Sales Aerobics for Engineers

5 Steps for Spring Cleaning Your Client Closet

New Year’s Eve isn’t the only time to take personal inventory. It’s an ongoing process… continual self-improvement. As the Spring approaches, perhaps it’s time to clean out our professional closets as we are already one quarter into 2010.

What does your “client closet” look like? Think of your closet at home, where you have clothes and shoes you wear a lot and those clothes that are sparsely worn. And guys, this means you, too. You are not fooling me!

Your “client closet” is full of clients you like to deal with and those you don’t, just like some pants, shoes, shirts and that great worn-in sweatshirt you've had for ages that you wear every weekend. Some clients are more interesting than others, some are more innovative and some are merely dramatic without substance.

Do you like buying clothes or do you avoid this task? Is your wardrobe up to date or outdated? Do you rely on your current customers to sustain your business year after year or do you welcome the opportunity and actively engage in new client acquisition?

I’d say it’s time to Spring Clean your client closet.

Here are 5 steps to get your client closet – and yourself -  revitalized as we move into Q2 2010.

1. Take inventory of your client base. How many clients do you have? How much revenue do they generate? Is this revenue spread out evenly among all clients or do a few clients contribute to the bulk of your revenue stream? Do you even like the clients who contribute to the bulk of your gross revenue? Are they your most profitable clients?
2. What industrial / business segments comprise your client base? Into which segments do the clients contributing to the bulk of your revenue fall?  Do you like working in these particular client segments or did you “fall into” them and subsequently cultivate similar clients over time? Are these segments areas of strength for your company?
3. In terms of client company size, is your client base balanced or skewed? Do you like the composition and balance of your client base in terms of segmentation, size, revenue generation and profitability?  What types of clients are missing from your client closet?
4. Is your company good at retaining existing customers? How many new customers do you acquire each year? How important is new customer acquisition to revenue generation, based on project life cycles?  Do you acquire new customers to replace those lost or to grow the size of your client closet?
5. How dependent is your company on new projects generated from your existing customer base? How has this situation impacted your actively seeking out new customers? What if you had to start all over again and only depend on new customer acquisition? What kind of customers would you put in your client closet?

I’m not suggesting that you “reinvent” yourself and go after style points that make absolutely no sense for your business. However, taking stock of your client closet does make you consider whether your current client base is holding you back or revitalizing your business. Your existing customer base can be a springboard for business development in related business segments.

Perhaps last year and the loss of clients served as an involuntary purge of your customer base. Perhaps you have won new customers because of the necessity of replacing those you lost. Some of these new customers may be just the type of customer you should be working with for future growth.

Although every cloud may not have a silver lining, I do clean my client closet annually during Spring. This exercise allows me to revisit how I serve my client base and what they value in what I bring to their collective tables. This exercise also focuses my attention on the clients with whom I work synergistically and those who drain energy, time and profit.

Whether or not you decide to purge your client closet is up to you. However, realizing why certain clients “fit” you better than others creates a great framework from which to continuously improve your 2010 client acquisition strategy.

Why don’t you try this strategy on for size?

It’s always about the customer. Precisely because we are not stupid.

How well do you know your customers?  And I am not talking about going to the same country club that they belong to (like we can all afford that one, right?). It’s not about finding out when their birthday is, so you can send them a card (so much for Client Relationship Management software).  It’s not about being their pal or buddy or influencing their decision by wining and dining them.  As though your customers owe you something.

It’s about the ANTHROPOLOGY of your approach to business development. 

Because our customers are not disposable. You can’t just run out and get another one just like that. Vendors – no matter how much value we provide for our customers – can always be sacrificed.  Depending on the anthropology of the decision that needs to be made.

Whether you are an engineer or in sales, do you develop business with an anthropological perspective?  Hints:

1. It’s not about digging around to find the vulnerable chink in the proverbial armor that will force your hand in the customer’s decision to spec your company’s services, your recommended solution or your specific skill set.
2. It’s not about manipulating the customer’s thought processes during the presentation so they have no decision to make other than specifying - yup, you guessed it - your company’s services, your recommended solution or your specific skill set.
3. It’s not about reading one more book on sales technique to employ that silver bullet strategy that closes the deal. As though everything you’ve been doing in the past has been ineffective.
4. It’s not about all of your certifications, all of your degrees, the number of professional organizations with which you are associated or your publications in professional journals. For some reason, that stuff simply isn’t impressing your customers.

It’s about taking the time to discover the context of the decision that needs to be made. Do you know how to be an anthropologist?

Because that’s what business development is all about: how well you know your customers, their mindset and context under which they make decisions. Whether you are approaching this function from the sales or from the engineering perspective.

