Train Diligently and Practice Constantly.

“If you train diligently in this skill, you will get to the heart of strategy itself, and in this way become able to win at will. You must practice constantly.” Miyamoto Mushashi

Miyamoto Musashi was an expert Japanese swordsman and rōnin (masterless samurai). He imparts much wisdom about strategy in his “Writings of the Five Spheres” (a.k.a., The Five Rings).

Source: www.biography.com/people/miyamoto-musashi-38201

As I read this quote, I began to think about how I’ve applied this concept over the last 25 years of my career. I’ve spent most of that time (~18 years) practicing the skills of solutions consulting. A critical and frequent opportunity to practice is product demonstrations. In all of those years, I have never had a Miyamoto single-strike moment. This is a level of achievement noted by a win (in my case winning a sale) that is secured with a singular movement (in my case a single demo, or presentation, etc.). That is perhaps an unrealistic goal for complex solution selling.

Selling technology solutions is a long process. Some deals take longer to win than others. The length of a sales cycle doesn’t always hinge on the size of the deal, either. I’ve experienced sales cycles that took a mere 3 months to close hundreds of user licenses, and others that spanned over two years for only tens of user licenses. When a deal takes longer than expected to close, I focus on being responsive to their questions and being patient. While I may struggle internally with the pressures of quotas (both mine and others working with me), it’s important to project calm and a heart of service to my clients.

The principal objective is to keep practicing. Every demo or presentation opportunity is a practice run for the next one. Each time that I engage, I learn a little more about what works, and what doesn’t. Invariably, I will get asked new and interesting questions that I have never thought about before. This improves my ability to answer questions the next time I hear a similar question.

Sometimes it’s the technology that makes the difference for a quick sale. Perhaps the software was cool and modern looking, or easy to integrate with, or just had the right mix of features. More often than not, it has been my ability to listen for the subtle clues a customer might give in the way they ask a question. However, just as important as the listening skill, has been my fluency with the product. Knowing the “fastest path” to execute a feature demonstrates how easy it is to use the software, as well as quickly validating that we have a solution.

If you are working in sales, pre-sales support, sales engineering, or some other version of solutions consulting, take these important steps now to improve your ability to win:

1. Practice using and demonstrating your product constantly. Find every moment you can to play with your demonstration environment. Find the easiest path to showing high-value features.
2. Research tough questions, and then go make it work in your demonstration environment. Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, is famous for saying, “a week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.” You will learn more about your product from actually using it than you will from any classroom, or recorded webinar.
3. Practice your perfect pitch and internalize it. Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach, said on many occasions that, “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” Write out your script, and read it out loud, word for word. Relentlessly refine your script. Edit for word choice and impact. Be sure that you are conveying the value of every feature, not just that you can do this or that.

Blueprint for a Top Performing Solutions Consulting Team

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am passionate about building teams of top performing consultants. On a personal note, in our home, we have made it a family tradition to watch television shows together like: American Ninja Warrior, The Voice, and Dancing with the Stars. All of these shows have one thing in common, the celebration of people perfecting their skills and talents, striving to be their best.

As a leader, there is no greater feeling than watching your team excel and maximize their potential. I’ve given this a great deal of thought in my personal development, too. So, I thought it would be good to share my vision and passion for developing Solutions Consulting organizations in this post. Here is my Top 10 list for creating high performance teams:

The Right Culture

There is a lot of material published about creating optimal corporate cultures. Corporate culture plays an important role in how professionals operate and interact with other departments, and even customers. The healthiest corporate cultures foster creativity and permit calculated risks. It has been said that Thomas Edison discovered over 1,000 ways to not make an incandescent lightbulb by experimenting with different materials. While we should strive for perfection, it’s important that professionals be given the latitude to take calculated risks inspired by their own creativity. “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not taking enough risks.” -Unknown

The Right Development

I recall my first entry into the consulting world. I remember telling the hiring manager during my interview that while “I know a lot about telecommunications technology and contact centers, I know nothing about your products.” He promised the first three months of my job would involve taking every training class available on their technology. I took the job and that made all of the difference in my career to follow. Not every organization can afford that kind of development plan… but many companies hire someone who’s never even seen their software before, and expecting them to be credible “experts” to represent them.

The Right Recognition

Even the most self-assured professionals need validation from time to time. It’s critical that people understand what the company values, and then to be rewarded when they help the company meet those goals. I was creating and promoting “gamification” among SC Teams long before it became trendy or a buzzword. For the uninitiated, gamification is “the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.” I have successfully applied the same concept to rewarding alignment with corporate goals such as: quota attainment, product mix, capturing new logos, CRM utilization, and more.

The Right People

Consultants often view themselves as the smartest people in the room. However egocentric that might sound, it often rings true. Even so, smart people value association with other smart people. So, assembling a team of like-minded, similarly competent professionals is an important part of building a top performing Solutions Consulting team. We need only look to organizations like Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, IBM and others to find this is true. However, it’s not just about hiring people with high IQs or product knowledge. Equally important is character, which includes finding people with a heart for helping/serving others, a solid work ethic, and personal integrity.

