that bright, regardless of what they tell you. And the more letters after their name, the less they can do.”
“All you have to do is stay 20 minutes in front of the client. You have to have the courage to have a go, and punch above your weight.”
To test this theory, I tried a presentation to a major IT organisation about our capability. I was reciting a presentation fairly much rote, with almost no understanding of the technical terms I was using - but following instructions of speak confidently, roll your hands, lean forward….
And the response shocked me -
“you guys are way in front of the market, I think you will shake up this town…”.
I nearly died laughing…
Since then of course I made sure I did know what I was talking about….
The Technical Hiring Dilemma
In the UK, the Technical Director was a young super bright guy named Nikk who had more technical and business smarts than many people I’ve met with 10 years more experience. He was the one with the critical pressure to ensure projects were delivered and worked. And he also had to manage the resourcing pains of that as well. His common complaint was, “everyone says they can do it right up until the point they cant do it”.
I experienced this on a project. We had briefed a local WA business partner to undertake what looked relatively simple application development. We noticed that he seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to do the work, reassuring us that all was on track and that he 90% there. After two weeks of this, he disappeered, taking the payment for the work done to date BUT without us having any code we could use. Of course, he could do it - right up to the point that he couldn’t do it.
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