Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

After a mere five hours sleep and with a nose that was running faster than Usain Bolt I really should not have gotten out of bed, let alone drive an hour and a half to the Gold Coast to attend an all day AIM seminar. Yet I am somewhat masochistic and managed to drag myself out of my warm, safe bed and drove the hour and a half to the Gold Coast. After getting lost in Robina for half an hour I finally found the AIM office and managed to make it just in time for the first of seven presentations.

At this stage you might want to make yourself a cup of tea - this is a long (but I think worthwhile) read.

Driving Business Performance
The first seminar was entitled Driving Business Performance. The speaker (who’s name I did not record) spoke on what she called the six Ps - Planning, Product, People, Plant, Process and Profits.

Planning is about getting the intangible parts of running a business right. This involves making sure that there is a simple, clear business plan that everybody in the organisation understands. It was stressed that if a business plan was to complex then nobody would understand it or remember it and ultimately it would be ignored. A big part of the planning process are the twin concepts of having an exit strategy and a succession plan. This means that information sharing should be a priority of every business and it is one area in which global-roam has consistently failed in the past (though we are making huge strides towards improving in this area).

Product is all about addressing your clients needs. It is what all successful products do, from Coca-cola to Microsoft Windows every product is addressing a customer need. For this reason the client should be at the center of your business.

People is what all business is about. Every business is made up by people to address the needs of other people and is staffed by people. This means that people are at the heart of every business. The speaker made a few very interesting points which were closely aligned with what we were trying to achieve with the recent company restructure. The segregation of duties is important to get the best performance out of all the staff. For us at global-roam this meant that instead of everyone trying to manage, code, debug, test, gather requirements and design for their own products, we had to reassign Adam, Kim and myself to the more administrative and client focused tasks of product management and requirements elicitation and allocated the other more technical aspects of software development to the other developers. Additionally to the segregation of tasks amongst staff, it is important to have accurate job descriptions and performance measures (but only if the measures are exactly in line with the business goals identified in the planning stage).

Plant is all about infrastructure. For a software engineering firm, infrastructure is not of as much importance as it is in say a steel mill. Still, even though our products are just a bunch of 1s and 0s, infrastructure cannot be ignored. An ongoing review of infrastructure is important to ensure a better allocation of resources and a planned, systematic replacement of aging infrastructure is a good way of ensuring that costs are spread evenly over a number of years.

Process is about the way in which a company operates. A number of interesting points were made on this topic. Any process is better than no process. All processes and systems should be documented. This can begin with something as simple as documenting the process for picking up the mail. Processes form the basis of job descriptions, which become increasingly important as a business expands beyond a few employees. As such the processes you use should be understandable and “owned” by the staff.

Profit is about the financial success of a company. This means that all of the key people in an organisation need to be able to read all of the different financial statements and understand their implications. Cashflow needs to be monitored regularly. Budgets need to be drawn up for each job and adhered to. This means that budgets must actually be realistic - the more unrealistic a budget the less people will actually try and follow them. Budgeting for new jobs is something that we certainly can do better at here at global-roam.

Business Development and Effective Networking for Professionals
The second talk was entitled Business Development and Effective Networking for Professionals but spent more time discussing human behaviour than anything else (though that is a good thing in my opinion). The speaker began by asking a very important question - “why do people buy stuff from you?” The answer to that is quite simple and it is at its core the fundamental basis of human behaviour. People buy from you to increase their pleasure or avoid pain. Therefore everything that we do should be tailored to accomplish one of three things - to fix, accomplish or avoid something for your client. This means building relationships with clients.

All relationships come down to trust (just read Shakespeare’s Othello for a lesson in how a lack of trust can undermine an otherwise healthy relationship). According to the speaker, trust comes down to three things - capabilities, reliability and character/integrity. The first two can be improved through training or better tools. The third aspect - integrity - cannot. If there is a reason to suspect the character of a potential employee then regardless of their qualifications you should not hire them. Similarly it will be much harder for a client to form a good relationship with you if they do not trust you (in fact they likely will not employ your services).

