Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

As a consultant most is know that much of our work is detailed and exploratory. Making change means we need to study and discuss the gaps in the “what is” position so you can have a discussion about changing that state. This takes planning thought and collaborative skill to get people to dig in to the detail and then go a new way to fix the problems we find. That process can be both continuous and radical.

Either way it happens best if the process is fun so people enjoy engaging to get detail information and explore looking for solutions and best practices.

I read something recently about teaching, and it seemed to me the parallels with consulting are similar. The article about teaching in an Asian culture pointed to quite different approaches needed to what we see in the so-called traditional west. A British teacher posted this in the Naked Farang entitled Working teaching Thais

In it he reinforces to be a successful teacher, the best advice is to steer away from boring lectures, long explanations and tests. Like we find also in consulting workshops, making your classes interactive and fun works best. Then not only do students enjoy the classes, but they also learn from them by being involved. The post goes on to explore some great examples that are thought provoking for every culture. It well worth a read.

We have to take all of this into consideration when we decide how we are going to manage change too, In addition to human cultural difference there always different business cultures which vary from business to business too. The common thread however is that people everywhere like to have fun, even at work. The corollary truism to this makes sense. “If you are not having fun it is very hard get things done”

In a work place it important, like it is with most students to win them over early. If they think that learning about change is going to be too serious, people involved will mentally switch off, turn up late or skip sessions and make minimal progress. The flip side is people will be more motivated to be productive and learn effectively if they enjoy the work and have a rapport with the leader.

This is deeply ingrained into Asian cultures more so than the west as following is more encouraged rather than making direct contributions at the risk offending or losing face. In fact, why should we want to change it? We should be flexible enough to adapt the way we teach or engage with people in any cultural styles.

In a workplace these cultural differences can be used to advantage as people who work in silos have fun with to joining the dots when you get them together.

As an example an Asia culture with students and what westerners regard as cheating in class can be of great value, In Asia this is almost pathological. As left to their own devices Asian students will typically gather round to just copy their answers. The counter-productiveness of this has absolutely no logic but you can do nothing about it.

Knowing this means at work however getting people to work things out as a group can be used to great advantage when they are given a problem to study and naturally relax under the protection of group discussions.

Another aspect of leading for results I have found useful, being foreigner is to set the scene in the common language of English then allow it to debated out in the native tongue. This can be very effective in facilitated workshops if it is allowed to run under this protection. By contrast to large passive participation in lecture style workshops, allowing time for discussion in the native tongue sees the noise levels and participation very high from all levels with occasional so called clarification feedback so you can keep it on track. That can be a tough call if your local language skill is not good. But other signals and natural group dynamics tell most of the stories as you just watch while people get comfortable and to the point. It is far from boring with the challenge to get agreement to move to the next steps.

The spoken language too is not the only tool. As we all know speaking is based on not only being cohesive with words and body language but also on the history in local cultures that have much deeper meaning. So unless you are stupid and use a Shakespearian style straight forward English is common use and widely accepted as the written structure format. Most Asians in business now have better understanding of written English even more so than a locally expressive document. Hence we often find people at all levels ask for a document before they ever ask for an explanation. The trick then, as with everyone, is it walk them thru it and allow learning process to take its course.

Another wonderful example of understanding rote learning is in the Naked Farang post.

He says, “When I was in high school in England, one of my favorite subjects was history because I enjoyed hearing about how important events and people changed the course of history.  We would analyze these lessons to see what we had learned and how they affected the present. It was, to me, fascinating and stimulating. In contrast, I hated maths because it just seemed too inflexible and boring.

For Thai students, history is one of the least favorite subjects simply because of the way it is taught. The students are simply expected to memories names and dates without actually attaching any significance to them. There is no wonder they find this boring. In contrast, moths is a popular subject. Why is maths so popular? Well, instead of rote learning names, words or dates, maths offers the students a relative degree of academic freedom because they can learn formulas and experiment with them. In an environment where everything else is so rigid, this is their chance to express themselves.

In our business world of consulting to identify problems and find solutions is always a challenge. But as always the biggest challenge is implementing in diverse cultures that by nature don’t really want to change. The process of learning how to do this is constant and ever stimulating to me

I am always fascinated reading and taking to others about their insights and experience. If you feel inclined please share your experience. I would love to hear about it.

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I want to share with you a recent experience I had negotiating a contract. During this process it struck me that even though we know there are no fairy godmothers, we still believe they will take care of us.

As a budding recruit learning the commercial ropes, my boss had once warned me about taking that approach.