Just because you are talking to another engineer doesn’t mean he/she has the same agenda that you do. The decision maker has a context which directly impacts how and why a decision will be made. And sometimes the decision that is made is to make no decision at all!  I know you’ve encountered that scenario. We all have.

Just because you are talking to another business development  /  sales executive doesn’t translate into your thinking along any of the same lines. They may not even understand their own internal customers. Don’t fall into a false sense of self at any point during – or after – the business development process.While you may be impressed with yourself, your customer may not. The process may stall out.

The CONTEXT surrounding decision making governs the decision that is eventually made.  I recommend spending more time understanding context of the decision and less time trying to dazzle customers with your expertise and deliverables.

Hint: this is something that they not only didn’t teach you in engineering school but they didn’t teach any of us in any school whatsoever.  This is an acquired skill.  It’s not people skills. It’s not engineering acumen.  It’s not sales skills.

It’s authenticity. It’s being inquisitive, presumptive and just plain curious.  It’s knowing your stuff yet deciding  to not depend on your superior technical savvy or sales skills as the fulcrum for business development.

Your customers know why – and why not- they make decisions. Let them teach you… by asking them to define the context of their mindset.  Dig deeper with each question you ask.  Understand the root causality of factors impacting their decisions. It comes in layers. Like an anthropological dig. Because there is never just one decision maker. Context provides a company-wide perspective to root causality and incorporates corporate culture, attitudes towards risk and innovation and ability to run their business successfully.

If every conversation you have with someone is simply about being genuinely interested in who they are and what the context of their business decision is all about – from their perspective and their team‘s -– think about what you will learn.

Ø  You may decide not to waste your time pursuing their business – at all.

Ø  You may decide to keep in touch with them, provide information and, when their (not your) timing is more favorable, pursue your solution once again.

Ø  You may decide they are a viable candidate for your solution, but your sales cycle will not be short

Ø  You may decide the customer doesn’t need your solution at all.

Ø  You may need to teach them how to work with their internal resources to approach their problem. Which may or may not end up involving your solution.

It’s really not about your solution at all – or anyone’s for that matter.  It’s about the customer. And why they make decisions.  Why they have to make a decision.  And how compromised they are feeling about making that decision. Before you even walk through their door.

Do you know your customers that well?

Now that’s something to think about.

Can old dogs retrofit, retool and recalibrate for global economics?

Current engineering students are very, very fortunate. They are beneficiaries of the growing momentum of change in engineering education.  This growing momentum focuses not only on engineering curricula but also on preparing engineers for the context in which they will practice engineering. This preparation includes emphasis on the complementary skill sets they will need to develop in order to communicate and implement engineering solutions. 

National programs and professional organizations are focusing on acclimating and introducing grade school students to engineering as a career. Demystifying what engineering education is all about, and breaking down perceptual barriers surrounding engineers, may lead to increased interest and enrollment in math and engineering programs at the university level. What a great horizon to set sail for!

What about the engineers currently in the workforce? Or, quite frankly, engineers displaced from the workforce in 2009? How can the changing perspective in engineering education be incorporated to assist the current engineering workforce in becoming globally competitive or find another position? These engineers are the folks that have to hold the course as momentum builds and advances for the next generation of engineers.  And, like the two lead sled dogs from the team I had the pleasure of driving several weeks ago, younger dogs with lead potential are harnessed with older, more experienced lead dogs to - literally - learn the ropes.

We all approach the care and feeding of our undergraduate and graduate education differently, regardless of the academic discipline we pursued. Some of us take the core courses and focus on becoming masters of tactical solutions.  Some of us cross-train because we want to incorporate other disciplines into our perspective. Some of us are researchers, others are teachers and yet others are practitioners of our discipline. This diversity in each student’s approach, regardless of the year in which they received their technical degree, is what leads to innovation and collaboration. In other words, diverse course offerings have  always been available to all generations of engineers. However, as the current global economic paradigm takes form, the choices of courses you take, especially those for technical fields such as engineering, become more important. Even if you are an old dog.

It’s interesting how many business development and sales books have been written and are purchased and embraced by individuals in these disciplines. Regardless of whether they have a technical degree or not. Business development professionals (and yes, those pesky sales folks) may be more open to finding new tools of the trade than individuals in technical positions.  Or perhaps the manner in which business development and sales professionals learn, assimilate and retrofit their habits lends itself to continuous change. Or at least searching for the next “latest and greatest sales technique.” 

