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.