What was my session about at Engage? Money and your Job

It was a cathartic, contrarian approach to our current situation, in which we, the admins, developers, and business partners, are supporting our Domino worlds.

I wish this were all in my head. But every single person in the room for my session at Engage was nodding their head at some point and others had very serious faces when confronted with my thoughts. The couple of people that talked with me afterwards were very happy they came to it. After all they gave up the Domino IQ roundtable for my session.

 

How did we get here?

 

The road that got us here is not the road that will get us out of here.

But enough cliché’s let’s be realistic.

We put ourselves in this situation.

Some items to think about:

(Almost) Every time we had a chance to ask for a budget, we failed.

We got what we needed, but this is not what an Enterprise solution desires, deserves, or requires.

We are selling our environments short if we only ask for licensing money, salaries, and some equipment. Way too short.

If your annual budget request does not include enough money that a respected enterprise solution requires, your request will not go up to the budget committee. Each company sets these meetings at various levels. Enterprise ready products have a staggeringly large annual budget, because that is how you know what is important. Or so the executives believe.

Maybe you think this is too much for “your team”.

Here is a little secret: Security budget money usually does not come from your team. It comes from the security budget. Leverage that every year.

Your environment needs to maintain perpetual security, which includes external and internal resources, people, apps, disaster recovery, development architectures, and more.

Everything you do in your Domino environment is for the company's greater good, and extending easier, faster processes for everyone, in a secure and meaningful way, needs to be backed by a secure environment.

I am not talking about 10k, 5k, or even 50k. You probably need to be asking for at least 100/250 or 500K to get to the budget executive committee. These days, maybe starting at a million. This is obviously relative to your situation and industry.

Some of you reading now might think I am out of my mind, but I am just a contrarian who has learned from 30 years of mistakes.

Maybe licensing is handled by a different group, so you didn’t need to ask for a budget. This also happens.

Once you stop asking for a budget, you don’t get invited to ask for one in the future. You mysteriously get left off the group email, or worse, your boss stops asking you about it. It is very hard to get back on the budget list. VERY HARD. 

For those who say, "No, we submit a budget," my question is, do they take it seriously, and do you get funding beyond the licensing basics?

Developers, you fall under this spell as well.

How many times have you said (as an employee), "Oh, I can put something together. Give me a few days or a week or two." Every time you did this but did not chargeback some business units' code or lay out the process and document why the app is needed and what it does for the company, you have also failed your Domino infrastructure.

If you were an outside vendor, you would have a project plan and bill X amount of hours or a total cost.

But you think that as an employee, you can’t do that, and you are wrong.

Everything goes to a cost center somewhere.

The group you are writing this for should be paying your team some of their budget.

But I bet few of you have done this.

While internal cost centers are a BS accounting move, they do work with your budget, so play ball by their rules, not the ones in your head.

Fear of Unemployment

I understand your predicament. You don’t want to lose your job, and I don’t want you to, either. However, no one has ever been fired for asking for budget money. A raise is a different matter.

For some reason, employees started to think they would get punished if they asked for the budget. You don’t get everything, but have you budgeted for the 2-8 various updates (now multiply by how many servers you have) you may need to do all year for your Domino environment? That number gets large fast, especially if you assign a value to it.

Why assign a value?

Because you should be clawing back money from every cost center. Again, internal budget money matters. Think about your budget if you had been "paid back" by the other cost centers.

When Lotusphere/Connect/Connected existed, you had to beg your company to go sometimes. How many of you went to the HCL Factory Tours? I hope you all knew they did these. If not, why not? You should all have been at them.

Did you think you would get fired for asking to go?

No, usually, the fear is to do anything that will get Domino seen inside your company. The CIO may demand someone's head for saying the D word, or your boss gets pushback for the old software. Whatever the reason, I understand, but keep in mind, you are not helping yourself in the long run because you aren't giving your company any reason to stick with Domino. 

I also blame the HCL sales rep at this point because they should be talking to you regularly by phone, email, WhatsApp, SMS, X, TikTok, set up an Ai auto message, whatever, I don't care, but they need to be on your side and not just "we have a webinar" or licensing renewal times. 

