Customer On The Edge

It is a miracle that I am making this posting today. On Tuesday my hard drive went into meltdown. Somehow I was fortunate enough to get the image cloned and over to my external drive in time before the meltdown was complete. As a card carrying technophobe you might be surprised to hear that I know what an external hard drive is, not to mention that I am capable enough to capture and restore the image of my entire C drive. That is a big part of the miracle.

There would be no external hard drive at my house if I trusted my IT department. I would have otherwise relied on them to make sure that I was covered. But, I took matters into my own hands and as a result I recovered from the crash with only a couple of days of productivity loss.

Sorry to be airing the dirty laundry, but the cat is now out of the proverbial bag. However, this certainly can’t be any surprise to see such a thing in print here. I have been reading posting after posting of the same topic – strain between IT and the business.

This is really a shame – it doesn’t have to be this way. Back in the 80’s it seemed like the finance department was the function wearing the black hat. Then, in the 90’s it seemed like HR was the subject of everyone’s fury. Now I guess it is IT’s turn for heat. Is the heat warranted?

What is most in the press recently is the power struggle between those who represent business needs, such as the BA role, and those in IT that are charged with satisfying those needs. As a consultant focused on technology solutions, I get to see both sides of this struggle and can attest to the fact that it is real. And, with a perspective into both sides of the issue, I do take a side.

Too many of the IT functions that I serve have a mindset that their work is at the center of the organization – they have lost their perspective. IT is a support function; there to support the business. Their job is to provide the automation needed to achieve business goals. They are not to decide which business goals are a priority or whether the business goals are the right goals. They are to do what ever it takes to support the achievement of the goals.

This is not to say that IT does not need to play a leadership role or be involved in identifying the path to strategy execution. But once we are all on that path, their role is to enable. Too much of the time they disable with dysfunction. One report recently published cited that 50% of the BA role was taken up with work that should have otherwise been performed by IT, but the struggle got in the way.

Yes, these are strong words, but this has to be put on the table and addressed. Which ever side of the fence you sit on, you need to reach across to the other side and work this through. If you need some help, go find somebody in HR (since they are out of the dog house now) and ask them to facilitate the problem resolution. The acrimony is causing too much waste, which we can ill afford in the economy we are now facing.

Oh, before you send along that hate mail to me, just remember, I have friends and family in IT – this is meant as an act of tough love, not a bull fight.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My first professional, wear-a-suit-and-tie job was for the world’s largest computer company. At the time it had 360,000 employees across all continents – not bad for a company that got its fame by manufacturing and selling typewriters.

As a young buck I had an early opportunity to speak with a high ranking official of this venerable company, a division president I recall, but it was a long time ago. Something he said to me at the time made me wary of the conversation, but it stuck with me, even though I was not sure at the time how to really assimilate its meaning. I was working within a function that provided leadership training to managers in the division, so the conversation was focused on leader qualities.

This extremely powerful, sickeningly high paid, navy suit and wing tips Ivy Leaguer told me that he was frustrated with the fact that, by climbing to the position he was now occupying, he had lost any real control over the organization that he was in charge of. At the age of 22, and a student of organizational psychology, I was dumbfounded. I was still getting a grip on the concept of power and this did not fit with what I was learning.

Flash forward the better part of three decades and check out a study recently published by a large audit and consulting firm. In the report outlining the interesting results of this executive survey is a bar chart listing the factors executives believe are the biggest barriers to their ability to affect change. The longest bars in the chart place the problem squarely at the feet of other senior level and middle mangers in their organizations. In other words, senior executives believe they have lost control and the rest of management is in their way of actually having an impact on things.

So, I am a little embarrassed to disclose that I remain dumbfounded. I didn’t buy it then, and I still don’t buy it now. Is it possible that you lose your ability for influence just by virtue of your rank at the top of the organization chart? No, I think not. Business leaders do have plenty of control but some may be at the helm of a ship where the controls are challenged.

Sometimes I get frustrated with my boat. Shifting into forward can involve a moment of delay. Turning while in reverse can lead to a position I had not intended. A bit of wind and current can easily thwart attempts at docking with dignity. In tight maneuvering spots, such as in a marina surrounded by expensive boats tied up in their slips, sloppy controls, especially in compromising conditions, can lead me to believe that my boat is in control of me, rather than the skipper being in charge. Improving the controls or improving the navigational skills of the skipper are the solution.

