Common Sense - Test Driven Design [TDD]

Last week, I spoke in Washington DC at the Certification Network Group's  seminar.  This seminar addressed the need for certification groups to establish their technology  requirements before beginning an  internet search or calling technology vendors for demonstrations and to understand how to have technology be a productive tool rather than take a life of its own.

The one method explained to help them in successful completion of their projects was to use an Agile approach. business process can help achieve a successful , I explained how an Agile Business Practice will help not only in this very important  first stage, the how step, but throughout the entire project. Since there was only one software development company in attendance, only one person had heard of Agile.  To explain this method, I used the basic Wikipedia definition: ...it is [sic]  a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development,  where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams.  This is a very simple definition but the highlighted the needed points:

•  It is Iterative
• It is Cross-functional
•  It is Customer Driven - both Internal and External

We discussed the benefits of  short iterations, stand-up meetings, huddles [retrospectives] and the use of a collaborative tool, in this case a simple Wiki.  As I asked for questions,  my software development person stood and asked - "What about  applying TDD -  test driven design - to these types of project?"  I looked at him and very cleverly stated,  "I have never really thought about that, let's explore this at the break."  Well the break came and went but the discussion never occurred but it did get me thinking.


TDD, very simply put,  is a process used in software development to produce continually working code by first writing a test for requirement/feature and then writing the code for that requirement.  Since the test is written first, theoretically the new code, written to the requirement should  pass the test. By following this method, you should always have working code.  Kent Beck, in his first book on Extreme Programming Explained brought this back into programmers tool kit. 


So, can TDD be used as a tool outside of software programming,  in project management or sales?  I say yes and we should  apply test driven design to all sales and project management.  It is basic common sense. As we work with our clients, we should always be applying  metrics or test to make sure the desired outcome is going to work to create a win-win for all involved.

Examples of these tests might be:

• Do all stakeholder understand the outcome of this sale/project?
• How will this sale/project bring value company/association?
• How will it bring value to our customers?
• Has this data been validate by  both customers and stakeholder?
• Are the requirements real?  Have they been validated?
• Have budgets been correctly created - not leaving out important line items?
• Is the ROI understood by all stakeholders?

So, we may not be writing code to our tests, but to create successful sales we must continually follow a test driven design format.  Make sense?


 

Common Sense - Product Line vs Territory

Several weeks ago, I was asked would I build a sales program around territories [geographical] or a product line.  Without even a second  thought I said product line.  Now, I have no hard data or any scientific fact to support my statement but to me it is  completely common sense. 

Sales is a number game; the more people you know, network with, Linked In with, build business relationships with the better chance you have at success.  Good sales people have the skills needed to network into their market segment as well as to use probing questions to establish current and future needs,  additional  internal clients and referrals to external clients in the same market segment.  Why would anyone place a territorial boundary on this type of skill?

When I was in graduate school, I was working in the proprietary chemical market. I received call from a bearing manufacture from  inside of my territory.  They had been importing bears from Eastern Europe which arrived rusted and therefore ruined.  What the company wanted to know was, did we have a rust inhibitor that would survive XX  days on the water - meaning the ocean voyage.  Being the good sales representative, I said yes, met with their chemists, did some successful testing and took the order for fifty 55 gallon drums.

When I took the order, the company requested that drums be dropped shipped to a dock in New Jersey for transit over seas.  At the time, I did not think anything about it.  I did all the paper work and set everything in motion.  For the time, this was a huge order and I was feeling pretty impressed with myself - then the problems.

First months commission statement comes and there is nothing about the 50 drum order.  I call my company's headquarters and am told  since it was dropped shipped to New Jersey, the representative in that territory would get the credit and commission.Now, here is where the story gets interesting.


Commissions were paid during the middle of the month, so near the end of that month, I am once again called by the bearing company to come in and work with them for another 50 drum order.  A time was set and I went into their office. Director of Purchasing tells me he had to call our headquarters about some exporting manifests that were not completed correctly and knowing how these type of companies work,  asked about commissions.  He quietly looks at me  and states he knew I was not getting nor would I get the credit/commission.  He explained he had  been playing this purchasing game for many years and  that the only reason my company had been given a chance for this business was that I had come highly recommended by one of his  competitors and luckily for me,  I had lived up to that recommendation. To him it was all about relationships and territories be damned.  He wanted someone he could "Get my hands around his neck when something went wrong and something always goes wrong".