To be fair to the HCL rep, they do what makes them money first before anything else, but if they don't want to lose customers, they could be more proactive, so could most of us, that's all I will say here.

Money is everything, and you don’t understand what money means.

Money means one thing to you, but it is totally different to executives. 

You think asking for 10k is too much when the executive deals with million-dollar deals.

I am not saying deals don’t get lost because of price; that does happen. However, when properly laid out and defined, a solution for your company is not a 25k over-the-weekend app. If you want the executives to take it seriously, it is a 500k project or equivalent for your organization.

They will take it even more seriously if you can show that the new app either helps make money or manages some part, if not all, of your company's manufacturing, selling, marketing, or finance. 

Do this, and you can ask for even more money.

I am not talking about fake ROI projections of “time saved,” but real money tied to real work processes.

If you used your budget for licensing, what else would you ask for? I have listed what I expect to be in your budget in the spreadsheet I have uploaded for everyone. I presume you are the budget submitter; otherwise, you must bother your boss more.

Spreadsheet for download.

It includes guideline pricing, multiple items, education, conferences, T&E for these events, and other items that should be clawed back from cost centers.

It is also laid out as though you built an environment properly, and you can understand why, as you start playing with it, how the numbers multiply easily the more servers you have, and some costs also multiply. I aimed to show that all your costs after the Year 1 hardware purchases should be budgeted for you and cover your expenses.

Some of you may find this enlightening, while others may find it far from reality. I will wager that few of you even have something laid out like this, on which you are basing your budget. I hope I am wrong.

UI/UX is NOT HCL's Fault

All the BS talk about a poor UI/UX falls on your developers, now.

Older apps did have limitations, but this is not 2001 and R5, why haven't you refreshed them? Even just using Restyle would help. NOMAD web can be your friend here to reduce the web overhead to convert an app from Notes only to web, but you probably do need a nicer UI.

There are some gorgeous apps, Notes and web ones, so we know it is possible.

Again, who is to blame for this? Your app's UI/UX is not HCL’s fault.

Your executives see it as IBM/HCL's fault, but that only relates to the mail template. Your apps are your own to be creative.

Speaking of executives.....

New Executives have no idea what Domino does for your company

Because NO ONE has told them.

In this situation, I am talking about apps here. Mail is basically a cost of doing business. While on-premises and keeping your data inside are essential and more secure, email is a cost.

Some of you have been trapped by this “cost” term. Just because email is a cost and you are told to reduce expenses(notice they never drop new applications or revise older ones to save money), you may have been mistaken in thinking you shouldn’t ask for more money. But this, again, is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Servers do not update themselves; they can now under v14.5, but you get my point.

But apps, apps run your world, make you money, reduce paperwork (hopefully), and should be so good that no one is looking to replace them. 

Every time a new executive comes on board —and let’s face it, executives bounce between companies every 2-5 years—how have you briefed them on your Domino apps and what they do for the company, what they make for it, or what they provide that would cripple you if it suddenly stopped?

Have you? Has your HCL rep? Have you even told your rep what your apps do? Your HCL rep can't help you be that internal champion if you don't help them with what exists.

In my session, I used one of my clients as an example. They make millions of dollars a day using their Domino app worldwide inside their company. It handles everything from initial email requests for pricing and online sales to shipping, inventory, and manufacturing, tracking everything along the way. It is typical of Domino and an insanely elaborate application put together over two decades of teams of developers.

And yet, EVERY MEETING that involves leadership, I have to go to bat for my client and their app. Their internal people are too afraid to be connected to the “old server” stuff. See the above section Fear of Unemployment".

Imagine that meeting, discussing when we will move off Domino (I have been managing their environment for over 10 years or so) soon, but hearing this every year from me that it keeps them running.

They back down and then ask what is replacing it, which I suggest nothing, since it is an active and constantly changing environment, why would they replace it. Keep in mind that they only know the app by its internal name, which is how I introduce the topic, because they have zero idea it is a Domino application. But it always comes up from the Microsoft guy.

Of course, the business units say some cloud thing or an app made out of another database or workflow solution. Anything they move to would be a considerable cost, and ALL THEY WILL DO IS REWRITE WHAT THEY ALREADY HAVE, and from experience, end up with less functionality. I offer our help with whatever route they choose.