On the other side of the spectrum are folks who are predominantly technically oriented. And for the engineer who has been in the trenches practicing for years and years, the discipline and rigor of how problems are approached may present a hurdle to retooling, recalibrating and retrofitting their engineering toolkit. They truly are the masters of their discipline and have trained their brain over the years to solve problems in a specific manner.

With the emphasis in engineering education on not only what engineering students learn but also how they learn, today’s engineers may benefit from continuing education courses.  There is probably less of a generational span involved at the student – professor interface in retooling today’s engineers, while educational efforts focus on recalibrating curricula for students graduating between 2010 and 2020. And today’s engineers have one thing that today’s engineering students don’t have: experience in the field. And lots of it.

Instead of thinking of yourself as a displaced engineer or a business owner behind the 8-ball of business development, what about regarding yourself as a resource to future engineering students?  Ask yourself:

1.)   How can I contribute my years of experience to the academic experience of grade-schoolers, high schoolers and college undergrads?

2.)   What types of non-credit continuing education courses are available at my local university’s engineering school, where I can be on the receiving end of current advancements in engineering education and my contributions to class discussion provide a real-world context for my classmates?

3.)   What stewardship programs are offered by the local chapter of my professional organization, such as technology competitions, field trips to manufacturers, etc.? How can I become involved with these initiatives?

4.)   Is there an opportunity for me to mentor grade school science programs, or even teach at the grade school or high school level?

5.)   How can I best work with vocational training programs to impact the quality of technical graduates?

Just some food for thought. The engineering discipline seeks discrete answers for tactical solutions. Instead of differentiating engineers based on age, academic, or professional discipline, I encourage you to think about the similarities across the entire engineering continuum.  Retrofitting, retooling and recalibration usually involves taking parts from lots of different machines and incorporating a cross-functional perspective into implementing the desired solution.

Who else can determine the best pathway for retrofitting, retooling and recalibrating career development – for themselves and for others – than an engineer?

Think about it.

Survival of the Fittest within The Workplace Revisited

We are in the midst of economic recalibration. No surprises there.  For engineers who remain employed by the same companies they worked for in 2009, congratulations. For those engineers displaced in 2009, many of you have started your own consulting practices or are seeking in a new position.  And while I wish you all best of luck, there is more than luck involved, regardless of whether your workplace is your employer’s office or your home office.

What does it take to survive in the 2010 engineering workplace? There are many how-to business books and engineering blogs, including this one, that consider this important question. Engineering schools are pondering just what engineering education looks like in 2010 and onward. Professional development is a function of what you learned in school combined with implementing self-realization after you graduate.

In other words, what do you need to know to be effective within the CONTEXT in which you practice engineering?

CONTEXT is important. It affects personal output and productivity. CONTEXT defines the types of decisions we make on behalf of our clients and ourselves. Let’s face it, we don’t make decisions in a vacuum.

Survival of the fittest within the context of the workplace involves consistency. And I’m not talking about the rate of adoption of herd mentality.  While it’s been said that corporations foster individuals falling in the middle of the performance curve, 2009 taught us that mediocrity doesn’t afford anyone a hiding place. Engineers who felt their post-graduate degrees and certifications would insure job security were displaced.  Engineers hiding in the middle of the curve were thrust into business development roles to pick up the slack of displaced individuals at their companies.

Survival of the fittest within the workplace involves incorporating new skillsets, to the best of everyone’s ability, into the existing framework of the engineering mindset. Now that’s a lot to think about.

Survival of the fittest within the workplace incorporates cross-training your brain and engaging in risk taking, even when all the factors impacting decision making haven’t been defined. And this mindset goes against the grain of the  tactical discipline required of engineering mindset.

Survival of the fittest within the workplace implies the engineer assumes responsibility for his/her continuing education and professional development.  Yes, you read that correctly. It’s your responsibility. Your organization may recognize and support continuing education courses or certifications. However, you may need to self-finance your continuing education, presenting a short-term economic downside on your part, for longer term gain in terms of career development.

Survival of the fittest within the workplace demands a different relationship between students and educators, depending on the nature of – and the timing of - a student’s post graduate education. Not every engineering student is going to be able to afford a straight shot from undergrad through graduate and post-graduate studies. And not every engineering student has a clear-cut sense of self, their true area of specialization or “what they really want to be when they grow up.”

Survival of the fittest within the context of the worlplace involves becoming a perpetual student – or at least making the commitment to becoming a life-long learner.  Whether you are white collar or blue collar, work in a machine shop or own the machine shop - or have a dream about buying the machine shop in which you work -  success involves placing a premium in self-improvement and continuous learning .  

And continuous learning includes picking up the newspaper (hard copy or via Internet) and reading about industry trends and, well, news.