So, what does this have to do with executives believing their mid-mangers are the problem? I question whether the skippers have the right controls in their hands or whether they are trying to steer with loose rudders. Good leaders will fix the controls. Leaders that blame their mid-managers are trying to steer the ship and may not even realize their controls are compromised.

When it comes to CRM, solid steering requires a clear customer direction and metrics to determine how well objectives are being achieved. If the plan is in place and measurement systems working, then it will be clear if parts of the ship are causing drag. Those parts need to be corrected. The skipper is responsible for making sure the corrections happen. If not, the skipper is accountable.

On the other hand if the plan and measurements are not in place, the ship is going to be hard to steer, but it is not mid-management’s fault. The skipper is responsible for making sure the ship is properly outfitted. If not, the skipper is still accountable. Under neither of these circumstances are mid-managers the problem.

I think the blame is incorrectly assigned. My bet is on the rudder being loose. If the controls get tightened up, it will be clear where boat isn’t performing. Then the skipper can take action.

Ahoy

Posted by Matt Johnson at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know what CRM is. I am certain of it. Therefore, I don’t need to share with you what I think it is.

Our company works with strategic partners in collaboration to bring the benefits of CRM to our mutual clients. At a recent even where I was leading a session on the topic of selling CRM we were discussing this exact subject. We all know what CRM is.

More over, so do our clients. All the folks I talk to are quite certain that they understand what CRM means, thank you. So, it is certainly a waste of time to talk about the definition of this three letter acronym.

Funny thing is, ask somebody to put this in writing, and then it gets interesting. With 10 people in the room, you will get 11 answers. There are a lot of different interpretations of what we think is obvious, and, in my opinion, there are misconceptions too.

Differences of opinions make the world go round. That is fine. But when we use a term and assume that everyone follows the same interpretation, we can get caught short. I think it makes sense for us to be clear with our versions and don’t let assumptions get in the way of serving our customers who rely on our expertise.

I have some strong convictions on what this definition is and what it should mean to our customers. You are welcome to adopt what I offer below or use this as a foundation for developing your own working definition.

1) CRM does not equate to technology. This is the biggest misconception and not talking about this hurts our customers. Many are still misled by this belief. The greatest risk is that it sucks people into believing that a technical solution can solve difficult organizational problems.
2) CRM helps to manage all customer touchpoints. CRM is not just for the sales process. Rather it is a strategy for managing all interactions, plus secondary activity that supports touchpoints. Is order management an ERP function or CRM? My definition of CRM encompasses order management.
3) Further, CRM is intending to derive synergy across functions, not just touchpoints on their own. Successful CRM connects Sales with Marketing, not just between these functions and their customers.
4) At the core of CRM is the dynamic of people, process and technology. CRM brings these three elements together as effectively as possible. Good CRM focuses on all three.
5) Ultimately, CRM must be in place to achieve business results. What ever the investment, what ever the effort, CRM must be focused on outcomes.

So, this is my perspective. I would be delighted to hear what others would add or modify. Ultimately, the objective is to make sure when we discuss the pursuit of CRM with our customers that we are all singing from the same page.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 01:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a project underway in my basement. It involves plastering, wiring, finish carpentry, and, eventually, painting. The project has been underway for years. However, this weekend somebody needs to actually sleep down there, so the project pace has picked up a bit. It never ceases to amaze me how powerful deadlines can be.

The term deadline has a pretty powerful meaning, when you look at the words within it and the history of the term. Apparently the term comes from the physical or virtual line surrounding a prison along which a prisoner can expect to be shot if crossed. That is a pretty powerful metaphor, even though we don’t think about it consciously when we use the term in our regular dialogue. Metaphors in our regular language have a pretty interesting way of influencing us. Listen to a recording of the late great George Carlin as he describes the metaphor differences between terms from football and baseball. But, I digress.

We set time boundaries for ourselves driving our action to be completed within that dead line, or otherwise we are toast. With the exception of those with pathological procrastination disorder, setting deadlines is a very, very effective tool for managing our time. And, this serves as a particularly effective tool within our business projects, including CRM.