Like I said, 10 years, same meetings, every year. Many partners have similar stories, because we believe in the product, management believes in their bonus and their next salary when they move on.

This is exactly what one person in the meeting said about his situation. While he isn’t happy about the reduction in physical servers (personally I prefer less, but clustered, even when you have remote locations) he agreed that he will be there until he retires, nothing is moving that fast. 

Management has made the decision in his case, but to be fair, their environment might be faster and perform better with less overhead from the dozens of servers being consolidated.

Details matter, but for every excuse or peculiar circumstance, a completely normal one is ignored or under-budgeted until it becomes too late.

I hope my session and this blog post help you never reach that point of no return.

Conclusion

TL:DR The problem is and has been us.

I hit on other items that we all see or hear when advising clients. But almost everyone should know how to handle those by now.

If not, reach out to me. The lack of integration FUD, the “old software” line, the “lack of knowledge out there” hiring managers, and the perpetual “everyone uses <insert some other company>” lazy man excuse from someone that doesn’t want to be accountable for anything.

But we could turn this around by addressing the money issue and how we handle pricing/budgeting.

If you need help with this discussion, contact me, my fellow HCL Ambassadors, your Business Partner (or dump them for me), your HCL sales Rep/ Customer Success Manager/Customer Success Executive.

We are at a fulcrum. The cycle is coming back to in-house data from Cloud data, and now is the best time to Make Domino Great Again in your company and champion it as a proper Enterprise solution.

Why Experts Save You Money

Did you ever hear these from clients or prospective clients?
"Your fees are too high!"
"You want how much to do this?"
"I can get a <insert tech solution name> person for $10/hr why do we need you?"

I have heard these, and many others too over the course of my career.

Now let's hear how some others see this issue, these are general references not specific to anyone or anything.

• Sales advisors tell us it is because we have not sold the client on us and our solution that the price still matters. If they are not sold on using us, price becomes the scapegoat. This is true.
• Marketing advisors would say our value proposition is not clearly reaching out target market and we should either move down or up, depending on our circumstances and expectations of clients. This is true as well sometimes.
• Financial people would tell us that they have a budget they can not exceed, which we know is not true because if the CEO, or another executive with power, want something, they get it, no matter the cost. This is true too.
• Technical people will tell you they can get it done in a day or two. However, they first have to clear their existing project or support items and then involve a few teams of people and plan the change management, etc.. This is true too, except it will not get done until next year, usually.

What is rarely understood, although we do explain this all the time, is your code-monkeys will spend days trying to fix something that an expert sees and can fix in a few minutes or hours. When this is an internal resourced project, it seems, no one cares about time or cost. When it is an external resource, that is another story entirely.

A friend of mine recently spent, per their post, 5 hours on an email configuration issue.After I asked why they didn't ask my help for what I know to be a five minute fix, we then walked through the config and solved it. Even though they knew I have spent over 20 years on messaging systems, they did not ask for help until they had wasted quite some time. ( I am still hoping they used hyperbole and it was really an hour or 2 which is still too long)

Now, if they are the hourly billing type of person they have a dilemma, do they bill for the wasted hours of troubleshooting or part of it or none of it? If they bill by the project, this would not matter because things like this are expected and included in the pricing. It never makes one happy, but on the other hand, you gain valuable knowledge and experience to solve a problem for next time in seconds, and THAT is huge money to be made...when you bill by the project and not hourly. 

Of course, I can't bill for five minutes of work, well I could if they weren't my friend. The bill would be like the famous joke about the guy with the hammer who knew just where to hit the machinery. I could bill anything just to solve the problem, whether it took me five minutes or five seconds. 

Yes, cheaper solution providers exist, but they are not IBM Champions or Microsoft MVPs or Salesforce MVPs or whatever leaders in their respective fields that while we may not have encountered every issue, we are very battle tested and call upon our other friends to help us because that is what experts do in life.

We trust others to help us in return for the help we lend them. This for me is one of the best things about being an IBM Champion and knowing people that are the equivalent across many platforms. No one wants to ask for help, it is seen as a weakness, but once you get over this your world is much better as is all the people you engage with over the years.