You can lose your shirt if you don’t get your pricing right. But you will lose your business if you compromise on your terms and conditions.

Don’t take shortcuts on conditions as there are no such things as fairy godmothers to bail you out.

Recently at work we concluded negotiations on a deal. From the get go we thought we had covered the sales cycle well, first qualifying our prospect to make sure our lead was a genuine with substance and had genuine intent. In the education and needs understanding stage we establish our credibility and could decide too if we were a good fit us to take on the work. Then as we looked at functional matches and implementation priorities along with their organizational change capability and resolve, that placed us well to understand all the risks. This process took some time as it moved to and fro on options discussions and as the prospect employed divide and retreat tactics and checked our competitive value.

But in the end with scope, resources and pricing all agreed , as the selected provider, the final step was to agree the terms and conditions to get their signature on a work order. The terms and conditions we included in our proposal had also been part of the practical discussion so we assumed our conditions and working assumptions would not present any issue.

But their legal people did a turn about rejecting anything that had even a hint of risk as they sought to remove clauses that protected us from events not of our making. In particular one clause that was red lined dealt with redress in the event of uncontrollable organization change in their business

As we struggled to find a compromise, suggestions were made to limit the clause to good faith wording and to deal only with specific risks. The watered down clause of course become unenforceable but the temptation to close the deal was by bow very high. This compromise however was still a red flag to me as I reflected on what my old boss would have said.

Blindly relying on fluffy terms to maintain commercial balance is just like lighting a long fuse and believing the bomb will never go off. Or when it does you will be long gone.

In our example we were concerned about:

1. Many projects have bad experience when key people leave or get re-positioned out. Often too it can even be the sponsors themselves who are gone. In such cases, ongoing carriage of process and managing changes defaults to the service provider to re-sell and continue to implement without the original sponsor support. It also becomes a new ball game as well as you start again at the re-educate stage with a new incumbent and are forced to defend agreements made with a previous one.
2. In cases where of a key person working with a service provider leaves they will invariably take with them knowledge and leave unfinished work This may revert back to the service provider to back fill and or/redo. Not having redress on this can have disastrous results not only for the service provider to unfairly bear the cost but also the weakened project may struggle and fail.
3. When the company gets taken over or itself does a takeover of others, there is always a material impact. Any material change in ownership will mean inevitable organizational change which in turn will always have some impact on a current project scope.

When preparing contracts, experience teaches us that pricing is only one aspect. Working assumptions that make this up must also be included and debated well so they are clear.

Terms should never be compromised without also reconsidering the risk and the pricing again. The negotiating approach should not be to reduce mitigation and cover, but instead to sell this as a mechanism to see fairness is re-balanced in the spirit of the original negotiations so nether side in the future can take an advantage

As a service providers it is not only for the burden of added cost or the overall success and gets us paid that is at stake if we get sloppy on our terms and conditions. Doing that can also lose us our reputations that keep us in business.

Do you have similar experiences?

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Here is some advice I got as a student. To make ends meet, I took a job selling wedding chest products. (Those old enough to remember may recall Carrigans, a boutique firm that sold a quality product range by referral based selling.

My sales coach at the time told me.

“Don’t try to sell products, show solutions to real problems” and something practical that goes with that is a mattress test” 

“What is a mattress test?” I quizzed.

It is a simple concept that alerts or disturbs a prospect unexpectedly that he or she has a problem, But the skill is to do it in a way you and your product or service are seen as part of the solution.  Most rookie sales people learn this but rarely apply it.  If you do, you will sell well”

He went on to explain the metaphor:

For example you may not know it, but a vacuum salesman knows a used mattress has a lot of dead skin in it. And he also knows any decent vacuum will pull it out easily.

So if  when he demonstrates to a prospect with a quick swipe across an old mattress it will show on the filter pad a pile of dead skin. That disturbs people and it also does a lot of the work for his sale so he needs to talk a lot less to close it.

It seemed to me as I applied that lesson, it is not about being slick and not always about having the best product or service. It is about identifying and solving problems. When a prospect becomes concerned they’ve got a real problem and you not only help them to see it but also become  part of the solution, you spend less time on vague conversations and more on working out the terms of a deal.

The use of a mattress test concept does take work to find a prospects real pain point. And to pick the timing and have skill to make it show up in a way that lets you be seen to be part of the solution. Doing your home work is the key, and it works a treat too, as you have happy customers and do good business.

At time of writing this post I am sitting on a plane with a colleague from Infor, our solution partners, who provider enterprise software solutions.  Being a seasoned salesman and someone I trust, I asked him for his experience on this. His reply was un-expected.