We need to broaden our CONTEXTS. We all need to become better at learning and connecting the dots, and not just those in front of our professional noses. We need to understand the interrelationship between what we read, professionally, and what we hear in terms of news.  Have you ever considered the impact of discussing the daily news with folks over lunch – presenting your opinion and defending or challenging or building upon an idea?  That lunchtime discussion group can become the fulcrum for continuing education, not to mention improved skillsets in terms of communication and presentation. 

Survival of the fittest within the workplace doesn’t have to feel like a continuous uphill battle. It’s where and how you seek knowledge, constantly, and how you incorporate it, that can make a tremendous difference in who you are.  Being a lifelong learner has to do with being curious and inquisitive, and engaging with others . Ultimately one’s ability to interact leads to confidence and personal development.

Life long learning is not performance art. Some folks treat their workplace demeanor like an ongoing act to sustain their employment. Life long learning is not taking one course after another – in a vacuum – and rarely sharing insights with others in an open, non-academic setting.

Think about it. Read the news. Pick up a book. Engage in discussions and dialectics. Make life long learning part of your personal culture. I guarantee you will be more interesting to yourself, as well as your co-workers. 

Does this sound like survival of the fittest within the workplace? I don’t think so.  

Sounds more like the habits of an individual who is interested in learning about and from others. That’s a person I want to get to know. That’s a person I want to collaborate with.

What are you waiting for?

What kind of engineer are you?

 

How would you describe yourself, and what you bring to the table, to:  

1.)   a prospective employer, 2.)   a prospective customer, 3.)   a colleague at a professional association, 4.)   someone outside the engineering field, and/or 5.)   an academician?

 

We know all engineers are not the same. Everyone brings a little something different to the table. So even in companies full of engineers, those engineers aren’t all cut from the same mold. The corporate toolkit is full of engineers who won’t see the light of day unless there are special circumstances. Some engineers are the day-in-and-day-out individual who brings consistancy, but perhaps not creativity or increase in revenue, to the table. How do you utilize this toolkit? How do you evaluate your own toolkit? How do you let others (professors, employers) understand your skillset and how to strategically, as well as tactically, best utilize what you bring to the table?

How would you describe the type of work that you prefer to do? Do you:

a) prefer to sit in a cubicle and solve abstract problems? Without any consequences to your deliverables? (Hint: do you pay for yourself?)

b)    prefer to sit in a cubicle and implement design solutions? Without any consequences to your deliverables? Do you pay for yourself?

c) prefer to leave the cubicle to interact with peers in engineering meetings? Taking the risk of engaging in discussion of your proposed solutions? Perhaps leading toward innovation that might pay for itself based on cost of development?

d)    prefer to participate in multidisciplinary business development discussions with peers outside the engineering discipline? Incorporating differing perspectives into your personal toolkit? Perhaps leading to entrepreneurship that might pay for itself over time?

e) prefer to teach engineering to undergraduates and graduate students? Within a traditional academic setting. Which may impact the quality and output of engineering education?

f) prefer to teach engineering to post-grad or returning/retraining engineers? Within an evening college or community college setting? Which may impact the quality and output of manufacturing engineering?

The rules for evaluating what we bring to the table change once we leave academia. So be honest with yourself about the type of work you prefer to do. Once we enter the workforce, the practical meets the conceptual – and needs to be articulated to business owners. The business owner isn’t going to pass or fail us, or give us First Honors or Second Honors. They are simply going to choose whether or not to continue doing business with the company we either own or work for.  And believe me, profit and loss considerations are far more profound than the difference between academic grades or Pass vs. Fail.  One can’t sit for an exam again, later on, hoping to get a better mark. Especially after clients fire you because of cost overruns or failure to understand, from project inception, the scope of work involved.

Doing one’s specific job isn’t going to be enough for you to keep your job or retain your client base, not in this expanding global economy. While academia can prepare us all to do a competent job in the workforce, the CONTEXT for our work is provided by the setting in which we elect to contribute our talents. And while we may / may not have complete control over where we lend our skillset (let’s face it, we are all grateful to be employed/educated), we do have control over how we can augment what we bring to the table.

So let’s be honest with our collective selves.  How do we utilize the contexts of our work environments to develop our skillsets, our personal toolkits?  If we are business owners, would we hire ourselves? If we are cubicle-sitters, how realistic is it for us to expect folks to feed and maintain us if we are uncomfortable explaining to business owners– in simple terms – the return on investment of our design solutions? What are our minimums and maximums? What are our tolerances?

How do we utilize the context of our current professional environment to improve our own processes, output and throughput? Are we continuing our education? Are we expanding our perspective? Or are we stagnating and expecting our own status quo to maintain us through a career… of how long?