If you are an IT manager, price means nothing when the issue is Enterprise important. If you think otherwise, your company will never get ahead of your competition. Work with experts who help make you look better to your boss, not cause your boss to look for replacements for you.

Building Competitive Pitches #EvangelistGuide

In my previous post in the #EvangelistGuide series, I discussed writing competitive pitches, but covered quite a bit of ground as well.

As promised, we now move on to the way one builds a competitive pitch. This may take many forms, and formats, with the idea being the same throughout, namely helping the customer say what they need and why they need it.

If you start a conversation with an attack, you put people on the defensive, which is not always in your favor. However, there are times when it not only makes sense, but would be the most direct way to accomplish your task.

Know your audience
If you are speaking to tech people or executives, you need to understand their pain, their business, and their thought process. Many of these people will have logic and minutiae to help them ward off any attack. Your ability to speak their language and work with their fears/loves is key.

Never lose sight of the business aspects, present information in ways that you can say "we provide the option for you to pick which way to implement this solution in house or in the Cloud" instead of "we made this work only in the Cloud" if you are facing companies that cannot go to the Cloud today.

Explain your words 
Do your best not to talk down to the audience, but also not talk above them either. It is not an easy line to walk. Please keep in mind, words and terms which the US may use, or think are normal, may not work outside of the US.

Speak so any person in the room, or their company, can understand your intentions and your solution.

Do not use acronyms, unless the audience has already.

Invest your time
Be there at the moment, no distractions, no phone, no Twitter, just you and them. You may use the same ploys every time, but you need to have many ploys in your bag of improvisational responses. Practice other angles, read more, watch more, write more. You also need to relax and take the time to debrief yourself after you are finished each time.

Test new ideas
If you are on a path of evangelism you should have already read or watched or listened to as much as you can on the subjects of sales, overcoming objections, persuasive techniques, hypnotism, poker, body language, non-fiction business biographies, The Godfather, the Bible, The Art of War and The Prince.

If you are still interested in going into the discussions that make sales people cower, now the hard work begins. Just like you need to push people beyond the law of 3 (3 no's, 3 excuses, 3 yes's) you need to be ready with so many more methods for your attack in case you are thwarted early on. It will happen to you, especially in the earlier days, but even later on, you need more ploys.

You can try to reason with the person on the other side, just remember if you are one on one, they will LIE to your face. Never have these discussions one on one, you want their people in there to listen to you and hear their own management make a case for themselves. You can be on your own, in fact, I advocate it should always be one on many. I like them to feel they can gang up on me, I like those odds.

When reason fails, resort to other tactics that match up with your opponent. They may say they want openness, yet are a closed company. They may be happy with their incumbent, but is that because they fear the new, the unknown or just are afraid to MAKE MORE MONEY. Never be afraid to point out the obvious. Push them to think, push them to visualize the problem through a story of your own. If you cannot reference other companies, or provide a good enough story, you need to practice this further and do more research.

Sometimes the simplest method is the easiest. I like to listen to people tell me why they don't like our solution or a specific vendor while I take notes and wait and listen. You then have them telling you what is wrong, what is important to them, and what the largest issue they face is on this topic. If there is a team of people at the meeting, they may all have input, but the executive is the only one we really care about, so watch the executive as the underlings toss out red herrings.

Help them make a decision
The hardest part is having the customer say what you want to hear, without you saying it first. Just like in salary negotiations, the one that mentions a figure first loses, if you or I suggest an outcome, prior to the customer stating it, we will lose all of the time and effort we put into the pitch.

Walk along with them as they explain themselves. Check in with them while they are speaking by verifying what they have stated in their terms. Lead them if you need to, but work on helping them solve their problem, not on you providing the solution. They will love you all the more, and never look back at the competition.

Coming up in this series, why executives lie, why one on many is important and the differences between Enterprise customers and Family owned business/startups.

If your sales or marketing teams are in need of training on this topic please contact me now as Q1 is getting busy.

Sales Presentations That Suck

Did you ever have to sit through a presentation? By default, the definition probably means 45-90 minutes and just feel bad for the speaker?

