The term ‘Business to Business’ is misleading; businesses buy nothing. Only people buy. And the CEO in the boardroom buys for the exact same motivations and in the same ‘style’ as he does when he is at home in his kitchen; he buys a one million dollar software system the same way he buys a $30,000 car, a $3,000 home entertainment system or a $300 membership at the gym. He buys as much or more by personal self-interest (than corporate interest); driven by emotions, not logic. One of the best things the B2B’ers can do is understand the specific human who he is selling to, and what his ‘emotional life in his business role’ is all about – for example: internal competition with peers for recognition and advancement? Resentment of bigger, better financed competitors on the street? Fear – of being too late, too slow, left behind, too dumb, embarrassed, missing yet another big opportunity, making a costly or even career-ending mistake?

Strategy: Always make it personal.

We’ve worked on a couple of software evaluation projects this year – and have had to wrestle with all 4 clients on this one topic:  Don’t ask questions to software vendors if you don’t know what you are going to do with the answer.

For example, a couple of my clients were requesting 5 (five!) years of financial statements.  My questions to them:  What are you looking for – low debt, liquidity, earnings - what?  What constitutes a healthy financial statement?  I get a lot of blank stares, and at times, anger.  If you had to focus on one thing in the evaluation of a software company (not the product, the company)…my recommendation would be to look at the health and breadth of their prospect pipeline.  More on this another day.

Just finished reading the book “Distracted:  The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age” by Maggie Jackson, in which she warns of  “an institutionalized culture of interruption, when your time is taken by a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages, and tweets.” — rendering the afflicted incapable of deep thought, creativity or peace of mind…

People have given up their souls to this stuff (just saw in a news article where a high school teen said:  I would DIE if I had to go to school without my cell phone), as if, because you own a car, you must be in it driving somewhere 24/7, non-stop, endlessly.  Or because you own a toaster you must stand there making toast every minute you are awake…

If you can make the time, it’s a good read…David

In my bathroom at home, I have posted a quotation by William Locke. Its there so I can remind myself of it every morning as I start the day:

I believe that half

the unhappiness in life

comes from people

being afraid to go

straight at things.

Find something you have been avoiding. A creditor to communicate with. A relative to make an apology to. A person at work you’ve been moaning to have a heart to heart meeting with. Then do it. Go straight at it! Jump into the deep river like Butch and Sundance, without a huge amount of worrying ahead of time. After you’ve felt the joy that comes with action, vow to go straight at something else tomorrow. Soon you’ll come to enjoy and respect the life you are inventing.

When writing the book, “Software and Vendors and Requirements, Oh My!” (http://www.lupinepartners.com/books.html), I interviewed a dozen or so software sales professionals.

I thought you might find their thoughts on references interesting. I agree with some of their comments but not all. More quotes in later blogs…David

On evaluating the vendor…

“References can be very deceiving. In the product areas that I work in, people are currently using six different versions of our product. So when you talk to a customer and that customer says, ‘Oh we hate software company X,’ well they may be on a release that is six years old and they haven’t upgraded. Or if you talk to a client that is like, ‘We love it,’ well it turns out that their accounting staff has the latest and greatest version. And so I think you have to be very careful about using references because the value is limited at best and my opinion it really doesn’t gain you very much.”

“I think a lot of our prospects fail to ask for the current product notes because current release notes will tell you what enhancements have been fixed, what workarounds are there, and what currently doesn’t work in that release of the product. Everybody knows it exists, everybody does. If you own software today, you know it is out there. But what they want to see if this future product that we keep striving to hit, and we never hit it.”

“If I was buying software from our company I would tell my sales rep, ‘I am going to make the decision on your currently released product and I want to get as many report books, manuals and release notes as possible. I don’t care about your future releases because hopefully you are going to be moving in the same direction as me, but I need to find a product that I can implement today.’”

“Be very careful about asking for references. And also be very careful about asking the users of the software how it works. I’ve had mixed results with this. A lot of times as a salesperson you never really know what a customer is going to give you as a reference. So in our market—this may not be true in all industries—my experience is that everyone pretty much knows everyone else. There are exclusive and very private companies that don’t share and don’t associate with association meetings but in general, we all know our competitors.”

“You are very much buying a relationship with the vendor. You are very much buying a relationship with the software company. The software could be great, but also evaluate the software company for who we are, the kind of people we send out, the way we talk to you and treat you on the telephone, both pre-sales and post-sales. And that should be a part of the questioning when you call my references. How do you feel that they value you? Is it just the dollar they value? Did they love you before the sale and after the sale you are just a number? And this does matter?”

This is for the quiet people.

I’ll come right out and say it. I’m an introvert – have been since as long as I remember. Not bashful or shy or anti-social or a snob…As the book “Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength” by Laurie Helgoe describes it – you are an introvert if you re-energize by being alone rather than being with people.

That would be me. Generally speaking, I’d much rather read a book than go to a party. Prefer one-on-one lunches to a banquet. A few very solid friends to a large number of lesser acquaintances. Quiet to loud.