In that case if you are selling vacuum cleaners it may be a good idea to hook up with a mattress company. Sometimes the customer may need a new mattress rather than just getting a new cover and or a quick clean up tool”

By the way my boss at Carrigans always got mad at me for giving away fine linen table cloths and without making a sale. And I was not supposed to cannibalize my samples case either, which annoyed the stock room too.

But when I did I found what disturbed my prospect was the thought that they may not be able to get the full matching set later when I was gone. I closed heaps of sales that way as I had the solution right there or when I rang back in a day or as promised and remade the point. With a good offer on terms many then bought the whole chest and even better I always got heaps more leads.

It was great fun too as I made lots of friends of clients who we very happy with what they had bought.

Since then I suspect nothing has changed… But I wonder what others do now?

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The process of writing this blog often puts me into another level of human commutation. Many do blogs to make money while others have different motives. My sister for example posts recipes for fun. In my case I do it with some forsaken idea that the those who know me in business will pass on the word because we try attempt to share our ideas. Noble for sure but maybe not so smart you must agree. We work in Asia Pacific and now have readers all over the world who will never hear of or even care about engaging our consulting firm.

But the upside and one of the delights is meeting like-minded people who also blog. For me as I attempted it increase my traffic twitter face book and so on were obvious choices. Three I got a surprise one day when I got a warm welcome to the community from a New York Lawyer who runs a blog with a difference. He bases it only on NYC Parking Ticker issues where he helps people understand the law and their rights.

 Larry Berezin, who runs the blog and who is a principal is the law practice it promotes, is now a great friend who I enjoy sharing ideas with.

But, you may ask, how does a Lawyer make any money out handling issues from such a mundane commodity service like parking. Yes you have to wonder?

Just now while reading his blog for this week I noted a testimonial from one of his practice customers, It tells the story in one shot

Clients say:

“My company manages a large fleet of trucks. We’re on the road daily in the five boroughs of New York. Our parking ticket fines between December, 2007 and July, 2008 were $663,321. New York Parking Ticket saved us $456,372. My company paid only $206,949, a 69% savings. 

New York Parking Ticket will save us more than $1M for the 12 month period ending December, 31, 2008. I heartily recommend New York Parking Ticket. They keep their word, deliver significant savings at a very reasonable cost. It’s a no brainer.“

Jonathan Smokler Uptown Communication & Electric 

Even though you may not live in New York or even in the US like me, I recommend his blog as informative and common sense. He turns what is a very dry and sometimes painful subject we all relate to into a load of fun as he provides valuable information.

When you look it you will see the experiences and law is mostly the same everywhere and does not just apply to New York

Larry also hosts a radio show where he talks on the subject to make it human and very enjoyable.

In keeping with his sense of humour this banner ad says it all too!!

One question I have for Larry is “When are you going to go international?  Perhaps we could be your APAC rep!!

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Some years ago as I walk around my supermarket and local stores in Melbourne, Australia I notice bottled water had become a very high seller. I wonder about that as it is widely known that Melbourne has one the purest and drinkable water supplies in the world.

Like selling snow to Eskimos this paradox defies logic, but marketing guys who figured it out had cleaned up.

To create this new category, rather than focus on changing buying habits of the natural competitor was done by selling the value of water as a health solution with a fashion image built around drinking bottled water. This also leveraged the trends in Asia and parts of Europe where water is sold in bottles, as the natural tap variety is not so good. In The winner was a brand new industry who got people to part with their money for something that was still basically free and just as good from the tap.

That got me to thinking how people change their habits when experts say it cannot be done. Like in clever saying about habit goes something like this:

To change a habit always leaves “a bit:, And then when you try again there is still one more bit, and so it continues.

But before I jumped to conclusion about habits I have figured may be several  types…..

There is of course the endemic habit that is there because it has always been so.

For example when I went to live in London in 1970’s I wondered then why people there seemed to always stand in a queue when they saw one. I learned this was a legacy from World War days when food was scarce. Rationing stamps. issued by the government to regulate shortages had in turn created a habit in people who joined a queue as it mean they got food.

This type of habit is so hard shift as it lingers even now in Britain having been passed on to the future generations, and in spite of the decades of affluence.

And then there is the leaned habit that may often be based on folk law which is out of date.

Like the one exposed when an mothers inquisitive daughter asked her why she folded the leg bone back on  the ham before she roasted it. “I leaned that from my mum”, she said. Not satisfied the girl went to he granny and asked her the same question. “My mother taught me that was granny’s response too. Still determined to find the answer the gild then went to her great grandmother who replied, “oh that is simply; because in my day we only had small ovens and it would not fit unless you folded the leg bone back”  

This granny’s folk law type habit persists through ignorance and even when uncovered it may still be hard to change.