Does graduating with an engineering degree define a set piece that is immutable over time? Keeping up with technology and translating it into how we think, making decisions and implementing our toolkit throughout our careers doesn’t end with graduation and job placement. It’s only the start.

What kind of engineer are you? Would you have hired yourself in the first place? And would you continue to employ yourself?

Think about it….

 

What they DIDN'T teach you in engineering school.

I invited Masha V. Petrova to guest blog today. This year I am going to be exploring gaps in engineering education and their impact on the engineering-sales/business development interface. I couldn't think of anyone more insightful than Masha to kick things off, so I interviewed Masha!  Her responses to my questions follow.

Masha V. Petrova holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and is a founder and CEO of MVP Modeling Solutions.  Her weekly blog on a variety of engineering topics, can be found at http://mvpmodelingsolutions.com/mvpblog/ . Her blog on Increasing Your Professional Value can be found at  http://successfulunemploymenttoolkit.com/blog/. 

 

Babette:  Masha, how well equipped were you, as a PhD engineer, to undertake a business development role in past companies you worked for as well as your current consulting company?

 

Masha: Aside from giving me a solid technical foundation, my engineering PhD did not prepare me for working in sales, marketing or for starting a company in any shape or form. Even for business development in a very technically oriented company, like MVP Modeling Solutions, skills completely unrelated to engineering become much more important. For example, being able to “see the big picture.” The process of getting a technical PhD teaches you the complete opposite – focusing on minute details, zeroing in on a very small focused area of research, looking at a very specific problem from every different angle, and researching your PhD topic to death.

 

Which is what you need to do, in order to conduct great research. Best technical papers focus on a very well defined problem and examine it from every possible angle. In business, especially small business, it is very important to have a big picture vision and to constantly correlate every action and task to that vision. They don’t teach you that in grad school.

 

Another thing grad school does not teach you, but that is crucial to a successful small company or to a consultant, is how to deal with people. In academia, especially in technical areas, the idea that being able to work with people is more important than your technical knowledge is seen as rather ridiculous. I cannot recall one piece of advice or knowledge from my instructors or from any of my classes that advised me how to work with other human beings effectively.

 

On the other hand, when I worked as a sales/marketing engineer at a software company, every single day I had an extensive lesson in human relationships and communication. And I can tell you from experience - learning people skills was harder then getting a PhD in Engineering.

 

Babette:  As an undergraduate, how many courses did you take that cross-trained you to speak the language of business, as well as engineering?

 

Masha: None. Even though it was a great engineering program and graduates from my class went on to work in the corporate world right after graduation, we had practically zero preparation for any type of business related work. Sure, there were senior and junior design projects, where students worked with engineers in industry and where we had to adhere to a certain project budget. That’s about it. In fact our undergraduate curriculum, at the time, made it nearly impossible to have even a minor in any non-technical subject (such as business).

 

Babette:  As a graduate student, were you encouraged to take marketing, sales or economics courses as well as grad engineering courses?

 

Masha: No. In fact, I knew of maybe one other student who took some courses after his requirement for the core engineering courses were completed. I enjoyed taking courses and continued signing up for various non-engineering courses until I graduated. But that was seen as rather strange and people kept asking me why I am bothering to learn stuff even though my course requirements for PhD were filled.

 

As grad students, no one really ever tried to explain to us how important it is to be able to understand the world of business and people relationships, whether you planned to stay in academia, work in industry or start your own company.

 

Babette:  Would you say that your education was "typical" in terms of how engineers are trained, at least in the US?

 

Masha: For the most part, yes. I got a BS in Engineering from University of Delaware, although I did manage to sneak in a minor in Religious Studies. Which is probably not a typical minor for engineering students. That helped me enormously by developing written communication skills.

 

What was not typical in terms of my graduate career was that I had an absolutely amazing thesis advisor. Extremely knowledgeable and brilliant, he was also helpful, kind and liked by everyone who knew him. That’s a very rare find in academia. Professor Forman Williams is not a typical thesis advisor. I was very lucky.

 

Babette:  What is the biggest disconnect, then, in terms of undergraduate engineers coming out of school and entering the workforce? Is this disconnect different after receiving a graduate degree? Why or why not?

 

Masha: I would say the largest disconnect was that in undergraduate school we were overwhelmed with to-do tasks. There were so many engineering courses to take, so much homework to do along with constant tests, that the main concern of an undergrad engineering student was to just get the tasks done. Typically, it was not to understand the subject in depth or to understand a particular problem, but to pick up just enough information out of the textbooks, and teaching assistants, to get the homework done and pass the tests.

