Sell, not Tell
I was really happy to be in a pivotal discussion today about the Mortice stream – a set of technical [...]
Posted on December 10th, 2010 by marc
I was really happy to be in a pivotal discussion today about the Mortice stream – a set of technical projects to connect our under-construction data warehouse (‘Databank’) with our yet-to-be-deployed new learning management system (‘Moodle’). In particular it was great to interact with Associate Professor Ian Solomonidies, Director Learning and Teaching Centre and his team.
We kicked around a lot of ideas and concepts, but the subject of this piece isn’t about the tech, it’s about empathy. My happiness progressively morphed into a sense of unrequited opportunity as I watched our project pitch miss its mark.
Here’s how I saw the situation, from an outsider’s perspective:
- Super hard deadline. 1 April 2011, no ifs, no buts.
- Existing reference implementation in production (sure it has its legacy issues, but it keeps us alive today).
- Skilled LTC people who are expert in their domain.
- Deep scepticism from many years of let down by ‘the IT crowd’.
- Patience waning having already extended deadlines on the basis of logistics.
Basically, a situation where our customers know more than us, have no basis on which to believe we will deliver, and have extreme pressure to do so. Ergo very little confidence or love in the room.
Do you blame them? I don’t.
So here’s how the Informatics team approach this situation, using – indulge me here a little please – a patient care metaphor:
- We walked in and offered a prescription.
- Our prescription required a leap of faith in at least two new wonder drugs.
- It turns out out these wonder drugs do not quite yet exist.
- It also turns out that we understand less about the condition of the patient than the patient does.
- We offered no prognosis or timeline for cure.
- We can offer no evidence that we’ve cured anybody so far.
And we delivered this using slide after slide of big picture positioning, high level diagrams, jargon obfuscation and bullet points. We offered no evidence, no proof of concept, no timeline, no sample code, and nothing that resembled tangible understanding of the problems at hand.
We did a great job of promoting the various grander scale challenges that the rest of the University faces, but we forgot the golden questions that had to be going through people’s minds: “so what?”, followed by “what’s in it for us?”, neatly concluded with “so what have you done for us lately?”.
In essence, we “told” LTC what our position was and assumed their business would be won. We didn’t adequately understand their context.
Look, we have some really smart and capable people, with some good solid thinking going on – that’s not at issue here. Equally, so does our customer who, like Fox Mulder, wants to believe but just can’t find the evidence.
Perhaps what we should have done was first listen to our customers and come to a mutual agreement on the three simple ideas we ultimately all understand are crucial (and why):
- Agree on a data model (to allow the project to decouple)
- Use an industrial grade transaction system (to best leverage available infrastructure)
- Build a compelling human experience (to achieve adoption)
On this basis, we could then have “sold” LTC on the tactical approach the project team believes will work best to achieve this strategy:
- Use Macquarie Databank for the model
- Use an off the shelf enterprise service bus for transactions
- Use whatever produces the best human experience for the UI
- Do all of these things in parallel to minimise time-to-ship
- Work together – worry about “who does what” last.
And what’s the best way to do this at the point we were at in the process to date? Hint: it’s not a slide deck.
It’s with a whiteboard marker and a heap of active listening. With some URLs to show examples. With tangible examples and some product demos. With some success stories – which we actually have. With a timeline. And most of all with an expression of goodwill and commitment.
It is a great luxury that we can take the best of the concepts “sales” and “customers” as applied internally – we don’t have to adopt the jaded conventions, spin and jargon of commercial vendor presales just because we (rightly) have a more commercial orientation these days.
Trust is a commodity earned, from whence confidence flows; it starts with empathy. It’s the number one thing we really need to succeed at in engendering innovation within Macquarie University.
The role of Informatics in a sales context, then, is not to impose regimen; it is to transfer belief.
Comments
I can't thank you enough for this post. I was in exactly the same situation as LTC. I wanted to believe but I couldn't see the evidence. Your post has reminded me that the evidence is there, but I am focussing on the continuing problems (which of course must exist, nothing is perfect). For example, right now I can't use SSH on a student account and my experience talking to Informatics about it has not been great. However, at least I actually have reliable wireless, which seemed an impossible dream not that long ago. What I mean to say is that I think you are right about having to tell people about your successes, not just your future plans and big ideas.
Matt Roberts - December 10, 2010
Thanks for the feedback Matt - glad to know it resonated. If you forward me your OneHelp ticket ID for your ssh issue I'll look into it for you.
marc - December 10, 2010
http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/seth-godins-tribes
Tribes is a term that has been reused in 2008 by Seth to mean a different way to mobilize action in people. This takes selling to a different level. The principles of bringing in a leader/heretic that reaches out to different individuals to form the group with necessary members and like minded ideals and gather their passion. This cannot be done using the traditional problem solving approach. It's like becoming one with the customer to understand the customer. I agree we need a new way to look at "customers'.
I personally think, as a university, we are the perfect breeding ground for tribes. Maybe I'm dreaming that student apathy does not exist, and it would be useful for students to be engaged in decisions that ultimately affect them. That leads me to another concept that I like: co-development. Customer is not seen as outside the process providing input, but integral part of the team and outcomes.
Gary Lau - February 25, 2011
It has taken me a while to get this..... but now i understand!
Mark S - June 17, 2011