IT Vendor & Partner; a tumultuous affiliation

CRN yesterday posted an article highlighting some of the “pet peeves” IT vendors have about their channel partners.  IT Solution Providers can see this list as a bit of a mini SWOT; it gives a pretty good overview of how vendors see Partners positioned as far as their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats go.  Those pet peeves birth ideas on how to do things differently.

Get ahead of the curve; adopt new business models, sell new technologies, understand core sales activities.  Only about 10 – 15% of partners are seen to be doing this.

Talk business, not tech; technology decisions are increasingly made by business influencers.  Talking tech to them means nothing; you need to get at the heart of what drives them.

Stop cuddling those boxes; with the changes happening in the industry the focus should be on developing and delivering more than just product and transitioning to services, content and IP.

Vendors love new business; learn to prospect and market to new business, not just existing customers.

Be trendy with transition; According to Microsoft, only 25% of their partners have expanded into Cloud computing.  Solution Providers that stagnate or hesitate to adopt new technologies are potentially losing significant opportunities.

Crack on with Certifications; a two way peeve, Partners find the certification process laborious and costly.  Vendors see it as the best way for Partners to promote their expertise.  There are advantages of certifications for instance getting bumped up Microsoft’s Pinpoint listing which in turn helps generate leads for new business.

Bleed vendor Marketing Funds dry; they are gagging for it, apparently.  IT Vendors allege that between 10% and up to 50% of the Marketing Development Funds they make available goes unspent every quarter.
 
Fill that sales funnel; explore marketing and proactive demand generation, don’t be satisfied with simply moving boxes.

Push the portfolio; sell outside the square.  Vendors feel they have a lot to offer over and above those one or two solutions their Partners are currently selling.  Have you offered the fries with that?

Often that of the Vendor and the Partner is a tumultuous affiliation, but like any dynamic relationship, one that can have a lot of mutual value if forces work together rather than in opposition.


Source: 10 solution provider habits that irk vendors

History of Management

When you review the history of management, you get an interesting perspective on current management techniques and trends.
 
American mechanical engineer Frederick Taylor (1856 – 1915), known as the father of Scientific Management, was one of the first “management consultants”.

The scientific approach to management is the art of gaining efficiencies by increasing the output volume of workers.  When you consider the era, this approach was born at a time when workers predominantly used their backs to produce results.

Frederick’s fundamental principle revolved around maximum gain for both employer and employee by effectively training each individual employee in a role that was most suited to their capabilities.  Of particular interest was investigating ways to increase output by reducing unnecessary movement.

German sociologist Max Weber (1864 – 1920) developed what is known as the bureaucratic approach to Management.  The principles of this style of management centre on job specialisation and clear job descriptions, where qualifications determined positions.  Clear hierarchy and control along with the uniformity of applied regulations created formal rules and performance indicators.  Clear pathways for career advancement were designed to promote long term employment with a single company.

Elton Mayo (1880 – 1949) approached management from a more social aspect.  Coined human relations management, the theory he developed was more concerned with employee motivation, team building, communication and leadership skills. He theorised that employee motivation stems from relational factors such as feedback and team dynamics more so than simply pay and environmental conditions.

French mining engineer Henri Fayol (1841 – 1925) took an administrative approach and developed six primary functions of management; Forecasting, Planning, Organising, Commanding, Coordinating, Controlling.  These are closely aligned with 14 principles of management that cover off the division of labour, authority, discipline, unity, remuneration, order, equity and initiative.

Management consultant, author and educator Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) was interested in the social ecology of man, exploring the way we organise ourselves and interact.  With an extensive body of work (39 books and countless articles) he was and remains incredibly influential when it comes to management by objectives; believing that by setting clear goals and with effective collaboration and communication, it is possible to allow staff to do a job in their own way.

A retrospective look at management evolution enables us to see how modern management borrows aspects from each of these theories.  Management today is a healthy mix of science, bureaucracy, administration, human relations and goal setting.
 
Good managers should be borrowing techniques and theories from all these approaches and applying them as best determined by the particular situation.

Choosing to be Great takes discipline.

The thing that struck me the most about Great by Choice – Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen’s handbook on choosing greatness over mediocrity – was the sheer weight of the research involved.  All good books undoubtedly require a lot of research, even those based purely on fictional characters and events require some level of research to build plausibility.

It was the minutiae of the research that impressed me; the dedication to trawling through years of corporate records for indications of luck, discipline, creativity, risk and reward.

The basic premise of the book entails taking two like coins and turning them over and over under a high wattage desk lamp, looking for irregularities and differences.  What is it that makes one coin infinitely more valuable than the other?  Why, when flipped, does one coin seem to come up heads, the other tails?  What dictates whether that was a lucky flip?

The coins are company comparison cases; two similar businesses in field and opportunity over a set timeframe – one experiencing extraordinary results of greatness, the other fading into mediocrity if not complete obscurity.

The research examines the key physiognomies of each company and why one rose to fly in the face of luck; maximising their returns regardless of events being fortuitously beneficial or unexpected calamity.  The insights that this research uncovered formed a set of characteristics that those who choose to be Great exemplify.

 

Key concepts that I took away from this reading:
 

• Choosing to be Great takes discipline and a consistent approach to vision, mission and execution.
• A leader’s job is to set out for their team firm guidelines about how far they need to travel each day; set boundaries and targets so they don’t overreach or underachieve, and make sure they have reserves for whatever the next day brings.
• The most effective creativity is that which is based on evidence and facts.  Research and pragmatic understanding of a situation helps with strong and sensible decision making. 
• Innovation must be timed so that it happens at the right point in the curve.  Innovation should meet market demand rather than pre-empt it; crest with the tide rather than after it.  Learn how to experiment so that riding a large wave of innovation is simply the culmination of many smaller test runs.
• Luck will find you; it is an absolute certainly in a chaotic business environment.  It’s what we do with our luck and how we prepare for that luck (good or bad) that counts.