 

Grad school taught me to think in depth about each subject I was studying and to actually understand what I was learning. However, neither grad nor undergrad education has prepared me for dealing with customers, dealing with a variety of people (not just other researchers), or understanding the sales, marketing and PR processes. 

 

Babette:  Should the structure of engineering education be amended in the future to create more engineers who are capable of assuming business development functions in today's global economy?

 

Masha: Most definitely. That would give engineering students an edge in the corporate world and would foster more pleasant working environments and increase creativity and innovation.

 

Babette: What advice would you give undergraduate engineering students in terms of preparing their skillset for a successful entry into the workforce?

 

Masha: No one is responsible for your education, except you. University may provide you with a curriculum, with instructors and with career fairs, but at the end it will be you looking for a job, working with people and putting food on your table. So take every opportunity to make sure that you’re prepared. Always look for internships and apply for them.  If you’re on a semester schedule, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t have a different internship lined up for every winter and summer semester.  Take business, entrepreneurship and liberal arts courses if you can.

 

Babette: What advice would you give current engineering professionals in terms of career development as we move forward into 2010?

 

Masha: I don’t mean to sound like a commercial, but the www.SuccessfulUnemploymentToolkit.com is designed to provide engineers with tools to help fill the missing gaps that might have been left there by their engineering education. Take a look at the website and read the blog: www.SuccessfulUnemploymentToolkit.com/blog for more advice on increasing your value as an engineering professional.

 

 

 

Feeling Ambiguous? Schedule A Walkabout For Yourself This Year.

Wikipedia defines the term “walkabout” as “a rite of passage where male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. In this practice, they would trace the paths, or ‘songlines', that their peoples’ ceremonials ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.”  An alternative term in Wikipedia refers to a Walkabout as a “disambiguation.”

When’s the last time you engaged in “disambiguation”?  

Oh, and you don’t have to be a male.

Folks tend to take personal and professional stock of themselves each December.  You know, what they did and didn’t “achieve” or “accomplish” in the past year. It’s “natural” (?) in the sense that the fiscal year is coming to an end, the tax year is coming to an end and people are going to be evaluated by management.  In other words, you feel as though you are self-evaluating. Yet it’s pretty much all about how you measure up in someone else’s eyes.

January becomes a clean slate. If you are in sales, it’s all about “forget what you did last year and the accolades you earned – what have you done for me lately?”  Yikes!  I’m only as good as my last sale in the eyes of management? If you are in a technical field, it’s more like whether you were able to not only bring in but also manage projects on time and at or under budget… especially last year. It’s a measurement of not only your technical acumen but your “people” skills. You know, that right-brain left-brain interface that is hardly a natural place for most engineers .

Again, your sight line is focused on someone else’s idea of how you should be measured.

What is your own horizon, your own personal benchmark? How can you determine your personal benchmark, even your starting point?

How ambiguous are you? To yourself?

Walkabout. I’m taking a week in February to do a lot of technical, sales and, yes, spiritual reading. I need to catch up…. not with my reading… but with myself. Where am I at? How has the sum total of everything that I have accomplished in 2009 affected my perspective and approach to business and life moving forward in 2010? After all, I’m the only person that can write my own Operating Manual. I can’t write it if I don’t take the time to understand just what type of equipment I am operating.

Disambiguate. I’m taking a week in February to learn best practices about becoming better at planning and conducting Webinars. And I’m going to be composing a theme and game plan for lacing these webinars throughout my blog. I’ve got some great business associates online who are tremendous thought leaders in their own right. When we guest blog or conference call it’s synergy. There’s a lot to offer to our online communities.

Marinate. I’m taking a week in February to mentally marinate some new paradigm thinking regarding how decisions are made and how the traditional and consultative sales processes may be incomplete. I’m studying innovation, its sources, how to encourage my customers to embrace the risk associated with innovation and discover who, within their organizations, are true innovators.

Find your spiritual coordinates. I’m taking a week in February to reconnect to the Who is responsible for the journey that I’m on and that we all are on. As far as I know, we all have only One Ultimate Reporting Relationship.  Sometimes we lose sight of this factor when we are chasing someone else’s performance goals.

Whether you have 30 minutes per week or a weekend a month or a week per year, go on a Walkabout. Every year.  While I have been blogging about how the new global economy will force businesses to recalibrate, we all should recalibrate each year. It’s not just a matter of taking stock of our successes and failures – usually economically or professionally related.

Disambiguate yourself.  I am. Let’s take  the time to clarify, define and, quite frankly, get to know ourselves. We will make ourselves less ambiguous, more consistent and clear to others.  Our thoughts and ideas are not compartmentalized but are stored in readily accessible areas in our brains where they can be combined and recombined for innovative strategies and solutions.