The Right Ratio

At least in the world of software sales, Solutions Consultants are typically paired with multiple Sales Representatives to pursue many books of business. There is a certain kind of magic that we see in enterprise software sales, where customers tend to respond more favorably to the Solution Consultant or “technical guy”, and view anything a Sales Representative says with skepticism. As a result, great SCs are in high demand. Everyone wants to work with the top SCs, the ones who are the most competent and most creative problem solvers. Therefore, to prevent burnout, it’s important to have the right ratio of Sales Reps to SCs. At least in the contact center enterprise software marketplace, this tends to be around a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio (meaning that for every 2 or 3 Sales Reps, you should have one Solutions Consultant).

The Right Focus (Specialists Vs. Generalists)

Consolidation within the Contact Center software industry, over the past 15 years, has evolved once very specialized organizations into one-stop-shops with very diverse offerings. For example, take a company that was once known for selling ACDs (automatic call distributors). Today, they sell Omni-channel contact center solutions spanning inbound and outbound call routing, email response management, customer facing web chat, interactive voice response (IVRs), advanced list management, recording and quality management, workforce management (for forecasting, scheduling and tracking real-time adherence), performance analytics, and more! The temptation of management is to leverage the same number of Solution Consultants they had selling their original ACD product line. However, the depth of product knowledge carried by the Generalist SC is far diluted from the SCs who once staffed the separate companies. If this represents your organization, it’s important to find the right balance of Generalists who know a little about everything you sell (to identify the right solution mix for any given customer), and the Specialists who are the deep experts in specific product lines.

The Right Challenges

Aligning teams with corporate goals is critical to the execution of any strategy. As I mention above, gamification is a great tool for motivating people to align with the strategy. So, it’s imperative to ensure you’ve laid out the right challenges. We’ve all heard that SMART goals are: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-bound (or some variation of this acronym). I’d only add that for professional solutions consultants, goals also need to be intellectually challenging. This concept plays well into creating the right development plan that improves and deepens your SC’s technical expertise.  

The Right Tools

Any hope that you have in creating a high velocity sales team will hinge on equipping your Solutions Consultants with the right tools. Since there is some variability in SC responsibilities from one company to another, consider leveraging your own SC’s to create these tools. Tools of the SC trade take on many forms, from: quoting engines, statement of work boilerplate language, demonstration systems, presentation templates, product documentation, knowledge-bases, and much more. SC’s are the best equipped to identify their needs, and are often the best qualified to create the solutions. Engaging your own experts to create the very solutions that will improve their work efficiency is both intellectually stimulating and rewarding. Consider creating “Tiger Teams” to gain buy-in and contributions from your ranks. If you’re staffing ratio is optimized, your SCs will have the time to contribute to the continuous improvement needs of the organization.

The Right Processes

The right tools will mitigate the need to have complicated processes. I’ve seen organizations build processes aimed at quality assurance. Their intent is to catch problems with a design, or proposed integration, or other issues. The fallacy with this approach is that it builds inspection into the end of the process. Properly designed systems build quality into the tools and process, such that it’s increasingly difficult to design a problematic solution (system, quote, statement of work, etc.). It shouldn’t be lost on us that investing in the right development plan, and the right balance of generalists Vs. specialists, all contribute to building quality into the process.

The Right Compensation

Compensation for Solutions Consultants is important, but is often times not the most important factor in top performing teams. In other words, if you’ve hired the right people who have a heart for service, who are motivated by intellectually challenging work, and who are receiving continuing education and professional development, then compensation is not the highest priority. Nevertheless, your compensation plan needs to be competitive with the marketplace. Top performers whose contributions are not being recognized, or who are not being intellectually stimulated, or who are starved for effective tools, will eventually depart for organizations who at least pay more. The saying goes, “If I have to be miserable, I’d rather be rich and miserable.” Creating a culture that cultivates and rewards top performers will help you to retain your very best talent, and will lead to higher performance in every measurement.

Make Your Benefits Analysis Stand Out

Stephen Covey teaches that highly successful people [insert, consultants] "begin with the end in mind". This advice is helpful when creating a new benefits analysis. As you begin to collect your data and complete your analysis, try to envision how you will display and format the results. You want to make the data come alive to help your client make a decision. Logical decisions (math and facts) should be obvious. But don't forget to present the soft benefits, as well.

Three Ways to Get Inspired for Creative Data Visualization:

1. If you need a little inspiration, do a quick Google search for "data visualization techniques" and then click on the images filter. You'll have a lot to consider, although a lot of these examples will require advanced graphics tools to generate. 
2. PresentationPro.com has a wide selection of presentation diagrams, maps, and infographics (fully editable charts and graphs for PowerPoint). The infographics are professionally designed and will help you stand out above any competition using the regular tools.
3. News periodicals, like the Wall Street Journal, and magazines are another great source of fresh ideas for presenting information. With a little creativity and standard software, you can bring some of these these ideas to life. 