And then there is the cult habit.

I only began to understand religion well when I lived in a Muslim community and my driver in Indonesia sought my approval to stop the care for a pee. He took with him a water bottle When I asked about that later, he explained it is part of his religion to  clean his penis.

Of course many others follow the same healthy habit but not always in the name of religion, but it was then I realized that religious administrations creates rules that become habits for the good of the community they serves. 

Thinking about changing these is generally impossible and one should never try unless a cult takes hold that places a community at risk.

And last on my list the environment habit

For example in Bangkok the queues of traffic create an insoluble problem. as every day traffic blocks the city unmercifully. It makes no sense to have a car there, yet minions still join traffic jams daily to face the residue of poor town planning of centuries ago that set the habit. I once recall seeing a traffic jam form in Bangkok as people joined it for so real reason in spite of alternative routes being there.

The massive network of freeways that have been built in the last 2 decades have not overcome the problem. It continues too even with high quality mass transport services in place; Sky Train, Underground. and cheaper bus and water ferry services. All  have all failed as the population growth outstrips the solutions and as commuter habits continue to see continuing use of the highly deterrent taxed car.Traffic management, there it seems, no matter how it matures with best practice, still always struggles to handle the habits of generations.

Like many large cities around the world Bangkok is a mix of old and new that sprawls through narrow streets. The often hard to find accesses to highways can be even frustrated with crossings in private land that serves as the link to an arterial superhighway city escape routes. Like the Londoners, with their food queuing habit, I wonder if perhaps the Thais have a deep seeded belief that jams, no matter how painful, in the end are actually seen as the way to get out of the city.

This type of habit may take an earth quake or some such other unacceptable disaster to bring about change so it always going to be a long hail to fix the symptoms.

So it seems Trying to sell change in habits in the market place is a paradox even on things that are obviously good or conversely bad for us. But by focusing on something new to build a following by using established habits, like the water in Melbourne, can and does work. 

The aim there is not on changing what is, but on a new category focus that brings perceived new value.  This concept is not new as business typically brings new product to market after often first testing it on a target group of zealous believers who may love it and to adopt new things.

Then as momentum builds, these people carry the message to otherwise skeptical masses and do the selling. In the meantime the masses are completely ignored at no cost, until the take up reaches the critical mass.

With this positive focus, like the water bottle example, habits may in fact change to eventually they become new folk law as something new.

I wonder if using this approach can also change the habits is all our large cities of the world.

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Getting people to do new work and change needs skill. In business and especially large enterprises change takes more than skill. It also needs good teaming with binding cross functional management dialog processes.

Getting objectives clear from the top can be tricky, but the hard job comes getting buy-in and finding a way to align people to change and keep them there. Both are critical steps.

Then as things proceeds you need a good leader to manage the roadblocks and keep it on track. Having a champion is vital too but even champions can falter as threats emerge and cloud the issues and as luddites undermine.

It is said that people change so organizations get the value or benefit. It is not the reverse as many think. So getting commitment is vital to ensure stakeholders can see a win. With nothing to gain or lose for the people effected, change projects will inevitably fail.

When change is needed, bad habits are the most difficult to break even when obvious to all. Operations people will always do operations work first and in the way that works for them even though they may appear supportive of change. The reality is, if they don’t have something at stake to get them involved when it comes to show time, they will be busy.

In our organizations we often find a popular fountain of knowledge where we can get all the answers. This is usually sees one or two people in so called indispensible jobs who are like gold in the business. But unfortunately when it comes to change if they are not managed well they may become dinosaurs and actually hold progress back. Identify them is important. Dinosaurs, friendly or not, become intent and divisive to survive. Taking them out of their operational job and placing them in a important roles as subject matter experts in a change project is often a good strategy. If they join the team and focus well you are likely to have a great outcomes all round.

At the organizational level to be successful you must find a way to engage and make change a continuous process. Selling is such a process that does that and works well when people buy. So when embarking on change we must consider selling and communications as a key ongoing part of projects.

Here is a useful perspective from change-management.com

Individual change management

Organizations don’t change, individuals do. No matter how large of a project you are taking on, the success of that project ultimately lies with each employee doing their work differently, multiplied across all of the employees impacted by the change. Effective change management requires an understanding for and appreciation of how one person makes a change successfully. Without an individual perspective, we are left with activities but no idea of the goal or outcome that we are trying to achieve.