Walkabout.  Something you need to decide to do rather than being forced into a situation of self-evaluation by your bosses. It’s your operating system. No one else’s. You write the operating manual.

Think about it. What is the value of disambiguation in your life?

Taking the low road is never an option. 10 suggestions for goal setting.

There have been a few blogs recently written about setting goals for 2010. I realize all of us are looking forward to 2010 as an alternative to a grim and realistic 2009. Lessons learned. Goals set, for us and by us.

I have 10 suggestions you may want to consider when goal setting in any year.

1. Establish your horizon.  I’m not talking short term goals vs. strategic goals.  Find your personal horizon. As you advance yourself and your career, I certainly hope you are taking the steps to grow yourself as an individual by making contributions to society as well as your company’s – and your own – bottom line. If not, think about it.

2. Relax your timeline. I’m finding many Gen Y’s have a 3 year timeline that includes spec’ing out who they are going to marry (including pedigree!), the type of car they are going to drive, the home they are going to live in, and just what their life is going to look like. Wow.  Sounds prescriptive. Talk about coloring within the lines. What if life doesn’t quite happen that way?

3. Revisit your priorities. Constantly. What’s important to “them” may not really be important to you. Do you run your life by committee? What’s important to you may be relative to your personal experience and the curves that may or may not have been thrown at you up until now. If you get tied to where you are now, you may never end up where you truly are supposed to be, down the road.

4. Be impeccable with your word. This one item is inflexible and immutable. You need to be true to what you say – and what you say you will do. Your word is not the currency of your career advancement, saying one thing to one person and another thing to another person, all for personal gain. All for achieving your personal timeline. Your word is your bond. For life.

5. Develop a sense of stewardship. What do you give back to others? Selflessly? It’s not just a matter of dropping a donation in the mail. Or occasionally volunteering for something.  What are you actively involved with, hands-on? What could you be more actively involved in?

6. Always take the high road. The low road is never an option. Never. Regardless of tactics used by your peers and managers. Reacting to their methods reinforces their success, not yours. They can’t control a person who refuses to fight back using their tactics. Take the high road. It forces them to follow along that path… or at least recognize your path.

7. Taking the high road means finding your personal high road. What does the high road look like to you? It’s great to have a timeline and set goals. Achieving goals doesn’t just happen.  You must choreograph and respond (not react) and have latitude for pursuing optional pathways to achieve your endpoints. You are the constant in all this. Constancy implies a core set of values that are immutable, regardless of circumstances. Your core values make you trustworthy. Are you?

8. Leave room for the epiphany that your personal high road may not be the high road at all. While we all have a sense of immediacy for achieving goals, allow some room for personal growth. You may find that your idea of the high road was merely one rung higher than the low road.  Hint: you may not be the one responsible for identifying the high road for yourself. No kidding.

9. Be honest with yourself and with others. Some folks make value judgments based on what they feel is “fair” at the time. Fair is an over-used word based on a personal sliding scale of what we feel needs to happen in order for us to benefit. Hmmm… fair doesn’t sound fair at all, does it?  Being straight forward and communicating honestly with others as to why you feel compelled to make the decisions you have made is a good habit to develop. Plus you never have to remember what you tell everyone since you tell everyone the same thing. Which makes you not only honest, but trustworthy. I think these days this is called “transparency.” Something to consider. Regardless of semantics.

10.  Take the road less traveled. You’ll find you are not alone. You’ll find that the folks you meet on this road are honest, trustworthy, ethical and have high personal integrity. You will teach them and learn from them.  You will serve and be served by them.  And you will be rewarded in ways that are beyond the limits of your personal goal setting.

The low road is never an option for achieving anything. Don’t even consider it. You short-change yourself …. and others.

Note to Self: Rock My Own Boat in 2010

After the roller coaster ride of sales and technical business development in 2009, I’ve taken the time to examine what’s important to me in terms of how I approach my client relationships. I’ve also taken the time to re-examine how I process information – sales and technical – and how well I communicate what I need to know to the folks I need to know it from. I figure if I can ask better questions, my customers and prospects can give me better answers.  

2009 was such a non-traditional business year. Yes, an understatement. It profoundly affected how I now view the entire business development process. So I don’t view 2010 as being a return to the status quo or whatever things were like in 2008, either.  Since 2009 rocked my boat – in fact, it rocked everyone’s boat, didn’t it? – I decided to continue rocking my boat. I liked how it felt. Go figure.

Boat rocking keeps me on my toes. I don’t take anything for granted. I don’t make any assumptions. I don’t forget to do my homework when developing new business relationships. I don’t lump my customers and prospects together in terms of a “one approach fits all” business development strategy.