We did not get the next  few orders because my company could not see passed the territory issue.  Finally, one of the National Sales people called to explain how this was the correct the situation but from what I heard, the bearing company had a little come to jesus with them and as Magical Max stated, "Give me the 65, I back on the job."

My point is simple, if you hire a person with all the needed skills for networking, relationship building and the ability to probe deep into the market or company, why limit those skills?  This makes no sense in my way of thinking

Common Sense - Not Skipping the How Step

One of my major tenets, if not the major one is, 

• When you sell something it should stay sold - no charge backs, refunds or returns. 

Returns, charge back or whatever your term might be, are not only financially devastating, but, from my experience,  are relationship killers.  You want to assist the client in making a purchase decision - not make that decision for him and the only way I know how to assist is to not allow them to skip the how step.

My father had an Olivetti agency in Evanston, Illinois.  When I was in my teens, I watched him demonstrate an Editor 5 proportional or variable spacing typewriter.  This machine gave different spacing value to each character of the alphabet, so the letter "i" had 1 space value will the letter "w" had 5 spaces values.  The output was a document which looked as though it had been actually type set. Extremely easy these days, but extremely difficult in the '60s. All office machine companies,  IBM, Smith Corona, Remington and Royal typewriter companies had a similar machine and all of them were extremely hard  master because of this variable spacing.   Additionally, these types of machines were extremely expense about a thousand dollars in 1960 dollars.

The demonstration completed, the man, a professor at Northwestern,  purchases the machine outright. We remove one from a box, check it out, he pays and he leaves.  Needless to say, I am pretty impressed until my dad says;  "He will be back and more than likely with the machine."  Baffled, I ask why?  "Because he has not listening and did not think it through.  He liked what he saw but does not realize the how of getting there - mainly the difficulty of the spacing"  Sure enough, a week later the typewriter came back and the original check was returned  my father never even deposited the check. 

As I learned then  and have continued to learn over the years, the how step in sales must not be skipped.  In this specific case, the how step for the our professor was when he was asked;  how are you going to use this machine?  Will it be you are will one of your student aids from the university? Will you have time to explain and show how to calculate the values for the characters?  The professor should have answered these questions and had he this type of machine would have been ruled out immediately.

So what is the how step and when do you use it?  The how step should begin almost immediately - right after you have introduce yourself.  It is the discovery part of your discussion and  establishes your crediibility,  your trust and your value to the client,  building upon the business relationship. You must get the client thinking:

• How do you know we have a problem? 
• How have you defined the problem
• How do you know the problem does not come from a bad process?
• How do you better to understand the requirements to correct the problem?
• How will this project/software/product correct the problem?
• How will we know the true budget – financial and staff time?

 By probing and discussing questions like these, the client should start to analysis the situation and not:

• Jump to any solution before you completely understand the problem

• Try to match a product or technology to an undefined problem, looking  for the silver bullet solution 

• Implementing a solution that  interferes with their best practices

• Forgetting  that these best practices create the value their customers will buy and therefore generates needed revenue

By using the how step, you have helped the client think through his problem so they can make most informed decision regarding the needed solution to his problem.  I realize that the underlying purpose of all of this is to have them purchase your product and service.  But even if they do not, you have  shown them your value and created a working, trusted relationship leaving the door open for future discussions and sales.

Please do not skip the how step.
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Up Selling - Common Sense Distroyed

Up Selling, you know what that is right? Convincing someone that they need to purchase more than they needed so the seller can make a profit. Forget about integrity or trust, just make the margin type thinking. Let me give you my most recent example of this game.

A friend of my took her Toyota in for the 90,000 service. She follows the suggested service schedule pretty good in an effort to keep the car trouble free. Previously, the service manager stated she would needs back brakes during this scheduled service. She asked me to look at the brakes to see what I thought. Having my share of second, third, fourth hand cars, I ran my fingers over the disks, found no real cutting so I told her if she wanted to wait I thought she could at least 5 to 10,000 miles

Several days later, I called her to find out what happened. The service writer did in fact tell her she needed the brakes - okay his call no harm no foul. Additionally, she needed a serpentine belt- at 90,000 miles and that makes sense from my experience with Volvo. Now here comes the travesty, something this agency should be ashamed - the up selling. He tells her, that since they are replacing the serpentine belt, and since they will be able to get to the pump, they should replace the water pump as well which would be about $450.00 [the part being $300 of the $450.00]. I did not see leaking when I looked at the car and asked her if any gauges came on during her driving to which she stated no. Then why the pump? Well, the service manager kind of put a scare into me so I thought it would be a good idea.