Guilty.

It has taken me a long time to embrace being an introvert, and to stop trying to be something I’m not. Many of my clients are surprised when I tell them that I lean this way. I have had my client friends tell me that I have to be extroverted because I am so ‘up’ and energetic when I am meeting or consulting with them. Well – that’s because consulting is what I do. It’s how I earn my living. Who in the heck wants a low energy consultant? It doesn’t mean that we introverts cannot be energetic and funny and sing karaoke. It just means that we will most probably run out of energy before our extroverted friends do. I know I do. One of my consultants has asked me a few times why I never work on the plane…he always sees me reading a ‘book’ on my Sony reader. The answer is that I am re-energizing. It’s something I know about myself and I no longer fight it. Tried the working on the plane thing…just stare at the screen. Drool forms.

This introversion ‘affliction’ affects how I sell consulting services and how I run my company. Oh how I envy those who go to networking functions and meet 100 people in a night. Get tons of business cards, and make 100 new friends. Or those who can pick up the phone and just start calling people…shot gunning for prospects. I interview a lot of people for jobs – most of them introverts as Lupine Partners is a wonderful place to work for introverts – and when I ask questions about their comfort level in selling they usually go into a fear-based rant on how they don’t want to cold call or be perceived as fuller brush salesman.

Me either. And I would submit to you that we introverts can be as successful in sales and marketing as our louder and more socially extroverted friends. I know because I have done it – Lupine is finishing up its 17^th year as a consulting company. Can’t do that without satisfied customers – most of them garnered by me.

If you are an ‘intro’ like me, the first thing you have to do is determine who you are and what you are willing to do – and comfortable doing. Cold calling – no. Large networking and convention events – maybe. Professional intimacy – you bet. Face to face and one on one – always. Don’t try and be something you are not (just to fit the stereotype in your head of how you need to act to be persuasive) – you will just fight yourself and never win. This also applies if you are ‘selling’ within your organization. Whether you realize it or not – everybody is in sales. And there are many ways to skin the proverbial cat.

Give yourself permission to be introverted (if you are), and realize that you have many things in your toolbox that can be used to your advantage when trying to persuade and to solve problems for your (internal or external) customer base. It’s a little more work, I think, than being an extrovert. I plod along having many one on one conversation…because that is what works for me. Building professional intimacy by having many sustentative discussions with a few people at a time. There isn’t much difference from my personal and professional life in this regard – it took me a long time to realize this and embrace the ‘tactic’. I have flown to both coasts just to have a short face to face conversation with a customer or prospect – because I know this works for me. Has proven out time after time after time. Some would say that it is not the best use of my time. And there is probably some wisdom in that sentiment – but the proof is in the pudding. Seventeen years old and going stronger than ever.

Reading the Helgoe book noted in the beginning was a real eye opener for me. Permission to be yourself is a good thing…and a profitable one too.

“Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

This is something I have done in my 30 years as a professional. But to be truthful, probably goes back to my earliest years…never was comfortable going the easy, popular route. Just never made sense to me. Possibly some genetic deficiency…

It’s why Lupine Partners’ website looks different than our competitors. It’s why my personality and beliefs are so prevalent on the site and in all of our products. NOT because I am that much of an ego maniac, but because all of my competitor’s sites are so homogenous and bland, that you cannot get a sense of who they are and why they exist. Companies are founded and consist of people – real human beings. To me it’s always been good business to show who you are and why we are good for you – using real words and real emotions. To be different, and to stand out from the crowd.

YOU may choose to move from one group to another by ‘moving’ your ambition, thinking, acquisition and use of information, initiative, and effort. But regardless of your choices, the fact that the majority of your peers are dead-wrong won’t change a whit. For the most part, where a particular person gets to in this continuum from the top 1% to the bottom 40% has much less to do with differences in genetics, upbringing, education, opportunity or luck than it does decisions. Associations matter a lot, but they are or can be chosen. The first critical decision for upward movement is to ALWAYS distrust the majority. It’s not an easy decision to make. It’s even harder to stick to. To see a majority stampeding north and stubbornly turn south. Not easy at all. Remember that whatever ‘everybody’ is infatuated with – you should spurn.

It’s worked for me…

This past December, in the span of 3 days I received 4 different phone calls from software sales professionals that went something like this: “David, I have prospect and they are ready to buy but they don’t want to spend a lot of money on the implementation – can you create a proposal on the cheap?”

Not music to any professional consultant’s ears. I did craft the proposals…and they were crappy as I knew in more heart that I was not serving this prospect well. I was just quoting services for a fee up to their threshold level. Nothing about outcomes. Nothing about success. Nothing about strategy. Nothing.

As a result of the December proposals, Lupine decided to open up our tactics and methodology to the market in order to allow our clients and prospects the opportunity to become The Wizard. We have created and are currently selling the “Do it Yourself Guide to Implementing Yardi Voyager”. It’s for those prospects who don’t want to spend/invest the money for outside consulting – i.e. unsuspecting Wizards. And it’s for those Wizard wannabes who have been itching to ‘look behind the curtain.’ For those who want to go it alone, but desire to be educated and to have us looking over their shoulder. Everything we know about software implementation has been included in this Guide.