Organizational change management

While change happens one person at a time, there are processes and tools that can be used to facilitate this change. Tools like communication and training are often the only activities when no structured approach is applied. When there is an organizational change management perspective, a process emerges for how to scale change management activities and how to use the complete set of tools available for project leaders and business managers.

This next graphic illustrates some linkages of organization process with individual behavioral aspects important for change .

Substring activity aside, delivering or selling change to others and/or responding to change forced on us by market competitiveness is at the very heart of what management and markets are all about. Making it all work requires attention to all these areas and more.

What drives a change is often a need to be able to respond faster to market pressure or simply grow the sales to achieve a stated business ambition.  Hence aging core systems and processes may first need replacing to allow ongoing improvement. As stagnant systems fast reach their used by date, resistance to change is often the highest, as people hang on to their comfort zones.

Like selling, long cycles are not good and invariably fail. And to a salesman, getting and maintaining total commitment with no way back, is the first and last step to shore up against risk to ensure a success. In change projects it is the same so work is best competed in small stages so success can be declared and continuous improvement resumed quickly.

But its not done there. To make it stick you then need the added energy to exploit the value in the new state with the old state now completely gone.

~000~

Here is a video we did for internal discussion:

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Do you think you could ever learn to speak in foreign language. Learning at school in Australia 1960’s gave me some limited choices. I chose French rather than Latin as I figured if ever I was in France or a French speaking country I could understand people.

Since I have lived, worked and travelled in many counties. Except for parts of Vietnam, and Canada plus of course France itself, knowing French has had quite limited value.

I do know my limited brain somehow interferes with my ability to learn more languages.  Hence English remains my dominate choice, even though work in Asia where Thai, Indonesian, Cantonese & Mandarin all dominate as the colloquial preferences that surround me.

Even so, believe it or not I can communicate in most and more without ever attend any classes or langauge  school.  And so can you!

For example  I am reading a new book called World Class ITnow that I would recommend. Here is a précis of a book review I was sent recently that in turn I sent on to a Thai colleague.

IT gets boiled down to 5 core principles (Mitch Betts Dec 21, 2009)

There isn’t any flashy writing or trendy technology here. A new book World Class IT (Jossey-Bass, 2009), by consultant Peter A. High, provides solid — dare I say timeless — advice for CIOs trying to manage IT for business success.

The book takes the CIO’s complex world and boils it down to the following core principles (stated here verbatim):

1. Recruit, train and retain world-class IT people.
2. Build and maintain a robust IT infrastructure.
3. Manage projects and portfolios effectively.
4. Ensure partnerships within the IT department and with the business.
5. Develop a collaborative relationship with external partners.

Highsays new CIOs should tackle those issues in the order presented above, starting with people and then moving on to developing a reliable IT infrastructure. High says the journey from ordinary to world-class IT can take several years, and even then you can’t rest on your laurels.

To make it easy for my colleague I translated it to Thai by using Google translate.

IT ได้รับต้มลงไป 5 หลักหลักโดย Mitch Betts 21 ธันวาคม 2009 06:00 ET ไม่มีที่เขียนฉูดฉาดหรือเทคโนโลยีอินเทรนด์ที่นี่. หนังสือ World Class ใหม่ IT (Jossey-เบส, 2009) โดยที่ปรึกษา Peter A. สูงให้แข็ง - กล้าฉันกล่าวว่าไม่มีเวลา - คำแนะนำสำหรับ CIOs พยายามจัดการไอทีสำหรับธุรกิจประสบความสำเร็จ. หนังสือนำโลกซับซ้อน CIO และ boils ไว้ต่อไปนี้หลักการ core (ระบุที่นี่ทุกตัวอักษร): รับสมัครรถไฟและรักษาระดับโลกคน IT. สร้างและรักษาโครงสร้างพื้นฐานไอทีที่แข็งแกร่ง. จัดการโครงการและพอร์ตการลงทุนได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ. ให้ความร่วมมือในแผนกไอทีและธุรกิจ. พัฒนาความสัมพันธ์ความร่วมมือกับคู่ค้าภายนอก. สูงกล่าว CIOs ใหม่ควรต่อสู้ปัญหาเหล่านั้นเพื่อนำเสนอข้างต้นเริ่มต้นกับคนแล้วย้ายในการพัฒนาโครงสร้างพื้นฐานไอทีที่น่าเชื่อถือ. สูงกล่าวว่าการเดินทางจากสามัญในระดับโลกอาจใช้เวลาหลายปีและแม้แล้วคุณจะไม่สามารถพักผ่อนใน laurels ของคุณ.

