Partnering For Success September 4, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Best Of 2009, Communication, Customer Service, Sales
1 comment so far
I do more than my fair share of beating up vendors for poor sales practices (to whit: regarding honesty, inappropriate emails, and unsolicited appointments). It is only fair, then, to highlight a really good thing that happened recently with a few of my key vendors.
I like to meet with vendors on a quarterly basis. We split the meeting in half, discussing everything new in their world, and then everything new in mine. The idea is to keep everyone up-to-date and see what, if any, opportunities have arisen since our last meeting. Sometimes actions arise out of the meeting, and sometimes we jsut agree to see each other in three months. Either way, this method seems to work well in maintaining an appropriate relationship.
Recently, my VAR (Value Added Reseller) threw me a curve ball. What if, they suggested, we brought three vendors in at once, and had a joint meeting? Each vendor would talk about their areas, of course, but we could also explore overlaps and potential synergies between the vendors as well.
Well. I had never tried this before, and for the most part, neither had they. So we decided to give it a try. The vendors arrived, prepared to present using a pre-determined agenda. My team attended, anxious to see what they had to say.
It was great! As each vendor got up to speak, we started deep conversations about their technology as it related to the other vendors. In some cases, we jointly explored how this stuff might all work together. In others, vendors had to address conflicts and points of competition with respect to their peers.
My team learned a lot more in this one session than we would have from three individual meetings. I think the vendors got a better feel for how my group assesses technology as a whole, pulling from various vendors to create our solutions. Best of all, we had substantive conversations that went well beyond traditional vendor presentations.
I applaud the salespeople that agreed to present within this structure. They went out on a limb to take care of their customer, and we really appreciated it. It would have been easy to pass on the opportunity, but they stepped up and did something a little out of the ordinary. I also appreciate the efforts of my VAR who worked to arrange and coordinate the meeting. That “V” stands for “value,” and they clearly brought it to us that day.
I could write dozens of “bad salesman” posts for this blog. That’s not fair to the many good salespeople out there who never get a mention. This time, I offer a heart-felt “thank you” to all those salespeople who work so hard to creatively serve their customers. What’s the most creative thing you’ve had a salesperson do for you? Share it so we can all appreciate what good salespeople do.
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No Public Privacy September 2, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Bureaucracy, Communication, Privacy
6 comments
My town is fairly techno-savvy. They run a great web site with up-to-date information on just about anything you can imagine. They also provide real-time email notification of town issues. Any time there is an emergency road closing, or an impending storm, you get a nice email letting you know. You also get all the official town press releases, as they are, um, released to the press.
I always thought this was pretty cool, until last week. That’s when I got an email from the town informing me that the address lists used to drive the email system are considered a public record and are therefore obtainable under the Freedom Of Information Act. The town wanted me to know that someone had just obtained a copy from the town, and that I should be on the lookout for potential spam as a result.
Isn’t that great? Spammers need not scrounge addresses on their own, or pay for them from dubious sources. Instead, they can get them, for free, from every municipal entity in the country that provides information via email. Somehow, I don’t think this is what was envisioned when the FOIA was passed.
Now citizens have a choice: continue to receive timely (and potentially life-saving) information from your town, or be subject to even more spam from those who get the lists from your town. Of course, this punishes the most forward-thinking towns who have taken the time to implement these fancy services. Backwards towns, still distributing information via criers, are not putting their citizens at risk.
I know that I should be running appropriate spam filters (I do) and not open suspicious messages from destitute ex-royalty in Nigeria (I don’t), but not everyone is as techno-hip as I am. Even worse, you know the spammers will be sending fake messages that look like missives from my town, just to further confuse the recipients. I know that is somehow illegal, but I’m guessing that most spammers are not following some sort of Spammers Ethical Code to prevent this kind of stuff.
Lots of people fret that private data being held by third parties may someday be retrievable via subpoena, and much is made of how responsible Google and other large firms will be when trying to protect our data. But I don’t know that many people have worried about what our local town government will do when asked for our data. Now we know: they turn it over to comply with the law.
I have to believe that certain town-held data (like utility billing data) is confidential. Or is it? Could I send a letter to any town in the United States and get their complete billing database, under FOIA? Forget email. That kind of data would be a goldmine for all sorts of data mining and marketing insight.
I don’t know where this is headed, but I am not happy about where it is so far. We need to rethink how data is held by public agencies, and how it can be withheld except under certain very well-defined circumstances.
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Management By Colorforms August 31, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Project Management, Teams, Tools
6 comments
As big a fan as I am of technology and tools, sometimes the simplest things really are the best.