The speaker then went on to explain that in every company there were three kinds of people - the finders, the minders and the grinders. The finders are the people who are comfortable creating new relationships. These are the type of people you want in sales and marketing. The minders are the people in an organisation who are good at maintaining the current relationships. They might not be great at meeting new people, but they are good at pleasing those they already know. This is the type of person that I currently am. The final subset of people are the grinders. They are the ones that excel at doing the work of the company. Generally they will have little interest in meeting or maintaining relationships except out of necessity. Todd is one of these people, which is why he is a brilliant coder but was not a very good product manager (and he would be happy to tell you the same thing). It is important when networking to find the right people in an organisation to network with.

When dealing with clients, it is important to make three different types of contacts in an organisation. The first and most important contact that you should make is a coach. That is, someone who can educate you as to the organisation that you are dealing with and point you in the right direction when you need to talk to someone else. The second person you need to contact is the person who is the financial buyer of your products. They are the ones who will ultimately pay for whatever it is that you sell, so it’s important that you understand who they are and what their needs are. Thirdly, you need to identify who it is that actually uses your goods or services in a company. If you do not make sure that someone is enjoying your services they may not want to renew their relationship with you. All three types of people are important to your chances of building or maintaining good relations with a client. It is very important that you have contact with more than one person in an organisation in case that person leaves. Finally, remember that in every relationship someone has to take the first step. Why not let it be you?

Impression Management and Brand You

The third speaker entitled their talk “Impression Management and Brand You”, which sounds to me like marketing speak (yuck!) but was full of juicy content. The first core theme to come out in this presentation was that of authenticity. Personal authenticity is very important in everything that you do, for a number of reasons. Primarily if you are not authentic then people are not going to trust you. If people do not trust you they will not do business with you. Trying to “fake it until you make it” is not going to work in todays business environment. Secondly, if you are authentic then you will be happier and more capable. It is no use for me to try and pretend to be a bubbly person because I’m not. If I tried to be I would appear fraudulent, burn myself out and achieve less success than being myself. You really have to decide who you are and be comfortable with that. Some people are extroverted in nature and others (like myself) are introverted. Some are big, some are small. The key is to accept your own style and work with that. For example, Scott Ginsberg (see Hello, My Name Is Adam) has a style that works for him. If I were try try and emulate his style I would look like a fool because it is not who I am.

As a part of developing your own style, the speaker had us all do an exercise - come up with an “elevator pitch” to introduce yourself. This is supposed to reflect who you are, what you value and what you are like. It was a valuable exercise to do as it got me thinking about what it is that I really value, what my unique selling point is and why I do what I do. After we had worked that out, we were asked who wanted to share theirs with the whole group. Reluctantly I was the third person to do so. In a room full of mostly extraverted managers it was the young introverted tech guy who had the courage to stand up and deliver (poorly) his ad-libbed introduction. The speaker and audience then critiqued my address and came up with a few points, though the only one that I really remember was that someone said I was shy (well duh…) and to which the speaker responded to that by saying that some people find that really attractive. I think my face went a bright shade of red at that point. The point though is that being shy should not hold you back from building your personal brand.

Exceptional Customer Service
Next up was a presentation on customer service. Now customer service, in my opinion, is one of those areas that everyone talks about and not many people actually do right (probably including global-roam to some extent). Earlier in the day one of the speakers mentioned that “going the extra mile” was almost always beneficial in business. What was not mentioned is where the origin of the term came from. Now that it has entered the common vernacular the term has lost some of its meaning, but it was first recorded in the Christian Bible. At the time the Jewish people were under Roman rule. Roman citizens had more rights than non-citizens and one of those rights was that they were able to command any Jew to carry their equipment for exactly one mile (markers were placed on the roads to measure the distance). Understandably the Jews hated this. Legally they could not be told to carry the equipment further than the one mile. When Jesus told his followers to “go the extra mile” he was telling them not to begrudge the Romans but instead show them extra courtesy by doing far more than what was expected of them. Regardless whether you believe the religious aspect of this or not, it does make for a very good demonstration of what good customer service is. It is doing more than what is expected of you. Treating your client interactions as more than just financial transactions is the key.

There were four key areas of customer service that were looked at in this hour. “Consistency”, “Phrases”, “Normal” and “Connected”.

Consistency was the first concept and it is one that is one of the hardest to get right. This means that your customer service should not be about isolated moments of brilliance but about constant, continual effort. An integral part of this is ensuring smooth “baton changes” among staff. Within global-roam this means that we ensure whoever is on support for the month has enough support to do their job. It means when a new product manager starts that the previous product manager educates them not only about the product, but about the clients and their needs and desires.