This literally took seconds using the free Google translate tool, which has most written Languages. To do this I just copied and pasted the text to a html page and Google did the rest.

The practical implications of this are that language in business is no longer a barrier as we can communicate with literally anyone. Yes it is that simple and these days even my french has improved.

From my stats I know readers of our my blog come from many non English speaking counties. So I am quite sure they already know well about translation tools. But for most English based countries readers there, I would ventured to say, would not see the value of subscribing to and translating to, say a Russian website.

I do and  I am often pleasantly surprised by some of the high quality and leadership information I get when I translate some of these sites.

Give it a try and perhaps see if you can find new opportunities to link up and grow.

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As part of our business at Sherwood Group Consulting, as Performance Management specialist consultants, we are often drawn in the tender process when it comes to working with large companies.

As a team we sometimes surprise ourselves when we win on our own.  But of course we never do it alone as we join large vendors like Infor, Microsoft and other big guys and with large consulting firms like Deloitte, who all bring with them their brand weight that can make us attractive.

To lead too it often makes sense, as software is now less important in terms of risk than the ground advisors who actually make it happen.  Many operators like us with corporate commercial experience on board with  business and vendor tools knowledge can make the difference. Now unlike days gone we no longer sell software but we still stand together with our vendors of choice and lead on deals for the consulting component. That way as we assess a prospect or client needs and then recommend a vendor, we are now often sought out as clincher for their sale. Taking the lead also allows us to leverage better value for our client  or prospect, which most often also gives greater value for everyone.

But enterprise projects these days are no place for the faint hearted  Clients are ruthless and commercially oriented in the mature business software vendor market. On knowledge and paying for such things procurements processes often don’t bother to invest properly in understanding what they need and the risks. Instead they rely on the market to cover them as they push all the risk to vendors.  So no matter how much you tell them they must do their homework, your contract will hang you out to dry if you don’t make it clear in the words and then fight for it as over and over again as you proceed.

When it makes sense to take the prime spot it also means joining all the players to win. That is equally tough and unrelenting as it adds bigger risks to carry the can if anyone fails.

Notwithstanding being advisors we often have no choice. Even as a minor players, be-it on design, integration, process change or the lot, if a vendor product fails, the whole project does.

Being advisory by nature always places us in the middle and we will wacked for sure if we don’t do our commercial and project homework well and know our game. It forces us to be very sharp so it is not a bad position as at least we can have some semblance of control and leverage for best options on the risk management . 

This week I was doing an RFI response which I hope will then lead to being shortlisted and then requested for a proposal.  From experience we know that deals are won and lost not on the tender but on the work that leads up to it.  So if you are lucky to be invited to respond, the information and effort and sales skill to deliver it well at the RPI stage will count.

All  RFI’s are different but having a standard boiler plate of responses can help a lot when you are slogging thru a tedious list of requirements.  Also if the RFP is sloppy or ambiguous as an appendix it may also help to narrow the risk and swing any influencer bias built into questions.

As a baseline I dug out an old FPI. It was one of those few and hard to win big deals we all used to see in the good old days. On that occasion we lead and won, based a mostly our submission. I must add that we had quality input from our partners, especially the senior people who trusted us to represent them to protect their value.

If the RFI does its job well, the next step is to respond to a request for proposal. Winning was fun as was the outcome when we got sign off on what we had promised and delivered.

If you take on tendering seriously to win it is a project of no small proportions in itself and should be treated as such.

As a useful reference I also found this process and a diagram at  invitation2tender.com

In the meantime  would like to share that RFI with you now. The client name, a large multinational public listed group in Asia, has been withheld for various reasons.

Any business considering a PM or BI solution, here are some questions to ask your advisors and vendors, to see how they stack up. Even though the client name is suppressed the client questions are real. Some privacy editing has been done on our responses.

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Here is part of a letter from India sent home to family and friends by Kate Wood. it was dated on April 26 2006. Since then Kate has gone on building her original design fashion house.  In the face adversity of  reduced consumer spending. she went against the odds to start her business The Dancing Feather.

Based around the unique of flavor of India, with its emerging high end “India” fashion tastes now highly sought after, her success to date is all to do with her determination to define and get in touch with her chosen market. In this crowded space she has sought a way for people to express themselves with quality distinctive fashion that is also very affordable.

Here is her letter around the time she was getting it all started:

‘Decision making has quite a different flavor here. It is not an orderly process of weighing up and considering; it’s a bombardment of bafflement and sudden clarity of capricious but authoritative intent’….