Out of all of the concepts, this was the kicker; keep an eye open for the people who will be game changers for the company.  Out of all of the strategic and methodical plays a business can make, finding and keeping Great people is the single most important one.  

Porter's Five Forces

Originally developed by Michael E. Porter while working for the Harvard Business School and the Boston Consulting group, Porter’s Five Forces are five powerful forces seen to impact profitability and completive clout in a business situation.

The Five Forces:

• Industry Rivalry - How many competitors are in the market, who are they, what are their growth prospects? 
• Threat of new entrants - How easy is it for start-ups to muscle in on your turf, what are the factors that would encourage or discourage them?
• Threat of substitutes - How easy is it for clients find alternative ways of satisfying their needs?
• Bargaining power of suppliers - What is the relationship you have with your suppliers, how easy is it for them to drive up pricing?
• Bargaining power of customers - How sensitive are they to pricing, how transparent is the market, what is the value of the customer to the business, how unique is your product or service?

Reviewing each of these market forces in depth and determining whether the power or pressure of each is low, medium or high gives insights into the “micro environment” of the business.

Porter’s Five Forces can help understand both the strength of the current business position as well as assessing a situation you’re about to move into; it helps to determine the attractiveness of a market; how potentially profitable that market will be.

 

Marketing your core competencies

Firstly, what are core competencies? They are the essential ingredients that make a company what it is. They are those key abilities with which the company achieves great things; not just abilities they aspires to do well at, these are the literal foundations of the customer’s experience.

Understanding core competencies has a number of benefits. It sets out a clear list of strengths and inversely showcases areas that fall outside of these competencies. These insights potentially highlight areas that may be better off outsourced.

Focusing on core competencies means investing in and throwing resources at the areas of the business that are already proving to be the most profitable and influential. It can help decision making around whether to pursue ventures that fall outside of the core competencies of the business.

Identifying core competencies gives a business a set of pillars to start basing their marketing around. They paint a very clear picture of how the business should be positioning itself in a market, what the unique selling points are or if not quite “unique” qualities, they are abilities that a company excels at when pitched against their competition. Everyone can claim to have great technical capability, but if it’s your core competency, you’ll trump your competitors with your technical skill.

So how do you create a marketing campaign around competencies? The first step of course is to dig deep into the company’s psyche to determine exactly what they are. This may be an exercise that the directors or leaders of the business do either by themselves or with their entire team.

Once identified, the next step is to determine how your clients benefit from these competencies. For example, a consulting practice may identify that their core competencies are keynote speakers, consultants, coaches, project managers and educators.

How might each of these factors benefit their clients? Keynote speakers may instigate change, their consultants may improve processes, their coaches may challenge behaviours, project managers assist in achieving successful outcomes and educators enable skill sets to be mastered.

Entire campaigns could now be generated around these competency > benefit concepts, further strengthening the focus in these areas and giving potential clients clarity about what to expect the company will do for them.

Quick tips for Communication

Ask the following questions:

• Who is your message for?
• What is its purpose?
• How do you want it to sound?
• Will they find and understand the information they need?
• Will they know what you want them to do next?

 
Tips:
 
Remember communication is both verbal and non-verbal; be conscious and try to ensure that your non-verbal and verbal messages are saying the same thing.

Listen and hear what is being communicated. Much conflict results from poor listening. Repeat what you hear to confirm the accuracy of the information you have heard.

Ask questions and let others talk. Asking questions allows you to hear the information in a different way or just hear it again. Dominating a conversation becomes a monologue, not a conversation .

Engage in Difficult Conversations When necessary. Not saying something doesn't make a situation go away and can cause more stress in the long run. Write down the important points in order to feel comfortable about what you have to say. Try to use a tone that is open and non-confrontational in order to encourage feedback from the other person.

 

 

6 Mistakes of Presentations

Notes from a webinar by Tim Wackel on the 6 Greatest Mistakes of Presentations...
 

Mistake # 1: Not understanding the audience

• Who will attend?
• What do they really want?
• Why are they participating?
• Do you need to establish credibility?
• "Why you?" – Quotes, results, case studies, credentials.
• How much time do you have?
• Specific measurable benefit?
• Likely objections?
• Bake objections right into the presentation "If I had to guess, I'm sure you guys are thinking…"

Mistake # 2: Lack of a clearly defined objective

• What do you want?
• What is in it for the listener?
• What is my call to action, how is it going to benefit the audience?
• Let the audience know early on what the objective is.

Mistake # 3: Too much data!

Aim for no more than three or four big ideas, "chapter titles", pillars that support your objective and form a framework of the presentation…

...Why?

• Memory and impact
• Distil many ideas into few
• Lead with your best stuff

Mistake # 4: Failing to excite

Look for the hook to start with, should take less than two minutes. Forget platitudes. Pause and then launch with a "gee-whiz" fact, a powerful story. Focus attention on key issues and grab their attention. Make it engaging and fun.


Mistake # 5: Death by PowerPoint

• Should only be used to visualise ideas, create key points, impress!
• Should not be a script, handout or data dump
• Add more pictures that have meaning
• The "6 x 6 Rule - no more than 6 words across, 6 lines down to any one slide

Mistake # 6: Ending with inspirational deficit

• Work on a punchy close. "What, if anything is going to prevent you from taking the next step right now?"

Presentation blueprint:

Introduction

• Hook
• Message Objective
• 3 Talking Points

Body

• Talking point 1/evidence
• Talking point 2/evidence
• Talking point 3/evidence

Close

• Recap Message Objective
• Recap 3 Talking Points
• Ask for a commitment