Ever leave early? Probably not if you were in an office setting. But IT people have had a macro button for years to cause their pager, phone, or whatever to go off, so they have an excuse to leave.

Not so easy to do in a sales presentation.

In the past, I rarely used slides for presentations unless asked/forced to do so. Why? Because on any given day, I may be off, or the executive in front of me may be rushed for time, and I never wanted to be one of those salespeople that asked for more time because they had more slides.

When I was presenting to some military brass on a road map that our sales team asked me to handle, after 1 slide, ONE SLIDE, it was clear the leader was not going to go for it.

So I stopped. In mid-sentence to turn around and ask, what is important to you? He told me, and we had an hour and a half of serious discussion. No telling, just sharing of information.

Don't suck. Pay attention to your listeners and attendees. Doing a webinar? Ensure the chat room is open and watched by someone else who can let you know when people are dropping off or showing their boredom. You know it when you see it if the conversation has little to do with your product or solution.

We all go to conferences, and some have better speakers than others. But if you pay for an event, you deserve to voice your opinion. What about when you are not really paying for the conference? Does your free pass get you to be bribed to talk nicely? Do you drop out of the conference because it turns you off?

Large conferences still have many other sessions, and no doubt you can find the better sessions.

The meeting in your office, much harder. Do you throw out the sales rep? What if it is your own employee? Hopefully, you will be helping them to understand a better way.

Reverting to your social media "out" is the easy way out.

Stand up and make your case because you will help others get better because otherwise, you are just as responsible for the failure by NOT saying anything.

The Accidental Silo Structure

http://www.mabeats.com/

In the Silo's Happen  previous post I started to discuss the Accidental Silo Structure. I can't use the acronym since it will get blocked by some systems, so I will use the term AS.

If you have an AS, what do you do? Do you realize that you look like an AS? Do you think that you look like an Accessible Collaborative Enterprise (ACE)?

How do you know? What can you do to test for which side you are on?

Keeping in mind that some companies are ACE on the inside but AS on the outside and vice versa we need a litmus test for the sales teams to better understand where the customer sits on this spectrum.

As a Sales person, have you looked for these from the outside:

1) Listened to or watched a webinar or conference call between the client and their constituents, be they business patrners, vendors, customers? Have you noticed if they have an open meeting? Do they let you see everyone on the call? Can you chat with anyone or only the presenter?

2) If you read their blogs on their company website, are they up to date, even within 30 days?

3) Do they run a twitter feed that searches on the company name? Do they show they even are active on twitter at all?

4) Can you comment on their blogs without a "waitingfor approval to post your comments" line?

5) Have you noticed if there is anything other than a phone number or email address for connecting with the organization?

None of these individually rule them out, especially #5 which I use as a simple test. Similarly to the Van Halen brown M&M's contract rider, somethings go a long way to tell you about the organization.

Now what about the inside? Not so hard as you might think:

1) What does the company use to disseminate information? Is email still #1?

2) Does the company use a standard Instant Messenger solution? I don't care which one but a company wide solution?

3) If the company runs Jive, Lotus Notes Applications, IBM Quickr places, IBM Connections, Sharepoint or whatever are they actively using it and managing it? Or are there a million silo places inside each that make it seem like a needle in a haystack to find what you want?

4) When you take a meeting with the executive...is it only them in the room with you?

5) If you know the backgroound of management, do they come from organizations that are open and sharing and social or cold, dark and closed?

#5 is not meant as a failure. However, it implies that the people, who may in their own way be open and caring, ACEs actually, have a background from a place that acts like an AS. In other words, they may know better, but their mind says "this is how we did it before".

We need to stop the historical thinking!

You must bring the problems to the executives at their level. Sometimes outsiders provide greater and deeper insight to a company than their own teams. Great leaders want this information and want to see changes made because they may be tired of their "yes" people.

Don't assume anything about your potential clients, but look for the signs, they are staring you in the face. Deal with these before you try to sell your solution and you will look like an ACE too instead of an AS.

Fud Buster Friday #53: Price Matters

Every salesperson, at one time or another, will tell you this if you are their manager.

Bad sales managers accept it and allow for negotiations.
Average sales managers stress a give and get a return. Lower the price, but lower the benefits.
Great sales managers provide benefits, ROI and don't argue about the physical item price.

