Monthly Archives: April 2011

Sell Value (Please!)

Posted by on April 26, 2011 No comments

Dear B2B Sales Representatives,

I had a discussion with one of your colleagues for a particular business product.

The first 20 minutes of your colleagues conversation with me was spent primarily speaking poorly of his competitors. From features, to prices, to business models, he slagged them all.

I have to tell you, at the point where he was stating how superior his business model was, I had to point out that a CEO and business, both of which are a household name in the PC space, used the same business model as this sales rep’s competitor, to good effect I might add.

That type of talk is needless.

Sell your value. Sell the perception of your value.

You are not getting far with me if your ‘value proposition’ is how bad your competitor is.

Sincerely

Elliot Ross

IT Manager

Lesson From A Fundraising Teenager

Posted by on April 25, 2011 No comments

A neighbors teenage daughter was canvassing our neighbourhood to raise money for a charitable event. You know how these things go, some minimal product such as boxes of chocolate are used as a ‘product’ to solicit your donation.

And it seemed that this young lady was a little ashamed of the product that she was selling to raise money.

First? of course, I purchased some.

And had to mention to her that even if she was not fond of which he was using as material to sell. To let that go, and do her enthusiastic best. Because in reality- it is the charity that is the value being sold.

In smaller businesses, we all have to wear many hats. We all do many jobs, tasks or roles.

And some of these roles or tasks?

We don’t like them either.

But we have to let it go. And do our best.

Because sometimes the goals of what we are doing, what we are working toward, is more important than what we are actually doing.

First Name Basis

Posted by on April 21, 2011 1 comment

We discussed doing a survey about a tool supplied to a customer, not to be used by the customer, but to be used by their customers.

One chap who is already overloaded was asked to make these calls. As he is busy, I suggested that we use existing capabilities to email a survey request.

The Company President denied that with one excellent observation;

We are on a first name basis with these guys, I want to keep it like that

He could not have picked a better answer.Hand Shake

Technology can do wonderful things, but some times face to face and a First Name basis wins hands down.

Photo Credit Zach Taylor via flickr

A Stolen Smartphone

Posted by on April 19, 2011 No comments

Sometime on Sunday a smartphone was lost or stolen.

Later that evening, using a computer, the victim found that whomever found, or stole the phone started deleting email.

The account was quickly disabled by the carrier.

Still – yes – it can happen to you.

The SMB Takeaway

Small to Medium businesses often neglect security with mobile devices.

Don’t.

Update: this article references a study that states;

…two million mobile phones are lost or stolen every year. That’s one every fifteen seconds.

 

 

The Financial Impact of SMB IT

Posted by on April 18, 2011 No comments

Many people have found posts on this blog by searching for certain terms in the major search engines such as Google or Bing. This WordPress blog software, as well as tools such as Google Analytics will show me what terms people are searching for, and which content here they have found.

Some of the least searched for content is some posts I did encouraging SME managers to perform a zero based budget of their IT spending. I can only assume that every SMB already does it perfectly, or it is something too many businesses don’t think is important enough to do. (my experience states option 1 is not the correct answer)

But it is important – and can be very important.

Some Numbers

Just about 4 years ago, our technology expenses were about 6.25 percent of revenue. (some numbers have been rounded) Although that six and a quarter percent was a little high, we are a completely digital business so it is not completely outrageous. (see this post: Real SMB IT: Company Size Is The Wrong Metric)

In less than a year, that number shot up to almost 10% of revenue.

I can hear you laughing and asking what the hell is this idiot up to! Is he chopping up the bottom line and spending money like a tourist in Las Vegas? Alas, I wish that was it, that would assume there was some enjoyment.

I stated 4 years ago, flip back your calendar 4 years, then start moving forward, you should find some key dates appearing…..

Lehman collapses, Bear Stearns….

Yes, we hit this recession. It was our top line that took a brutal hit. It was evaporating.IT Spending

And with significant fixed costs in our IT – those costs could not just drop in size as we did.

Through some significant changes, we returned our IT spend to 6 percent of revenue over the next 8 to 10 months. Of course that is the ‘new normal’ lower top line revenue. We are also making plans to reduce it even more.

The SMB Takeaway

As a CFO or other manager responsible for IT, take your current top line revenue, then plug in my numbers.

After you have done that, do you still think accurately determining your IT spending is not critical?

Does your current knowledge of your IT spending even give you the slightest clue where you can begin to reduce costs?

Photo Credit: Nick Weisner via flickr

 

Ready, FIRE! Aim?

Posted by on April 14, 2011 No comments

Ready, FIRE! Aim? This term has always been used with negative connotations. The implication being action was taken with incorrect assumptions, without planning, or without sound objectives or goals.Target

At least here in North America, the term has been pretty much synonymous with similar terms such as;

  • Going off half cocked
  • Throwing it against a wall to see what sticks
  • A scatter shot approach

Each of these terms implicitly assumes that we are acting (or reacting) to events with little or no forethought or planning.

Moving on Web Time

Our environment has changed though. We no longer have years to plan and attempt to implement some types of strategies.So I join many others who state sometimes we need to accept the ambiguity and do it this way.

To be clear, if you are investing millions in a new manufacturing facility or plant we can’t afford to ignore accurate planning. Physical investments cannot be adjusted as quickly as digital (or digitized) investments can. And to make the exception that proves the rule, Apple moves their manufacturing on Web Time very well, but that is beyond this article.