Many of the deadlines we work within make a lot of sense. Projects need to be completed within a budget cycle. They need to be completed in time for supporting an event. They need to be finished quickly to resolve a problem that is causing losses.

There are also deadlines that don’t make sense. They are set for the purpose of completion, but their inappropriate targeting may result in dysfunction for the project. I have seen project teams work 16 hour days, week after week, just because there is a random deadline. This kind of project death march causes burnout and unnecessary turnover of important project resources. Poorly set deadlines can also cause scope-related expenses to soar, driving the overall project budget to be worse than if conducted along a more reasonable timeline.

Deadlines can also be set too far out and serve no value in driving to completion. Within these circumstances, project behaviors form a culture of under-motivated activity. There will always be time tomorrow, so why do it today?

Ultimately, I think we take the deadline thing for granted. They really work, but need to be wielded like a sharp tool, such as the metaphorical double-edged sword. Let’s give the right attention to this one element of the project so we don’t inadvertently cross that perimeter of demise.

And, yes, thank you for asking, the basement looks pretty good. Come on by if you need a place to stay or want to play some ping pong or foosball.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 01:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got the boat in this week, early enough in the weekend to actually enjoy it for a few hours. It is truly amazing how many variables have to work out each boating season in order to have the vessel afloat rather than in dry dock.

There is the mooring that has to be inspected and then placed on the shore at low tide. Then there are the eleven dock sections that have to go onto the flatbed one at a time, in order, hauled to the launch, and motored into place – God willing and the tide is right. Next, the dinghy and its motor have to be put in working order, which was quite a to do this spring. Of course there is the boat itself – unwrapping the winter cover, chasing out the squirrels, getting things cleaned up. And up to this point we have not even started up the engine to see if it is going to cooperate one more year.

One of these items chooses not to cooperate and it becomes a set back that will ruin the goal of being out on the water for a sunny Sunday afternoon. It takes a lot of perseverance and faith that everything is going to fall into place and the plans one has made for guests out on the boat will be realized. But, to pull it off you have to go forward with confidence otherwise that sunny Sunday afternoon is going to happen without you. Each portion of the plan has to be attended to with the expectation and confidence that all the other elements will also pull through.

Managing a CRM program requires this same confidence. You have to believe once your plan is in place and your gears are in motion that each of the elements will come together. You have to trust your process and you have to trust your team. You have to move everything forward.

He who hesitates is lost.

Being overly cautious to avoid a risk and causing a delay may prove more costly than moving forward with confidence and making an error, especially when consistently over cautious. Needing to get the messaging just right can make you miss a milestone. Getting absolutely everyone’s input can lead to a watered down product. Attempting to boil the ocean by including each and every requirement may lead to nothing accomplished.

Set out with a goal. Build your plan. Trust your process. Adjust with the feedback. Keep moving forward, the rewards are wonderful.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On a fairly regular basis I get asked to work with organizations that are unhappy with their CRM programs. They want to know why they cannot achieve what they were led to believe was going to be possible. So, we go in and conduct an examination of a number of factors, many of which are common culprits. The things we typically find that get in the way are mostly involving the lack of a sound CRM strategy, insufficient management consensus on what the program should achieve, varying usability issues that drive poor adoption, and then there is the IT function.

If you take a look at the research reports provided by the industry analysts you will see different studies that show a common set of factors that continuously compromise CRM programs. We also repeatedly find the same set of factors, with one exception, that being the last item on the list above. I have never seen the IT function listed in these reports because it is politically incorrect. The analyst firms are completely underwritten by IT subscribers and the technology companies that they are analyzing. You can’t bite the hands that feed you.

But I ask the question, is your IT department playing a gatekeeper role with regard to your CRM system? Is there a shroud of mystique veiling what your system can and cannot do? Are you limited by a silicon curtain?

Please don’t send hate mail. I am not on a personal crusade against the IT function. I have family and friends that reside there. However, it is very important for this strategic business function to be fully aware of when they are serving as a source or the source of limitations to the efficacy of a very critical business solution. In other words, if IT is causing some of the problems, they need to own up to it. I do see this situation arising on a more common frequency than you might believe.