I’ve been told by several in the industry that I am crazy for doing this – signing a death warrant for Lupine Partners. Who opens up their intellectual vault and shows their secrets to the world? Us, I guess…And this is one of the reasons why I went ahead with this effort. I look around and see what others are doing, and then do the opposite. To stand out, to differentiate, and to serve my employees and customers. This is no death warrant. In a changing economy, CHANGE!

Change. Just to be clear Lupine Partners is a consulting firm. We still consult with clients on a daily basis. We are also in the product solution business. We consult with our clients through our products on a daily basis as well.

We created our Guide with our team of 5 each having a separate responsibility and function while we carried our full consulting load. Amy served as the project manager using the exact methodology that I teach in the guide. In other words, we practiced what we preached. We had an issues list, held weekly status meetings, had a kickoff meeting, and a lessons learned process at the end of the ‘engagement’. Maggie was responsible for the packaging and shipping. Brian, Angela, and I created the content – each handling about a third. I also had (have!) the responsibility of marketing and selling the series.

Not many consulting firms or companies can match our speed to market. Our 27 DVD series was completed in about 2 months – from soup to nuts. Our agility is a by-product of working together for a very long time, working overtime as necessary, and having a trust in the relative strengths of the individual team members. In our company, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

While the Guide was built for new customers, an interesting phenomenon has occurred. Existing Yardi clients have been buying it…Reasons given to us include:

• · not wanting to be held hostage by key employees
• · having to add more properties to their portfolio and wanting to ‘do it themselves’
• · using the Guide as an internal training document

As a marketer, I have been trained to enter the conversation going on in my customer’s and prospect’s head. For prospective software buyers, one of the questions is always: Why does an implementation have to cost so much? It’s a good question – really good. The honest answer is that doing it poorly can be devastating and expensive in ways that most people don’t think of. A few being:

• · An increased amount of time on their old, inefficient system
• · Loss of organizational confidence
• · Loss of time spent on meetings and tactics that did not take them to their goals
• · Employee firings resulting in increased training costs and ramp-up time (on their regular job)
• · Organizational recriminations
• · Money spent on software license fees for a product they were not using
• · Money spent on outside consultants – with no implementation to show for their consulting investment
• · Competitors had pronounced operating advantages due to being on a more current software platform

When should you be the Wizard and when should you beware the Wizard? My answer is that you be and do both all the time – as much as you can. Independence is a good thing – except when it isn’t. For example, if the independence takes you away from your core earning potential or your core business…then you need to be marginally dependent. If you are in a dependent mode, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket and don’t trust one Wizard absolutely. Hate to say this…even if that wizard is me.

The following is framed on my office wall.  It keeps me focused when things don’t go according to my desires.  As I read it here again, I realize that it also very much applies to software implementation:

1. Things will not always go exactly as you have planned.

2. Things might take longer than you have planned.

3. You might encounter some heavy bumps while following your plan.

4. The bumps may frighten you.

5. You may have to change direction to get where you want to go.

6. You might have to temporarily ‘park’ in a place you don’t want to be and this might trigger anger, fear, worry, impatience, and resentment.  And while all this is going on you may think and act as ifyou are the ‘only one’ going through this.

7. You can, however, go through all of these seemingly negative situations with a smile, if you have trained yourself to do so.

When we are leading software evaluation efforts we normally ask the software vendors for two customer lists from the software vendor: one of its large, major customers and one of its customers that are a similar size to you. You really need to think through your strategy with regard to reference checks. They can be a colossal waste of time or excellent feedback. The strength of the reference calls is going to come down to the questions that you ask. And you need to determine what it is you really want to know.

Who makes these calls? Is it the whole team, a handful of people, or just the project manager? There is no reason for a whole team of people to sit through a phone conference with the poor person who agreed to give a reference. Invariably, all discipline will break down and the reference giver will be barraged with questions from the third row. Go with a two- to three-person reference team: one to ask the questions and two to transcribe the answers and to listen for things not asked or answered.

What is the strategy for determining who to call? Ideally, it is not necessarily a company that made the vendor’s “A” list. All of us put our best customers on reference lists, the ones we feel certain will say good things about us. With a bit of research (go to the vendor’s web site) you can probably find some “off-list” customers. Having said all of this, be thankful for whoever you can get. Getting customers to take the time to give you the information you want is not an easy proposition. Take what you can get.

The results of these vendor reference calls should be summarized in a grid or a narrative. You do not have to wait until the product demonstrations to make these calls. Oftentimes after the last vendor demonstration you will want to go right into the final evaluation process. Making these calls—which often take a while to coordinate—can be a real momentum stopper. Ideally, you should make these calls prior to the vendor demonstrations. There is no reason to wait until after the vendor shows you his products. Don’t pass out the reference call information until you get to the final deliberations; it may prematurely bias an evaluator against a vendor that has not yet had a chance to give a demonstration.