Tag - business

I was in a portion of a workshop yesterday with Steve Matteson, a consultant from Simpler Consulting when he made an interesting comment about rainmakers … salespeople who sell more, make more, bring in more.

Rainmakers don’t sell the product.

Rainmakers sell what customers get out of buying the product.

I’ve heard it before in different contexts and words, but I like this formulation.

Reality is, most salespeople sell the product. It’s this big. It’s that powerful. It’s got such-and-such features. It’s comes in these three colors.

So what?

Find out what the client needs and wants. Show how your product/service/solution/widget meets them. Count your cash.

Some people, when there’s a project at their company that they think is a complete disaster but for political reasons cannot openly oppose, adopt sabotage tactics.

In other words, they become an active participant, then find excellent reasons why the company can’t proceed. But, and this is an important but, they always couch them in positive language.

I’ve persevered on a number of projects in spite of well-meaning (but fortunately amateur) saboteurs. Most times their negative energies are so well disguised you can’t root them out. But here’s an excellent – and public – example:

According to Internet News, the US Commerce department has commissioned a study saying that transitioning to IPv6 will cost $25-$75 billion.

Unbelievable. That’s more than it will cost to rebuild New Orleans!

Now that’s how to conduct sabotage operations: release a report showing how to complete a project. Then, on the last page, add one tiny little detail: an absolutely stupendous, enormous, ridiculous price tag.

Mission accomplished!

I recently had a situation at work where I sent out a personalized fax for 8000 people.

Fax, I can hear you snort disdainfully. Faxes are so … 1970s.

True. I personally hate faxes – both sending and receiving. They’re bulky, they require painful preparatory stages to either composing or replying, and they’re notoriously undependable, relying as they do upon such antiquated requirements as an adequate supply of paper in your recipient’s machine!

However, faxing was one of the first technologies to thoroughly exploit the network effect, and the great advantage of a fax is that when you send one (and it gets through successfully) there is an actual physical piece of matter in someone else’s personal or workspace that cannot be ignored quite as simply as an email.

Plus, if you don’t have email addys for the 8000 people, you’re kind of stuck with what you’ve got.

In any case, I composed the fax, and then circulated it around for some review. Even I’m not quite brash (read: stupid) enough to send something to thousands of people before asking for a few other eyes and perspectives on my work.

One of the respondants did something interesting: she changed all my “you’lls” and “it’lls” into “you wills” and “it wills.” Plus, there were other changes to generally make the fax more correct, professional, and formal.

I hated every single change from the bottom of my passionately informal heart.

People want authenticity. They want others to be real. They want communication to be real. They want to see, read, and hear messages that are natural.

Their bullshit filters snap into place at the slightest hint of corporatese. And so do mine.

That’s why the Cluetrain is so important. That’s why articles like this one are so important.

Masks are boring. Your idea of what sounds “professional” is boring. Your CYA language is boring. Speaking to your boss while writing to me is boring.

Worse, at some level, people perceive it as deceptive. And it is.

Be real. Be authentic. Be genuine. Be heard!

A long time ago, I wrote about the first cardinal sin of project management.

Well, now I’m in the interesting situation of managing an enormous project which has grown from a pilot to an official launch to a company-wide multinational initiative, and along the way we’ve (necessarily) had some inefficiencies as we’ve scaled it increasingly bigger. But, frankly, there have been good strategic and tactical reasons for increasing scope as much as we have.

Which has lead me to consider another cardinal error of project management:

“There is nothing so inefficient as doing exactly the right things in the right order in the right way … at the wrong time.”

There is always going to be someone who will tell you that you are screwing up. Spending too much money. Doing things in improper order. Not going through approved channels. Involving too few people and departments.

However, the reality is that when the time is right, you need to MOVE. And speed ensures that you’ll make some errors.

But good timing covers a lot of sins.

I recently went through some Lean Transformation training provided by Simpler Consulting, and one of the facilitators said that “best is the evil enemy of good.”

I was a little surprised by that, because I’ve always thought that good is the enemy of best … people are satisfied with ‘good,’ and so they don’t put out the extra effort for ‘best.’

But Steve explained it this way:

We’re so mesmerized by the best system, the best process, the best solution that we often fixate on that and don’t even start. The ultimate solution is too far out there – it’s unattainable. So, because we don’t want to fail, we don’t go for the brass ring.

That rings true …. projects that I’ve delayed and delayed and delayed, because I knew we couldn’t get where we wanted to go.

But the point is, if you try, and you achieve 50% of what you tried to do, you’re still better off. And next year you can improve another 20%. And the following year another 15%.

The idea is continuous measured improvement, instead of staking everything on quantum leaps of improvement.

I kind of like that idea.

As ongoing readers of this blog may or may not know, I’m starting up a new piece/division/value stream/part of Premier, the company I’ve worked for over the past 11 years.

I knew this going in, but I know it now: starting up is not easy to do.

Vision, research, product development, marketing strategy, marketing collateral, communication strategy and execution, training, more communication, finance, operations, demand forecasting, capacity planning, and general nursemaid, nanny, and bottle-holding mommy to anyone who needs information/help/etc. througout the process …. these are only the things I can think of right now.

Which is why my workday just ended and I’m turning the computer off now.

(As challenging as it is, it is also a huge, huge, huge, huge opportunity, and a lot of fun. It’s the chance of a lifetime, and I’m going to make the most of it!)