How does this come about? I have seen multiple reasons. Most commonly this is the result of insufficient skill and resources. The folks in IT are asked to do more than they are capable of and they have simply given up on saying no. A worse variation of this is the under resourced team that won’t admit that they can’t handle the task. Many times the IT function is asked to run the CRM program and they run it as a technology project, not recognizing the heavy business and organizational requirements involved. Implementing CRM is not like implementing Outlook - it requires an immense amount of business context.

Some IT functions want to keep the CRM system from getting too hard to manage and support, so the philosophy is to contain it. Supporting the business takes a back seat to managing the application. There are also functions that waste cycles in turf wars with the business or the implementation vendor. Politics get in the way of producing a good solution. These last two scenarios are not as common as the former situations, but when we run into them they can be the most devastating to the effectiveness of the program and hardest to correct.

Once again, this set of observations is meant to be constructive. I have never met a CIO or Director of Applications that was intent on sabotaging the success of a CRM program. But, while this may not be driven willfully, the effects are still the same – CRM investments are compromised. IT has a tough challenge with the mission to both support the business and also serve as the steward of the company’s technology assets. Optimizing the assets can sometimes appear to get in the way of serving and maintaining the correct balance is performed on the edge of a razor. Awareness is the important thing. Keeping the dialogue going with the business is the key. Don’t let that tough project status meeting you just returned from become another brick in the wall.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had the pleasure of some down time for reading. It was one of those cross country flights from bean town to fog city. Once a year we converge as Larry takes over Howard Street and 40 thousand members of the world’s best IT organizations fill the Moscone.

After getting through a copy of Ski Magazine I switched genres and dove into a techie editorial on EIM. While it was a difficult switch to make from a compelling photo journalistic essay of Sun Valley, I somehow became interested in Enterprise Information Management. Yes, I understand that those of you out there who know me don’t believe that could be true, but it is true, just not for the correct reasons.

But it gets worse. Not only do I read on the plane all about the virtues of bringing together every possible source of data a company could ever hope to generate all into one spot, but then, the opening keynote address the next day at Open World lauds the same exact virtues.

This is really starting to bug me by this point.

So you are all thinking, what is the problem with all of this? The tech industry is finally making some progress to help companies manage their businesses better. Why should I be having difficulty with it all?

I’ll tell you what my problem is. I think ideas like EIM are going to crush my clients who are already struggling with mountains of data that they can’t handle. These businesses have too much information at their fingertips now. This overwhelming amount of data has already reached the point of becoming very loud noise. EIM is going to be a sonic boom.

The problem is that we probably don’t have a choice. This is all coming as progress that we can’t prevent. So, I guess if you can’t beat them, join them. But we are going to join on our own terms.

We need to make sure that all this data does not drown the business – we need to make sure that it nurtures the business instead. This can only be done by turning that data into something that provides both meaning and relevance, filtering out the noise.

Stay tuned for more on achieving meaning and relevance.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may recall a recent posting where I raised the issue of business functions breaking away from corporate IT in order to obtain their own business applications, most notably a CRM platform that fits their requirements over the standardized system designed to fit a broader range of needs.

Since putting up that posting I ran across a blog site that has also elaborated on the situation, showing both sides of this thorny predicament. However, the author of that site has taken one step in the direction of IT that I cannot support. Stated directly is the recommendation that, although the business needs to have its requirements met, IT must have the final say. On this point I cannot disagree more.

Giving IT the final say on what application a business will use is the equivalent of giving HR the final say on the next recruit to be hired into that same business function. That would be preposterous. Wouldn’t it? Yes, absolutely. IT and HR are in place to serve the needs of the business, not the other way around. Everybody repeat that out loud a few times until it sinks in.

However, this can result in a battle waged in the name of control that can waste a lot of time and other resources. Very recently I advised a client smack dab in the middle of this conundrum to work with IT in a way that enabled them to believe that they had the final say. Was this manipulative? I prefer to think it was collaborative. And I would advise the IT people the same. Work this out in such a way as to get the IT standards met, but do it also in a way that lets the business believe they have the final say.

When the business has to go around IT and get its own CRM system, I do not think we should view this as rogue behavior. I believe we should look closely at what is going on in the IT organization and encourage some soul searching.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 02:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s hard. You have a lot at stake. The competition is tough. Your customers have high expectations. You have to rely on your team. When somebody lets you down, you have a long memory. Some times when things go wrong, there has to be blame.