Training and common sense are everything. But the price is not.

Yes, if I want to buy a commodity, but software and its ancillary services are not a commodity today. Email may be a commodity, but at what point do you drop the corporate walls to use any Web 2.0 service because it is free? In some cases, never.

I hear about deals that never get done because of price. I hear about special bids and all types of crazy offers. Do they entice some people? Sure, just like Groupon coupons. But the downside of Groupon, as the advertisers, is it can be a losing proposition. A short-term gain but only in quantity, rarely in sales, and does not feed a pipeline of future buyers. It is, of course, great for Groupon because the consumer comes back for more deals. But for the supplier or advertiser, be careful.

Corporates don't have a Groupon...yet. No doubt some sites are out there like it. I don't consider retail or wholesale sites or stores to be like Groupon, but the argument could be made.

When push comes to shove, the money is there usually for what the company NEEDS, not what they want or is nice to have, which means you should focus on this point. This is the key to remember in sales, competitive discussions, and interviews. What the company needs from you and your solution is to gain the future they want for themselves. Help them see themselves in that future with you or your solution, and the money is there every time.

Just don't give it all away every time and belittle you or your solution.

Auto Dealers taught by Microsoft Sales Course

After my experience today in trying to obtain a van to lease I am convinced that auto dealers learn their sales techniques from Microsoft.

Why do I say that? Because it started with a conversation on the phone.

We would like to lease this van, model type, color, whatever, how does it look on monthly lease prices? Answer came with a dollar figure we could live with. Great, send it to me in writing. They did, so off we went today to swap the old van.

So far it all sounds good, just like any other sales conversation.

We get to the dealer, they do their song and dance and announce a price that is $100 more a month. Funny how that happens, but sad really if Honda and their dealers cared about customers. But maybe they learn from Microsoft that you suck people in and then change the terms on them.

I asked what happened to the quoted price. Was told that the sales person had no right to provide a price. Ok, so let me get this straight, you hire sales people not to give prices to customers that want to buy your cars? Interesting.

So his job is to lie to customers to get them to come in so you can bait and swap them? Sound familiar? Microsoft will come to a company tell them the product will do everything they ask, nothing special required. But there is this minor issue that there are no such options in version X, but buy this one now and when the new version comes out we will let you upgrade. Yes, really nice.

The Internet Sales Manager needs to go to ethics training. When I asked if he respected his staff and stood behind them, he said "of course". I asked why he would tell a customer that the sales person they talked to lied and should not be trusted, yet why should we trust him? Ok, this line happens in every sales organization at one time or another but really, he answered me with a straight face. I did warn him, he was a good deal older than I am, that the Internet has powerful friends and many ears.

As it turns out they did not have the car we wanted, oh we could get the color, but it came with a bunch of accessories which we do not require but the dealer had put them in or on 95% of all the vehicles. I reckon this is the License, with a CAL type deal, even if no one ever uses Onenote. Eventually we found one car that would work and the dealer still refused to honor the written offer from their own sales person. In the end we compromised to an amount that we knew others had signed off on. No I am not happy about it, stick to your word as a company, for better or worse, own up to the fact that you messed up.

Then it was time to sign the 1,000's of pages in documents. They then asked if we wanted to pay in advance for maintenance and towing benefits. Normally I would say no but as this is not my car left it up to my wife and she wanted it. Fine, another $9 month, but no fee for general service. This is the Microsoft Software Assurance offer, but we know the car will go in for maintenance, unlike say Microsoft who may not have any new versions of software out for years at a time. This also felt like the way the Microsoft consultants come to you at 4pm on a Friday and say they need more money, time, hardware to make stuff work or they have to drop the project.

On our side we did go to leave and they gave in to the price we wanted, but not the quoted price. Numerous customers have been in that situation and it is never fun especially if you got budget approval for less.

Some people will say IBM does this as well, but I have faith in the sales people I know not to act this way. Something I do not have for Microsoft sales people or a specific Honda dealer in Pompano.

Everything else went well and efficiently showing that not everything learned from Microsoft is bad. Of course I don't expect to hear from them until the lease runs out again, that is something they did not learn from Microsoft who continuously calls on customers weekly if not monthly.