I saw this in book I’ve just finished reading, which sums up perfectly the way it is here.

Today here I am in Goa. Palolem. Yes, yes I’m aware that Goa is still not the real India,  especially with 1 foreigner to 9 Indians. But my living quarters tell a very different story. It is just off the beach again in the village. My shanti shack’….. with its Spanish green interiors has a pink patterned bedspread and a pillow that reads “Be Happy Always”

India screams affirmations at you wherever you go;  A cement alcove serves for a washroom with two buckets supplied for collecting water. Pigs, chooks, dogs and cows together with a family feel fortuned from a friend who invites me for my favorite ‘real Indian’ food each day for lunch.

On a hired a scooter the other day with a friend I went for a road trip a little north to Agonda- with its 3 kilometer stretch of lush white sand.  I counted just 8 people the whole time we were there. Yes there is space in India!!

Then onto another little piece of paradise where there was a semi fresh water lagoon that kissed the ocean. “5 star tikitaya” (which means the best “real indian” food and the cheapest- less than $1) delivered to us for dinner on the beach. Heaven! Papaya juice on the roadside, chai at shiva’s temple and ride back on sunset. Lovely.

In Goa at every corner, every turn I’m reminded of somewhere….but where, I have no idea? Fleeting moments of the familiar flood my thoughts yet I can’t put a finger on any of it. China, Thailand, Darwin, Byron, Victoria, St Andrews, Etham, my back yard, Everywhere I’ve ever known is here. To be honest it’s freaking me out a little, thinking I might have to move on as it’s creating a saddening feeling of home sickness.

But it brings me back to the passage at the top that I don’t know exactly where to next, monsoons only a few weeks away so until then I’m just kicking back beachside while I still can…..and mentally beginning to prepare for the real adventure…

 

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I prefer not to copy others for 3 reasons, 1. Original thinking is more fun plus it forces me to improve my game, 2. Readers and search engines will mark me down for good reason and of course abandon me for the original.  3.  I want to build my own credibility by doing the work and being  judged for that on its own merits.

In this case I make an exception, if only to share the work of a  master I follow and admire  myself, as do so many, He is one that cannot be ignored.

So  just in case you missed Seth Godin’s post today here it is. It speaks for itself as he hits the spot with the human essence of all business.  If you prefer just go straight to his blog, which I would hope by now is on your email subscription or RSS feed anyway. then you get his daily updates like me.

If you read my cut and paste version below and make any comment, the trackbacks on this post are set to go to Seth anyway. , Enjoy!

Lessons from very tiny businesses 

(by Seth Godin)

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With my wife Margaret, in June this  year, we visited the Bangkok chapter of Power Talk International . If you have never heard of Power Talk International you may be forgiven. To put it in context, in 1970 the Apollo 13-astronauts took with them three of its formerly named and long time established Toast Mistress Club seals to leave on the moon.

Power Talk, like so many others clubs of its kind, recommends public speaking as a must  for anyone in business, or who has anything to do with communication and influencing people. But even if you are not so inclined, being able to face the fear of speaking in public is  one of the best personal confidence and performance enhancing skills you ever can have.

As a past member from Australia, Margaret had been warmly invited to visit and give a talk. The regular 6.00 – 8.00pm. 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month meeting was at Goethe Institute , Bangkok.

In her talk she spoke about her experience growing up in the grape growing district of Mildura in Australia during the 1950′s. This region was an area that had been settled by a soldier settlement scheme. Her father, Bill Broes was a WW2 veteran, who will be 90 on 24th this August 2009, had bought up a quota. This was also at a time when Australia was still a developing nation, so it was an interesting time to look back now.

Here are some photos we took of the club and some speakers that I have set to some music in a video as a memento.

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One way to survive is to milk the value till the cow is done. Another is when we have something of value is to just give it away.

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According to this news article, Twitter users have caused an uproar by impersonating celebrities on the popular micro-blogging service. Businesses, too, are targets of fake Twitter profiles — sometimes from competitors.

Exxon Mobil Corp. has found at least two unauthorized Twitter accounts under variations of its name.

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Do’s and don’ts of business etc., are copied around the web by many as they share their finds. Here is one such resource.

Why Intelligent People Fail by psychologist, Robert Sternberg is worth bookmarking to use as a check list when you are planning your next failure. 

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With communication in web mode much more, is body language changing or becoming less important?

Body language as we know it, forms the major part of all effective communication. A test is, we rarely close a significant deal or change something complex as a team without at least one or two face to face meetings.