The IT function takes it on the chin often - sometimes rightly so – sometimes not. Staff functions are easily made into scapegoats, but technology and the high expectations that go along with business technology solutions put IT at the center of the cross hairs, very often. Too often the blame is unjust.

On the other hand, I believe my grandmother was often heard saying something like, “if you can’t stand the heat, don’t stand in the kitchen.” If you are going to cook, you have to operate by the fire in the stove. If you are going to preside over technology, you better be prepared to live or die by the technical solutions you provide, and some of them pack some heat.

I have a client right now with a well functioning IT department that has decided on a set of standards for the corporation, which is a good idea generally speaking. Allowing each of the different businesses to do its own thing can be a problem. However, it seems to have gotten into trouble by standardizing on a CRM platform that literally nobody wants. Different groups are slowly committing mutiny, one group at a time, abandoning the standard and adopting their own platform. It is kind of a mess.

How does something like this possibly happen? In my opinion, it is a situation that plain and simply cannot be tolerated. If the IT function adopts a technology that the business rejects, then it is a necessity to find a technology that the business will accept. IT is a support function after all, not a police state. It is there strictly to support the requirements of the business, not dictate how the business will function.

Brother and sister CIO’s I implore you, please don’t declare a software package as a corporate standard until you have done an honest due diligence, and you have the business on board and involved in an educated decision. This is serious stuff, not to be decided based on politics, cronyism or technological purism. Nobody wins unless the technology supports the needs of the business as a first priority.

Selecting software to best fit the needs of the business can be a tricky exercise, especially with all the different options available. Look for an upcoming entry focused specifically on the process of evaluating and selecting CRM software to best satisfy the requirements of the business.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been finding that it is quite in vogue for my clients to refer to themselves or to one of their functions as suffering from corporate ADD. While this affliction is not something to joke about for those who suffer its effects, I do find it commonly referenced in only partially teasing fashion within many of the organizations that I visit. No function within the enterprise is pointed to more commonly than sales.

You may think your sales function has Attention Deficit Disorder, but it is more likely Limited Discretionary Attention (LDA), the insufficient ability to give the requisite amount of attention to all the different issues that demand it. ADD implies the inability to stay focused due to incapability, but I think this is an unfair characterization for many of the sales functions that I advise.

These people are not incapable - to the contrary - they are often amazingly capable, but they have too much on their proverbial plates. It may appear that they can’t stay focused on the topic that you want to be the center of their attention. The problem is that you are competing with a bevy of other just as important topics, and they all require attending to now.

If you want to work successfully with functions encountering LDA, you have to learn how to work within this environment – it is not a disorder, it is a reality. I learned this lesson most potently when working with a global media company a while back. All of the executives had an array of video screens in their offices, monitoring most of the cable news stations. My time with these high-powered individuals was spent sharing their attention with news anchors across the channels. To be stopped mid-sentence was continuous. To have an exec bolt from the room shouting orders at handlers in the adjoining cubes just as I was about to get to the point was commonplace.

This was their work environment, and I needed to adapt if I were to be effective. There are methods for making this work. Some suggestions you might consider to work effectively with your LDA function follow:

- Sound bites on steroids – if you want to get a point across, be brutally succinct, cut to the chase first, give detail second, don’t blather

- Solutions, not just problems – while this is important in a lot of places, the last thing you want to do is to point out a problem without a solution in your pocket (otherwise, you are the problem)

- Relevance, to the right person – raising something to somebody with LDA when the topic is important to you but not to them is the first step toward becoming noise

- Avoid becoming noise – you have a finite number of times to raise things, if you always sound the same and don’t vary your tune, you are officially noise

- Don’t take it personally – perhaps the hardest lesson to assimilate, but being ignored is not a sign of rudeness or your status, it is an indication of another priority getting attention instead of yours

Posted by Matt Johnson at 04:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Would you like to get more from your consulting vendors? Don’t burn their bridges! So, what the heck does that mean? Let me offer a case for illustration.

I have a client where it is literally easier for me to get a meeting with the President of the North American business operations than it is for IT VPs to get on his calendar. And that upsets those hard working IT execs to no end. They have even resorted to attempting to block those meetings unless they are invited.