Ready, FIRE! Aim

In our digital world, there are times when this approach makes sense. Web based technologies and our human social attitudes and tools are changing so rapidly that it is impossible for marketing, sales, operations, or any part of your business to perform multi-year studies before trying to write that first line of software.

It is not as simple as calling it ‘trial and error’, as you have plans, you have goals. You just need to realize that you are not going to hit the target the first time. What we can try to do is iteratively narrow the gap between the first attempt and the target goals.

As eBay CEO John Donahoe said in the March 2011 Harvard business review;

…you’re better off moving and, if you don’t get it exactly right, make an adjustment

In this web centric day and age, being fast, and reacting quickly, can be a huge success. This aligns with the mantra of fail fast, fail cheap. Test as many things as inexpensively as you can, then refocus, and try to get closer to the ones that brought the most success, rinse and repeat.

Photo Credit: Andy Rogers via flickr

A Picture is Worth a Thousand……

Posted by on April 12, 2011 No comments

Many of us have heard the old adage; A picture is worth a thousand words.

Now what about simplicity? what is that worth?

Now, how about pictures and simplicity?

Imagine this situation:

Your business rents heavy-duty construction machinery.

Your problem?

You are having an issue with machinery being returned damaged. Unlike, say, renting a car, were a small knick or ding in the paint job is quickly visible, with heavily used construction machinery that is used on or in harsh environments?That can be harder to track and manage.

The resolution?

Date and time stamped photographs of the equipment before being delivered to the customer. Then again after it is returned.

“So now when [damaged equipment] comes back, we can prove it, and I know the courts will uphold that time stamp,” Box explains. The company collected about $100,000 from customers to pay for damaged equipment in the first three months the new system was in place; previously, it would have had to pay the cost of repairing the equipment out of its own pocket.

The SMB take awayHeavy Equipment

In this case? Simplicity!

I love it.

Photo Credit Bill Jacobus via flickr

Managing IT: On Outcome Bias

Posted by on April 6, 2011 2 comments

Last week I wrote this post titled; Software, Hacks Upon Hacks. I am going to dive a little deeper into the psychology of this.Wrong Way

Quick and dirty changes to IT systems, without adequate documentation or guidance will leave your IT infrastructure in a state that I call brittle. And by brittle. I mean susceptible to breakage, which causes downtime which costs money.

This is an issue that all IT teams need to deal with, but it can be an extra challenge for CFOs, CEOs or other general business management that are responsible for managing IT to realize or visualize. It is challenging because you need to ensure that IT teams are truly understanding and responsible for what goes on ‘under the hood’ of IT systems and development.

Complexity…

Your IT systems are complex. hardware, software, all tied up into systems and services. And complex systems rarely have a single cause that initiates a failure. Multiple small and seemingly unrelated events can all add up to producing failure within particular circumstances.

And Outcomes…

Within the fields of psychology and behavior. There is a term called outcome bias.Which Wikipedia defines as;

(to) judge a past decision by its ultimate outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made

Or to put it bluntly, “Hey it worked! just leave it like that!”

So your IT team says the problem is fixed, the outcome? hey it works right? But truly- was the quality of decision making in the how it was fixed worth giving kudos to that team?

What outcome bias means to us is that as long as it worked, all must be good! So in this case at least, the outcome worked and we don’t ask further questions.

It can be tough for non-technology managers responsible for IT to understand if your technology teams are making these undocumented shortcuts that may have an immediate outcome that works, but leads to fragility and brittleness within your IT systems that will increase the chances of failure down the road.

For a CFO or other general manager managing IT, the only way I personally know of to reduce the risk, is to ensure that there is open and accurate communications on any deviation, incident or problem that affects IT services. This communication must include how it was resolved, and some simple questions asking; is that the best way?

As an example, if your software development team solves a particular problem, was this a good method? is it one that can be used in similar situations? is this method documented as a good practice?

The alternative is that all future issues are handled differently. In other words five different solutions to the same problem. So if something goes wrong? Finding where in those five different solutions the problem occurred will be difficult.

Ask Questions

If there has been an IT service failure is IT telling you that it is fixed? have they said that the issue is closed? Have they identified why the issue occurred? Is the way that the issue was resolved considered a good practice?

The SMB Takeaway

Just because an outcome was successful in fixing an IT service failure, there is no guarantee that it was fixed in a fashion that will ensure that it does not happen again.

Ensuring that there are guidelines and good practices for maintaining and repairing your IT systems and services over the long term will reduce outages, unscheduled downtime and costs and also provides opportunities for improvement and learning.

Avoiding outcome bias means we need to dig deeper than a blanket statement such as; ‘it is working’ and understanding that underlying causes need to be addressed.

Photo Credit Jack Zalium via flickr

On Online Sales Leads

Posted by on April 5, 2011 1 comment

I recently read a brief article in the March 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review titled; The Short Life of Online Sales Leads.

The statistics in the article demonstrate that:

…firms that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query written nearly 7 times as likely to qualify the lead

And one of the larger reasons the article states as a reason for small business to neglect online leads?

Is difficulties in getting leads from their CRM systems on anything more than a daily basis.

As a general manager in the small to medium enterprise, does this make sense to you?

People, process, then technology

If you could have a process, where people can review in less than an hour applicable online sales leads, I am pretty sure your IT can automate that by generating e-mails, or other types of alerts or notifications.

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