Refunding a Contract? Huh?

I have been in business for 20+ years and can safely say this was a new one to me. Sure we have had accelerators before and pay per goal/deadline but never a full refund.

We provided a proposal to an organization which was deemed to be too expensive. Upon further review it was in actuality equal or less than their other estimates when viewed item by item.

That's not the point.

One of the key individuals asked for a complete refund if within 6 months they don't like the solution or want to drop it or go back to what they had. If we would agree to this they would do the project with us. Individually I would, as a business, we can not and will not commit to such a thing. It is an embarrassment to my business and theirs if such a thing occurred. I know this happens all the time, but we are not the size of EDS or IBM and can just shrug it off.

Never been asked that before. Really.

My reply was we were happy to do so, if they would agree to pay us twice the amount of the project cost if in 6 months they kept what we rolled out. So if it was a 10K project so pay an extra 10K. Seemed reasonable to me as a request, but we would still be on the losing side in many ways as it's their choice not ours.

Needless to say they decided it was too expensive. We await their next server failure and "woe is us" story when their vendor asks for more money than the contract stipulated when they run into problems.

See tomorrow's post to better understand where this is going.

Small Beers or Increased Sales?

While staring at a Coronita Extra which for those who have no idea what this is, it's a Corona Beer, in a 7 ounce size.
Why would anyone in their right mind order or buy these smaller than a soda drinks.
What was Cerveceria Modelo thinking anyway?

They were thinking in a down economy, we need to sell beer. Or in a place where regular size might be too expensive, at least you can get some beer, albeit in a mini size.

What about applications? How do you downsize them for this economy? Should you?
Do you take smaller steps in your project? Do you do more POC(Proof of Concept)?

No, I think in this case, Coronita was a bad idea(I know they make money on it but I'd love to find out more about why it came to be) because your market will always want your beer. Try selling 4 packs instead of 6 perhaps?

Applications and projects serve a purpose that on the whole provides for a better economic situation once delivered if properly thought out and planned.

So go out there and have a tall cold one and aim for the big project, push for it even!

FudBuster Friday #17 - I Don't Know

How can you discuss something you don't know about?
Listen children, all is not lost....

If you are in sales or marketing, you probably don't understand this blog post already.
I don't know where I'm a gonna go when the Volcano blows...

If you work at a major software company you probably never hear these 3 words said by your executives. OK, maybe if you also worked at a bank, auto manufacturer, AIG, Enron, Worldcom, NASA.
I read the news today oh boy...

You see the problem is you can't know everything. When you don't know something is when the FUD spews faster than Superman can circle the Earth.
When the world is running down....

So why not stop and pay attention to what you say in front of customers. Sure some people can spin anything, but you will go further and build a better confidence with your customer if you admit what you don't know, especially if you are an experienced individual.
You got to know when to hold em...

Folding in Poker is the hardest thing to teach someone. So.is.this. As much as I try to train admins and sales people that it's okay to not know everything, just look at some of my posts, one can't really know it all. Once you start spinning or lying about a product, a sale, or a price, you dig yourself far deeper than anyone can pull you out.
Don't pay the Ferryman until...

Stop the FUD, Lotus is not dead, Microsoft doesn't suck, Google is not a startup.If you never expand your mind or accept you really don't know if these are true or not, then you will become the FUD you produce and that is not fun.
From you I get opinions, from you I get the story.....

FudBuster Friday #5 - No Resources

This FudBuster is for everyone in Sales or IT, depends on how you view it.
Following up from Ed Brill's post yesterday and some comments I made there got me thinking.

The #1 answer I get when asking clients why they don't upgrade to R8 of Domino or Sametime or Quickr is:
1) No Money
2) No Time
3) Why, we are happy on the version we are using
4) Lack of Resources (whatever that means in reality)
5) All of the above

Bingo, #5. No doubt many of you have more answers, please comment withthem, they might make it into FudBuister #6.

Many clients have been paying for support and maintenance which usually means you are entitled to upgrade AT ANY TIME. Sadly, they don't. They pay and pay and IBM/Lotus makes money off them, but suffers because these same clients are at least 1-2 versions behind.