Well, let’s look into this a bit. When you hire a consulting firm to assist with initiatives such as CRM they will come in to the organization with a need to understand both business issues and technology solutions. These types of firms span both management and technology consulting expertise. As a result, they tend to develop connections to both sides of the organization, no matter which side brought them in.

Unfortunately, this ability to establish relationships with the business can be threatening to members of the IT staff. But this need not be the case. Good consultants serve as bridges between the business and IT. They bring in objectivity to a situation that can often be riddled with emotion. Many of my executive-level clients have become jaundiced toward the IT function, in some cases with good reason, and in some cases not. Either way, consultants can serve to bridge the chasm and, if permitted, assist with bridge building internally.

When IT execs feel threatened by their consultants the bridges are either prevented, blocked, or are attempted to be torn down. This is tragically counter productive. Most consulting firms are very sensitive to this difficult situation. They recognize they have multiple constituencies to satisfy and will find ways to assist all stakeholders to be successful. The best way to leverage consultants is to allow the bridges to be built and then build upon them further. This will enable IT to be in the best position to work as a partner to help achieve business objectives.

Use your consultants to your best advantage.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was in college my program was pre-med studies and as a result I constantly compare things to the field of medicine. It got so bad that I even wrote my master’s thesis using the metaphor of the organization as an organism. I can get out of control easily. It should not come as too big of a surprise that I often consider my business clients as ailing and in need of some type of organizational medicine.

Everyone has watched enough episodes of MASH or ER to have a firm grasp of the concept of the triage unit. These are the folks that determine which direction the injured go – quickly into emergency treatment, wait in line for the more critical to be attended, or passed along to clergy of one denomination or another for some version of the last rites. Seldom, but once in a while, a patient argues with the medical staff over the decision to be moved in one direction or another. I recently encountered one of those clients.

In this particular case the recently implemented hosted CRM just wasn’t working. Nobody was using it the way that sales management had expected. It did not perform well. Accounts were often assigned to the wrong sales rep. And, nobody really acted like they cared if the system was utilized or not utilized. One sales agent stated during an interview that he stopped using it and nothing ever happened.

The client wanted emergency treatment - get this thing working better as quickly as possible to get user adoption up high. But when we asked what benefit high utilization would gain the company, the answer was, “Because we need utilization to be high to justify the investment!” With a bit more digging we discovered that we had a basic disconnect between the use of CRM and a business purpose for CRM to serve. It was a mystery to the users for sure. This lack of alignment between CRM and the business was just a symptom of other areas also lacking alignment.

The prescription for improvement was to get consensus among the management team to determine what purpose CRM was to serve for the business, how it will benefit the company and the user. Once this was clear and agreed the next step would be to set out a plan for accomplishing the goals, which would include some short term initiatives to address the usability problems. The treatment plan was calling for a comprehensive path to recovery – one that would take some effort on behalf of the patient to get better.

Unfortunately the treatment plan was rejected by the patient who only had tolerance for a quick bandage in order to get back out to the action. “We will make people use the system to give us a forecast – they will benefit from not having to do forecasting manually – that will drive utilization up fine without any of this other unnecessary planning. Just fix the usability and we will be fine.” This was the answer we got in return.

I don’t have any more of the case study to report since this all just transpired, but I don’t think the prognosis can be all that good. We have not attended to the factors that are causing the symptoms. I am hoping to get another chance to write out another prescription when the symptoms get worse

Posted by Matt Johnson at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I get asked what I do for work during social encounters, and I am in a whimsical mood, I will often reply that I am in The Third Profession. Normally this invokes raised eyebrows. So, we all know the first profession, and the second is, without question, the legal profession. Much like hookers and lawyers, consultants are at the top of the list when it comes to making jokes about one’s profession – making consulting the third. I am accustomed to it, in fact, I just heard, for the thousandth time, someone tell the one about asking a consultant what time it is. What shocked me was that the individual repeating this joke acted like he was telling it for the first time and laughed hard as if it were really funny.

What is much worse about the jokes is that I have had many encounters with clients and prospective clients that act as if consultants are evil, as if I actually would steal their watch. Is this a deserved perception? Maybe – I have heard some horror stories, and I have cleaned up plenty of messes made by others. But I need to go on record saying that I know a monstrous number of consultants and nearly all are extremely decent and hard working people. I am happy to live with the jokes, but I think the attitude toward consultants hurts the clients more than the consultants. Consultants can and do provide critical value to companies in need of the right help.