At my company, we have some sophisticated tools for tracking our project portfolio, managing schedules, resources, and priorities. We use these tools to drive planning and prioritization meetings, as well as to help our customers understand our planning and resource processes. They provide greater insight into the ebb and flow of the work we do.
There are tools at the other end of the spectrum, too. In addition to our portfolio management system, I also keep a list of various projects on my white board. These are the projects that matter to me, for one reason or another. Some are big, some are small. Some are strategic, some are tactical. Some have great political implications, while others may be the linchpin of a critical operational process. But all of them matter to me, somehow.
Next to each project, I place a 2×2-inch vinyl square, either red, yellow, or green. This is the same kind of vinyl used in those Colorform sets from our childhood, where you would stick different vinyl shapes onto a slick black background to create pictures. That same vinyl sticks nicely to a whiteboard, and allows me to express my gut feel about a project. Red expresses grave concern, yellow shows some doubt, and green denotes that all is well.
I update the squares as the mood strikes and as updates flow in from my team. When good news arrives, a project may “go green;” bad news pushes a project down to yellow or (yikes) red.
Each day, as I arrive in the office, I place a small purple dot next to each square. If someone comes and updates me on a project, I erase all the dots next to it on my board. If a project is neglected for a period of time, the dots accumulate. If a lot of dots collect next to a project, I know to go hunt down someone and get an update.
This highly complicated scheme was originally created to help me keep track of lots of projects quickly. It certainly works in that regard. But the real value of this system is what it has done to my team.
As people come and go in my office, they always stop and check the board, looking for their projects. They want to know that they are green or yellow, and do not like being red. They want to make sure that dots are not piling up. This generates lots of conversation, which is always a good thing. The board also lets people know which projects are top-of-mind for me, although I sometimes need to remind them that projects missing from the board still matter.
Just as importantly, people must come into my office to see the board. At some point, it was suggested that I aim a webcam at the board, so people could review it from afar. I declined. I like that people must go to the board to see what is going on, and I like the quality conversations that ensue. I am also told that people stop by when they know I am not here, for a “safe” peek at the board. That’s OK, too. As long as people are talking and interacting, good things will result.
In spite of all of our fancy tools and systems, simple things often work best. What’s the simplest tool you use to be an effective leader? Have you considered Colorforms?
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All For One, And One For All August 26, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Communication, Customer Service, Newspapers, Twitter, Users
10 comments
I’ve been having a semi-regular delivery issue with a certain national daily publication. Every now and then, it does not arrive in my driveway. I dutifully go to their web site and note this oversight. The next day, I get two copies: the current issue and the previous day. Needless to say, getting a daily publication a day late is of limited value.
When this happened last week, I tweeted about it, and included the publication’s Twitter account in the tweet, along with two columnists who also happen to be on Twitter. It was a bit of an experiment, I’ll admit, but it was also a request for help. Would the power of Twitter help solve my problem?
Well, no. What I did get was a direct message from a columnist with the number of the customer service department, along with an explanation that the columnists have nothing to do with delivery.
I know that. I knew that when I included the columnists on the tweet. But they work for the publication, just like the delivery people. And in the end, they should be just as concerned that I get my paper as they are about writing their columns. When the delivery person makes a mistake, the columnist looks bad. When the columnists wrote a lousy column, the delivery people lose a bit of stature. They are all in this together.
This is just as true in our own companies. How often have you seen a group breathe a sigh of relief when they discover that “some other department” made a customer-visible error? I hate to burst their bubble, but they get painted by the broad brush of customer dissatisfaction right along with the group that made the mistake. The outside world does not know, or care, that some mistake occurred in a specific department. They only know that the whole group has caused them a problem.
When you make a mistake, you hurt the reputation of every single person who works with you, whether they are involved or not. That’s why mistakes are so expensive: not only did you inconvenience a customer, you damaged the standing of all of your co-workers. Did they deserve that? Did you think about that before doing your best to do a good job?
Fortunately, this works the other way as well. When you make someone happy, everyone in your team benefits whether they were involved or not. By making a customer feel good about your company (or department, or whatever), you improve the reputation of every person in that group. What a great way to help every person you work with, every day! Help a customer and make everyone look good!
The columnist dissociated themselves from the group that made a mistake, thinking that I would do the same. But like most customers, I view the Journal as a single entity. When my paper is late, they all decline a bit in my mind. But if the columnist had gone out of their way to help fix my problem, they all would have gone up in my book, from the deliver person to the editorial board.
We’re all in this together, all for one and one for all. Remember that when someone makes a mistake, and leverage it when you decide to do something good.
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