So they spent all their money on software.... but they own it and could upgrade at anytime.
Whoah! You say you don't have enough staff to do this? OK, simple numbers, can you upgrade one server a week? Probably.
Can you upgrade a batch of clients at a time? Probably, with some preliminary work.
Can you do 10,000 people in one week? Yes, but you won't usually for various reasons, but it CAN be done.

Small staff numbers? Get help, it's cheaper than you think.

No budget? Go ask a business line how they expect to sell more with less people and slower programs or how you could provide them with quotes/pricing to their phone while sitting with the client? You don't know how to do this? Call me or come to Lotusphere.

Happy on the version we use. Hardest one to beat, especialy in organizations with large turnover of staff or very specific needs. One answer is to run your machine like a demonstration box. Make every business line person or sales or whoever come to you or if you have a laptop go to them. I don't know your business, but if you do, I am quite sure you could create a very functional and useful UI that they would jump at to own. This is how I do demo's for potential clients on why they should be upgrading to R8 of Domino, Notes, Sametime or Quickr.

Money is the easiest and hardest thing to get around. Yet, if the business line or executive wants it, suddenly there is money. Just remember my thoughts on this, it is not CHEAP. I fyou say it will cost $5,000 to do it you will not get any respect from executives or business lines.

They want to perceive value based on price. That doesn't mean to tell them it's $1 million, but make it enough so it goes to a budget meeting, not someone who just says yes or no.

If Lotus is truly a corporate solution for you and your company, then treat it like one.

LS08: Customers and their problems

I attended a session where customers spoke about their decisions to not just go to Domino or Websphere et al, but how they got interest from the masses at all levels to go along with it.

Sure some laid it out as a direction and business decision, others did it be bringing it to a personal level. The medical health provider had an average age of 56 and was worried about their uptake on Sametime and other solutions. But it went well.

I loved this session. Ok it also included a client from South Florida which we would like to work with but I did not know that before attending.

After each one spoke for 5 minutes there was an open bar and discussion area. My more interesting discussion was about how to convince line/plant workers or even the guys on the delivery trucks to login for email. We also discussed executives that fear Lotus Notes of course.
You can not force people to change their patterns, but you can give them a choice.
If you run a promotion internally, the first 50 or 100, or some number which make sense, people that email you at prize@yourcompany.com will receive a (insert gift item of value or interest). But instead send it to everyone that logs in, make it either company specific or holiday or personal redemption.

Once they are in, you can show options, possibilities and remind them about being green, reducing paper and paperwork, faster payments on expenses, maps provided with full directions with delivery orders, instant answers to your questions via instant messaging, updated benefits, calendar scheduling, legible work orders or instructions.

I can go on but you get the idea.

Late, late, late last night by Jelly Roll's on the Boardwalk I ended up speaking with a guy that just left Boston for Orlando and also recently graduated college. We were discussing sales, competitive analysis and management, in addition to what all the people with badges were from and why IBM would do a conference like this or if IBM liked macs or not.

He is ambitous, not to the larry Ellison level, but wants to move up in management(he is in retail in Downtown Disney) and we discussed some basic tenets that can work. I put it in his terms and when I didn't he did ask what I referred to and I did this without acronyms.

I explained competitive analysis is like the (apologies to my non-US readers for this american football reference)New England Patriots being reviewed by the New York Giants for ways to win. Everyone knows if you hit Tom Brady he is a mess for a quarter or 2. But aside from that what else is the Patriots weakness. You watch films, see which side they run or pass to or if someone sometimes gets flagged for holding or maybe a linebacker that jumps too early.

I also told him if he wants to make more sales to NEVER ask a yes/no question until you are ready to ask for money/signature/contracts.
Just like the bartender that asks "Which beer do you want?" instead of "Do you want a beer?" I suggested he greet people in his shop with "What character do you like?" or "what's your favorite sport/musician/country/state?" depending on the shop in question.

So my question for you is, what do you ask your customers?
"Do you use Domino?"
or
"How do you communicate within your organization?"

The answer, or in this case your question, may help you in Orlando this week.

And now on to the Worst Practices - the Bets of the Worst from Bill and Paul.