Why do you need a consultant? I think there are three general circumstances that pretty much represent the wide array of reasons.
- Pair of hands – this is when you need help because you don’t have the time to address the issue – managing process change is an example
- Subject matter expert – this is when you don’t have the knowledge for addressing the issue – technology selection is a good example
- Change agent – this is when you need an objective outsider to help guide you through a change process – facilitating strategy development is a common example
- Combination – many situations warrant one or more of the three in combination – introducing a full SFA or CRM program is a great example

Under any of the above circumstances, utilizing an external consultant is likely going to have great pay back, helping you achieve your business objectives for a reasonable investment. In fact the ROI for the utilization of consultants is often highest compared to the use of other external professional resources because you are often causing an impact to your ability to grow, save costs, or improve your customer experience.

So how can you choose a consultant wisely? Having been on both sides of the table many times, I have some experience that leads to the following suggestions:
- Chemistry is huge – don’t ignore your feelings when you interview a consultant or a firm. If you don’t feel comfortable it means something. You are inviting people into your castle; don’t let them be barbarians.
- Date first – if you need help with a long engagement, find a way to start with a smaller, limited engagement to make sure the relationship is good. This will minimize your risk.
- References count – and examples are really good too. Ask for explanations of how they encountered similar problems as yours with past clients and ask them to describe the solution and outcomes. A consultant that can give multiple examples of problems, solutions, and outcomes has most likely got the right stuff.
- Bigger is not better – larger consulting firms do have a broader range of skills, and may have more flexibility in resourcing. However, they can have a tendency of filling your project team with junior people in order to learn at your expense. Smaller companies cannot afford unhappy clients and they tend to do everything they can to leave you satisfied.
- Cheaper is cheaper – be aware of the low cost provider because you do get what you pay for. Good consulting firms demand a premium because they are, well, good.

Consultants should not be confused with those who sell their services for pleasures of the flesh. It is OK to make the jokes, but when you hire a good consultant you are going to get a return on your investment, and it won’t need to be treated with antibiotics.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During a recent initial meeting with a prospect I was asked, what are the typical characteristics of my favorite customers. I really love this question because it allows me to expound on a topic that I don’t usually have the license to discuss very often. Some people might say that they like well funded customers, and some prefer attractive or funny customers. I have even heard some consultants say that they prefer less experienced customers because it gives them more opportunity to mold their thinking. Not me – I prefer very experienced customers - the more scar tissue the better.

First, I should probably offer a short explanation of what I do for a living, which will provide some insight into the type of customers with whom I work. I am a management consultant, focused on business transformation, and I work with companies who are trying to improve the business outcomes they achieve from working with their customers. The company where I currently belong, Innoveer Solutions, is a CRM Consultancy. We help our clients work more effectively with their customers. I personally get involved with making recommendations to my clients regarding their CRM programs – how to best plan them, how to best implement them, how to best optimize them after implementation.

So, my definition of a good customer is one who heeds the advice I am being paid to provide, and, one who actually acts upon it. Please don’t think that I state this with unnecessary bravado or hubris – my job is to provide advisory services after all, and I do stick to topics I am experienced within. I don’t, for example, advise people how to invest company profit or how to avoid paying taxes.

What I have learned is that those customers who listen best and are most likely to act on my advice are those that already have had some experience with the nature of the advice, and their experience did not go as originally expected. These customers have learned that things can go wrong. They tend to be realistic. As a business transformation consultant, I am typically advising my clients how to complete an organizational change and the content of that advice is often focused on how to reduce risks. Experienced customers have seen that those risks are real and are more likely to listen to suggestions for their mitigation. Less experienced clients don’t always believe that the risks require the level of effort recommended and want to find ways to cut corners (which typically translates into cutting effort and costs).

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to offend anyone with overgeneralizations. I have worked with many good folks who were going through their first CRM journey and through establishing a good level of trust they have been very good at carefully following advice. However, overall, I do think that those with scars have a tendency to listen best. Having said all that, I will also add briefly that I do enjoy working with nice people, too.

Posted by Matt Johnson at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)