In fact, I go about developing business as though the boat might capsize tomorrow.

Rocking my own boat helps me develop a sense of balance in terms of which customers are just kicking the proverbial tires and which customers are serious in terms of doing business with me. Rocking my own boat keeps my conversation fresh and engaged in what my clients and prospects are saying to me. Rocking my own boat keeps me searching for new ways to identify the factors impacting their decision to buy.

Now, let me clarify myself here. I’m not looking for new ways to manipulate folks into buying what I am selling. I’m looking for questions I need to be asking to assist people in identifying the offline factors impacting the decisions they make daily.

Your customers aren’t going to decide to buy what you are selling until you stop forcing the conversation towards your solution – as their only solution I might add. Your clients and prospects are expecting you to “sell” them. They want you to “pitch” them. So they can commoditize you, quite frankly, as a “typical sales rep” or “typical sales engineer.” However, they just might not be ready to make a decision, even if you are driven to “sell” your solution to them. Even if your solution is right for them.

So I’m learning how to rock my boat and keep it upright. I’m reading a lot of books. Taking training courses.  Communicating with clients. Asking questions of peers. Asking a lot better questions of my customers and prospects that impacts how they put information together towards solving their own problems.

Because, like the Wizard of Oz, there’s always somebody (or lots of “somebodys”) behind the curtain pulling lots of strings and jerking chains that are impacting my Client’s decision to purchase a solution or product, from me or anyone.  And I figure if I can get a handle on identifying these factors, and ask good questions up front that allow that individual or team to understand the ducks they need to have in a row, I bring value to our relationship.

Making a decision is the hardest thing we ask our customers and prospects to do.  I need to understand the decision making process better. This decision making process is not selling, or closing the sale. It’s everything that precedes the actual sales process.  It’s why folks decide to place a solution in the first place. It’s why folks decide to put making that decision on hold.

After all, my customers and prospects are the ones with the answers, not me. They best understand how their internal systems work. And I need to understand how to understand their internal systems. Because it impacts their decision making processes and my business development cycle.

A bit complex, yes.

That’s how I am rocking my own boat in 2010.

What are you doing to rock yours?

 

 

Are You Putting Yourself In Your Customers' Shoes, First?

Whether you are involved in business development (aka “sales”) or technical development (aka “engineering / IT”) you need to revisit where the customer fits into your equation. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, to address this situation. And it’s more important as we crawl out of recession into “where the economy is going.” Because we are the ones impacting that direction. A sobering thought.

Traditionally, business development continues to be all about directing the customer / prospect towards the solution that your company provides. As though that’s the only solution that’s right for them. As though that’s the only thing they have on their minds. I don’t think so.

Traditionally, engineering / IT has focused on emphasizing why their solution offers superiority, flexibility and all answers to all questions compared to what currently is in place or what the competition has to offer. As though the customer is in search of the “next greatest thing.”

When’s the last time you made a decision to upgrade your home internet service? Did you upgrade all of your peripherals at the same time? Did you assess the impact the upgrade would have on all the other gadgets you currently do or don’t have in place at home for hi-def, ISP, communications? Did you do a fair amount of thinking prior to making the purchase, in terms of the economic impact the decision to purchase this solution might have on the State Of Your Home Electronics situation? Or did you run out and blindly purchase the next greatest thing because everyone else had it, or you had to keep up technically?

When’s the last time you made a decision to purchase a new car or truck? And finance it? Based on your current credit score, the lending environment and your perception of your job security?

OK, now let’s get back to business development. And please put yourself in your customer’s and prospect’s shoes. They are the same shoes you wear. Every day. They have a lot more on their minds than what you are selling or the services you offer. They have to factor in a lot of stuff that’s happening behind the scenes in order for them to make a decision to solve their problems and perhaps purchase a solution.

If you are not factoring in the behind-the-scenes stuff into your business development strategy, and “simply” trying to justify why your solution fits their needs, you need to go back to the drawing board. You can identify “needs” all day, and drag the customer over the coals to emphasize how great their need is. But like most individuals, they have made do with and will continue to make do with, the status quo. Because it’s a known entity and comfortable. Because they may have internal resources committed to making the status quo continue to work. Not because your solution doesn’t really offer them what they need. It probably does.

There are a lot of behind-the-scenes factors impacting decision making on investing in solutions. By taking into account these factors during your initial business and technical development discussions, you may shorten your sales cycle. And yet this has nothing to do with “selling” or with product or service placement.

It starts by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. First.

How comfortable are you with this strategy?

Think about it.