I could not believe this, the water pump. In all the cars I have had, I have only replaced three water pumps and they were on the same Mustang II had in the '70s and the second two were my fault. I could not believe this. She took it in for a $49.95 oil change but thinking it could be $400 with the brakes and her total bill was over $1200 dollars all from up selling

My common sense tells me that this is just not good customer relations. Do they laugh at you when you leave? Do they realize once you figure out what has happened, you more than likely will not come back? Do they even care?

So what is my point? My point is that up selling has no place in the long-term relationship building process. In reality, it has no place in transactional sales either. My common sense tells me I do not like being treated this way so I had not treat anyone else in the same manner.

Make sense?

Common Sense - Elevator Pitch

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be a co-host of InTimeTV's "Association Executive Today" an online program addressing those issues that might be keeping ExD's awake at night. www.intimetv.com One of the guests, Steve Yastrow, discussed his book, Brand Harmony and We: the Ideal Customer Relationship.

Steve believes and I totally agree that:

"Every time you interact with a customer, three things can happen:

• Your relationship gets better
• Your relationship stays the same
• Your relationship gets worse"

A major point Steve discussed was "Ditch the Pitch" again which I totally agree. In my thinking and experience, the "elevator pitch"must go - now. I have no idea how many times I have been instructed to create one of these things by someone, other than a common sense driven salesperson and they never work.

Have you every really tried this elevator pitch thing? Try it sometime, and watch the eyes of the person, watch them glaze over while shaking their head pretending to listen. Did they learn anything? Will they follow up with you? I doubt it. Now ask yourself, if I was in their shoes, how would I react? Would I have learned anything? Was there a call to action for me? Will I act? My experience has shown me that none of these things happen.

So my common sense approach is to use that time and that moment to engage in a genuine dialog or even better, engage in a genuine listening that will allow you to gain the needed insight for the next conversation - the one, in my experience, that really counts

This elevator pitch thing is kind of like the Bett Midler's line when she states:

" Okay, enough talking about me honey. Let's talk about you. "
"What do you think about me."

Maybe what is needed are listening questions developed instead of elevator pitch's?

Common sense can, at times, be as simple as thinking outside of the box.

Last week, I was touring a clients manufacturing facility when he took me through their graphic arts/reproduction area. This group produced all of their collateral material for Sales, Marketing and office use. It had half a dozen or more people working on what most people would consider the latest generation of graphic design and reproduction equipment.

Before I could say anything, it was explained to me that early on several of the smaller manufacturers in their general area had approached them for help with graphic arts and reproductions. The owner saw a way to create a win-win situation for everyone so she negotiated a price for these services. Over the years, strictly by word of mouth, these outside revenues have grown to the point that the department is now a profit center for the company

Have you ever sat in a sales meeting or sales presentation and you been asked - "But what are the business values? What value does this bring to my company." You sit and stare at your paper or brochure or maybe even the product while your mind races. You have presented all the benefits, the cost savings, the ROI issues not to mention the correct positioning, so what other value can there be? Well, have you gone over the most important benefit of all? Mainly, you - both your knowledge and experience of product/service as well as the people skills need to bring the total business value to partition? Too many times, we, as business development professionals, are so concerned with using the correct process that we overlook the most important business value that the client can expect to receive and fail to articulate this benefit to them. Paraphrasing the Pogo comic strip, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

An example of this is, I find it extremely important, as a business professional to remain in contact with the client during the project to assure the business value is received. This is not to say product knowledge is unimportant but times the manor in which a certain issue is addressed, aka hand-holding, becomes more important to the projects success. One of the things I have done over the years is to position myself, at the start of the project/implementation, as a "safety valve" for the client. Several times over the past years, personalities within the project team have clashed putting the project at risk. By remaining in contact with the client, and completely outside of the project management team, the client felt they could discuss these issues with me. This allowed us to make the needed personnel corrections keeping the project on track. The elegance of the situation was there is little to no loss of face - placing everyone into a win-win situation for future project work.

So, as business development professionals, we should recognize and articulate the fact that one of the major business values our product/service delivers to our client's is our expertise and ability to sell and communicate with the client, using our people skills, to ensure he receipt of all the business value.