So, what if you don't have a creative streak, or a graphic artist on staff? The new Microsoft Office 365 (or Office 2013) builds its tradition of solid charting tools with brighter and cleaner looks.

Examples of bubble charts using Microsoft Office 365:

Bubble charts are useful for plotting three dimensions of data, in a single view. Consider using the following example in your next benefits analysis.

• You can emphasize the ROI Ratio of a given set of solutions from different vendors [Figure 1], or for separate components (products) within a single vendor's offering.
• (X) = Cost,
• (Y) = Estimated First Year Benefits (i.e., net profit), and 
• (Z) = ROI Ratio (to control bubble size)

Figure 1: Investment Analysis Visualization
(Bubble Size = ROI Ratio)

In the fictitious example above, option "A" has the highest ROI Ratio (largest bubble size). The midpoint of the x-axis represents the point at which any projects equal to, or exceeding, this cost must go to a capital committee for spending approval.

• Alternatively, you could use the bubble chart to emphasize the expected benefits (performance gains) [Figure 2]  while projects that use more resources, or take longer to implement, are plotted farther to the right on the x-axis. 
• (X) = Complexity to Deploy, 
• (Y) = Total Project Cost, and 
• (Z) = Estimated First Year Benefits (to control bubble size).

Figure 2: Investment Analysis Visualization

(Bubble Size = Estimated First Year Benefit)

In the fictitious example above, option "A" has the highest expected first year benefit (largest bubble size), and the smallest project complexity (e.g., implementation time in months). The vertical tick marks of the x-axis could be decision points at which projects, or optional capabilities, might get pushed to a later deployment phase.

Remember, an executive summary should be brief, but comprehensive. If you are including the analysis in a consulting abstract, be sure any supporting data and analysis are included in an appendix. While executives look for the bottom line analysis in any kind of presentation, they still want to see the detailed analysis for their own due diligence.

There are many ways to display the results of your benefits or investment analysis. No matter which options you choose, make sure your data visualizations communicate a clear and concise message.

Copyright © 2013 | Howard Leary

Essential Ingredients of a Powerful ROI Analysis

If you are consulting as part of a sales team, the simple truth is that your client isn't going to completely trust you. That's why it is critical to gain their participation and buy-in throughout the analysis. Clients who own the inputs to the analysis, will own the results, as well.

Conducting return on investment (ROI) workshops with your clients is a great way of getting them to consider the expected benefits of a proposed solution. The workshop can involve one or more sessions, and often includes a broad representation of the client's management team. To ensure a great workshop experience, be sure to: use active listening skills, vet any disagreements, and ultimately gain consensus among the participants.

Three steps to building a powerful ROI analysis: 

First, help your client to summarize the current business process and to identify anything hindering better performance. These hindrances are called the business challenges. This is the basis for your work, identifying the specific problems to be solved.

Before clients can quantify expected gains (or losses), they must understand the current cost of the business challenge. This often means the client has to start thinking about cost in a different way (e.g., cost of goods sold, waste in the business process, risk of non-compliance, contributing factors to lower satisfaction, etc.).

Second, the analysis requires an understanding of the proposed solution. Help your clients to visualize, describe, evaluate, and select the solution. Solutions can be new people, processes or technology. Be sure to quantify the estimated results.

Third, a powerful ROI analysis includes an executive summary. Decision makers need to understand the bottom line. A powerful summary always makes it clear "how much the solution is going to cost", and a quantifiable measure of "how much the solution is going to help."

Essential ingredients for a powerful return on investment analysis:

• Cost of keeping the incumbent solution.
• Actual productivity measurement (before)

• Cost of doing things the new way.
• Projected productivity measurement (after)

• High Level Description of Proposed Solution(s).
• Common examples include: 
• new personnel to handle increasing transaction volumes,
• new process automation (applications, databases, etc.),
• new self service technology (IVR or Web), and
• new contact channels (email, social media, sms, etc.).

• Estimated hard benefits (savings) for doing things the new way. 
• Common examples include: 
• improved capacity (production throughput, top line revenue),
• improved efficiency (reduced COGS; Improved EBITDA), 

• Estimated soft benefits for doing things the new way.
• Common examples include: 
• improved customer experience (satisfaction),
• improved containment (self service automation),
• improved escalation ratios (factors that impact NPS),
• improved employee retention rates, 
• improved quality and or accuracy,
• improved retention & loyalty, and
• improved customer engagement capability.

Before presenting the final analysis, it's a good idea to do a quick reality check on the results. If the results are unbelievable, your project won't get past the board of directors or capital committee.

As consultants, we have to keep our need to control and manage in check. Peter Block [author of "Flawless Consulting"], teaches us that our job, as consultants, is to help our clients learn how to think about their decisions, not to make the decisions for them. In short, clients must own the analysis, because they are the ones who must ultimately own the decisions.

Copyright © 2013 | Howard Leary