The next word Phrases deals with the language that you use to communicate with clients. The point was made that the phraseology used within and organisation is vastly underestimated in most corporate environments. We looked at several phrases from the Scott Ginsberg e-book entitled “117 Phrases That Payses” (available from his website - no direct link as you need to provide an email address to get it) and looked at how using the right phrase would aid both how we respond to clients and how they saw our organisations.

Nobody notices Normal. People as a general rule would rather hear about you and not from you. Think about Google as an organisation. How many people have ever been contacted by them? I do not know anyone who has, yet everyone knows about them because they are the best at what they do. “The speed of change is changing and it is changing ever quicker,” is a quote that accurately describes the corporate arms race when it comes to being exceptional and standing out from every other business. In 1999 having a corporate website made you stand out. In 2009 if you do not have an awesome website you are being left behind. Great websites are now considered the new standard for “normal”. What is it that you can do to stand out from the rest of the pack? Quite simply “do what you are going to do when you say you are going to do it”. IT is an industry in which 20% budget and time overruns are considered best practice. Imagine a company that delivered what they said they were going to deliver when they said they would deliver it.

Everybody in today’s society is Connected. Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, youtube and google all mean that people are connected to each other in ways that was never before possible. Just the other day I checked my facebook and email, watched the sports report and participated in a work meeting before I was even out of bed (admittedly I had this infernal cold, which is why I had the work meeting there). Three years ago this simply was not possible. Today it is the norm. For organisations this means that the term “secret” means that others will probably find out about it within a day, rather than an hour. It means that you do not know who anybody you interact with is connected to. The cleaning lady might be married to the person in charge of accounts at your biggest client (so treat everyone well - it certainly will not hurt you). The other part of this is that you should never gossip about others. Chat, yes, but never gossip. The old adage which says “do not say something about someone that you would not say to them in person” is even more important today.

Resilience for Managers
While it was an incredibly interesting session, Resilience for Managers was mistitled. It should have been named “Resilience for Everybody” as the lessons learned here are important for all people, not just managers. Resilience here is defined as “your ability to bounce back after disappointment or setback, to be adaptable and flexible and to create vitality and re-engineer yourself”. I do believe that the definitive book on resilience is Adversity Quotient, but this session was still very useful. Michelle, who ran the session, was responsible for a job that saw her sometimes need to work for twenty hours straight, deal with international clients and fly in and out of multiple timezones. A story she told involved flying to Dubai for a conference. She had to deliver a presentation to people there a mere couple of hours after she had landed. When she got there she found that her luggage had been run over and shampoo now covered all of her work clothes. Someone that she was traveling with had the same problem. One of them vented their frustration at the airport staff, lost control of the situation and ended up late to their presentation. The other went to their presentation and gave it in jeans and a teeshirt, after explaining to the audience why they were dressed so casually. Which do you think left a better impression with the audience? Instinctively we all know it to be the one who took control of the situation and worked with what they had (in this case it was Michelle).

When facing a crisis, there are five stages that an individual goes through. The first stage is the stress trigger. In the ancient past this was the bear that was threatening to eat us. These days it may be the boss approaching looking for a report you have not finished yet (truth be told I’m sure many of us would rather face the bear). Stress triggers are unavoidable. We can reduce the likelihood of them occurring due to good planning, but no matter how carefully we plan, something unexpected can always happen (bringing me back to the idea that no plan survives the battlefield but no battle was won without a plan). The second stage that we go through is the “red alert” stage. When faced with a crisis our body changes its physiology to prepare us for a fight or flight response. The third stage is action - the actual response to the emergency. In eons past this would be running from the grizzly that was about to rip your arms off or grabbing the nearest rock and whacking it over the head. These days it is more likely to involve you talking to the boss and explaining why that report that was due yesterday still has not been started or ducking off to the lunch room for a snack so the boss conveniently finds you missing. This is the stage at which people commonly get stuck. Constant stress without respite is what burns people out. The next stage - the relaxation or rebound stage - is what returns us to normal after a crisis. This is where in times past we would have collapsed and slept in a cave for a few hours after fleeing the bear. It is mostly ignored by people today, which is why we seem so stressed out as a society. The final stage is the return to normal.