In Asia, as with many other parts, where English is a second language, I find to listen by also watching body language  brings greater success. When I fail to do this or I’m ambiguous with mine, sadly I am misunderstood and fail miserably. I found this too with raising my kids.

With so  many of us are now working and influencing things remotely, the opportunity for real face time is less practical. I am interested in views and experiences of people who can still remain effective and what actually works for them now?

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This man is brilliant at making a point that can grab attention and motivate others to understand their value.

In our company, as consulting advisors charging a fee, understanding our market and those of our customers is vital.

To help keep us on track Seth Godin and others like him are now playing an active role every day as our advisers in our RSS feeds.

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As large companies continue to consolidate and look at ways to rationalize they inevitably focus to cut out the middle man. The falling out of Singapore International Airlines with one of their major agents, Flight Centre in Australia, tells the story of this type of change.

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Late last week when I came to Bangkok I went to see my tailor who I have known him for many years.  He told me, with business down,, he was trying new ways to keep people well dressed. “And it’s not just about cutting the cloth for a better fit either”, he laughed in self-amusement. Adding more seriously he said “Staying in the race is the first step, and then we have to be even more creative and innovative to remain there.”

Our conversations began when I asked him to make me three suits. His reaction seemed odd, as he asked me if I was sure. Feeling the pinch it was a risky question that may reduce my order. I explained that looking sharp in business is important to project confidence you will be there for the long term for the customer. He already knew that and listened as he knew there was more. I then added smiling, “I am buying up in case you go out of business and I cannot find another tailor so good”. Read more…

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As many wrestle to make the numbers, we need to be sure our selling message is clear and we understand our buyers. That fact will never change. In selling it is also easy, in the quest to get the solution, to forget what we came for: to get an order. As the salesperson deals with tasks that surround his objective; education, positioning, proving, competitors, objections handing and so on, how many times, as a buyer, have you been ready and the salesman did not come back?

Need is the mother of invention … as is selling. So the task of selling is never simple or easy.  Like motherhood the selling rewards can be good, especially when you use all your skills to bring it all together. Understanding buyer resistance and what’s missing will make practical selling easier and close more deals.

When the business buyer signal is red, invariably one of three things is missing.  A prospect will never be qualified or ready until they have:

1.        identified a compelling dissatisfaction with how things are,

2.        a clear vision of what the improved state would look like &

3.        a workable plan to get it with at least the first steps clear.

The buy option goes green when all three are clear and then the need for change is an  imperative.

It is very easy to get off the track and lose focus when clarifying points of process or technical impact issues.  However selling is social not technical, so we must not miss the point that a salesperson’s job is to bring in the deal. It is not your technical advisor.

As a salesperson, once you are certain your proposal is sound in these terms, you should have no concern to move to the closing question, "Is there any reason that we would not to expect your order? 

As a practical first step to better sales, try doing a survey with your clients. Simply ask people what they need fixed?  As you ask about their problems and listen well to see if you can help, you can move to next steps.

People with the number 1 issue, "dissatisfaction," will always be happy to talk to you and will let you know what they need changed.  Once you know this you are well underway.

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When developing your sales process there are some basic questions of approach you must have well planned. Her are some good points to use as a boiler plate for expanding.

Who is your Market?

You are not selling to those who already have the solutions but rather to those who need the solutions and who might be reluctant to invest in the high end software.

What is your product?

How is the product is different from the well tested all inclusive brand name product? 

How is the product perceived?

People are sceptical of the sales pitch from the sales person who does not use the product and are not naïve about software and can recognise re branding.

What motivation to buy?

They do not want to be left behind and this is more important than how the product has been developed.

They need product that promotes best practice and addresses their needs.

The product provides solutions for problems?

Listen first before offering solutions?

Ensure a match of solutions for problems.

The software needs to be targeting the behaviours it seeks to improve and the first task in sales is to listen to the  

THE PITCH

What are the problems and where the current packages are costly and inefficient?  The sales person can anticipate.

Plan for facilitation of both the method of solving problems but also way of working with the processes of the organisation

Build in reviews to demonstrate the process of efficiency and effectiveness (you use specific models here)

Be inclusive of all stakeholders and departments concerned during buy-in with a face to face approach with key personnel (e.g. budget personnel)

Facilitation of the change process in the first 3 months of the project.

Be prepared to demonstration and do proving work on the products ability and effectiveness. This also serves to reduce the risk for all parties with better scope definition and accurate estimates for implementation.

Additional information .

Plan the sales process end to end using 5 step method. And don’t miss any steps. Most sales fail or abort late after costly investment for that reason. 

This article was by ciontibuted Nada Mills

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