Resiliency is about identifying when a red alert is about to occur and implementing strategies to return us to normal after the event. Michelle identified three fundamental keys to doing this - body talk, mind talk and feeling talk. Body talk involves changing our physical state to deal with the crisis. This might mean that we go for a run, go to a pilates class or more immediately stand up and stretch. Mind talk is about what you are telling yourself and the way in which you analyse a situation. Adversity Quotient deals best with addressing this. Finally, Feeling talk is about changing the way you feel about a problem. It is the hardest to deal with, particularly if the stress is emotional in nature (like a disagreement with your significant other). Dealing with your feeling talk may involve strategies from the other two types of talk, it may also involve crying, talking with someone or using some other form of emotional outlet. Ultimately resilience comes down to a couple of key points. Do not sweat the small stuff because it is ALL small stuff. Secondly, if you cannot fight or flee a problem, then just go with the flow.

Marketing on a Shoestring
Marketing to me is a term that is used to describe the way in which you communicate with your clients and potential clients. It is about educating people about your products and yourself and letting them know why they should invest in you, your products and your company. Marketing on a Shoestring was a session run by a Bond University professor named Stuart McAuliffe (who shares the same last name as a previous boss, but is no relation).

Stuart was a very practical person, who loved to talk and be listened to. He was quite an engaging speaker who knew how to tell a joke. He stressed that a firm should know its target market and know what its competitive advantages are. It sounds like a simple concept, but many organisations do not really know why people buy their products. Often real, tangible competitive advantages are ignored by a company because people in the company view it as “simple stuff”. Unfortunately most of the time the simple things are not as simple as they seem and by not reinforcing your advantages in your marketing you are missing out on an opportunity.

“Some people will really like your business for some reason. Target them. Market in a way that will appeal to them.” Stuart’s advice seems very simple, but many businesses do not do this. Most marketing experts that I have heard have stressed this concept - it is far easier for you to sell to an existing client than to gain a new client. A part of this is to not try and make your product appeal to everybody. Very few products ever will be used by everybody (water and air are the only ones I can think of) and in most cases it is better to build a product that nails a particular market segment’s needs than to try and appeal to the whole market.

A large part of Stuart’s presentation was on the effectiveness of brochures. Brochures can be a very effective way of reaching a target market - far more effective than email or other forms of advertising. Stuart waxed lyrical about the psychology of brochure advertising. Larger brochures are better than smaller brochures. Womens faces sell far better than mens faces. Sex does not sell and turns people off - but people love the concept of love. People look at a picture and then read what is under it, so do not waste time on text that sits above your pictures. Tell a story with your brochure - it is far more effective than presenting a series of facts. On and on he went about tips and techniques for constructing a brochure that sells well. Many of his insights into human psychology were very interesting and entertaining.

Project Management
The final session of the day was on Project Management. By this stage my brain had gone into spasm and I felt like I was ready to die. I had lived a good life anyway. I did not absorb much at all of this session - not due to the quality of it, but more to my concentration powers after a mere five hours sleep followed by a very long day, while sick. However, the one point that I did get was that there is a book - “A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge,” which is the most important book on Project Management ever written. Oh and I do remember the interesting statistic that there are two types of project manager - the 27 year old who has been educated for it and the 54 year old who has been thrust into the job, largely because they were there and were less incompetent than those around them. At global-roam it seems that we got the age right but the reason wrong. Still, I am up for a challenge.

After a quick nap on the back seat of my car (I always nap on the back seat - I do not want my body to associate the front of the car with sleep) I headed off back home, but not before stopping off and watching the Invisible Children documentary with some friends. It might be off topic for this blog, but it covered a very important situation - child soldiers forced into service in Uganda and the Congo. Children are being abducted as young as nine and ten years old and forced to commit attrocities against their will. It made me both angry at the injustice and glad to live in Australia, where my greatest concern is whether the latest version of our products are checked into source control properly. By comparison to what these people face, my concerns seem meagre and that helps me keep my problems in perspective.

Overall I had a long, but awesome day at AIM Gold Coast. Each of the speakers was really good and while much of the information was not new, it was valuable.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 3:50 pm and is filed under 04 - Sales & Marketing, Company Roles, Event Review, Life-Long Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.