We live in a world constantly quantifying all things, preparing for sales, selling or, dealing with post-sales activities.
Thus Liza Minnelli was right all along and we all know that.
The thing is money isn’t everything, we all know that. However SAM is more or less all about money, well , maybe not money. SAM is the management of currency value, expressed in software, and so money expressed as value embedded in software, which is supposed to take part in production of goods or services contributing to organizations profits. So I often explain what we do using analogies, so here I’d say that all the things, including tools, software, rules, knowledge, frameworks, standards that constitute SAM are a form of currency, see it as a stack of chips at a poker table, where the poker table is both your environment, spend on software and services and at the same time the global software community, with its demands, rules and costs. The thing I learned about playing poker is, when you get to the table and you can’t identify the “sucker”, it’s because you’re the “sucker”, “the money cow” to be milked by everyone at the table.
I have had lately many discussions in various environments about aspects of SAM. To my surprise rather than clear focus on pain points and challenges in which solutions could be found, it is a dance around the money pot, guarded or approached by various sides of the argument. The thing for me is that it’s too early to be talking about money until customers challenges are clearly defined. Sure customer should know that solutions cost money, but I believe when there’s many levels of granularity, until it’s clear what we are talking about, we can’t discuss how much it will cost, unless you have a “solve-it-all-solution” or we are talking about a symbiotic relationship.
Me, myself?
I want the customer to get a ROI out of our interactions, rather than a TCO.
How so?
I see time as currency too. My motivation is to help the customer, and even though I’m also expected to help the customer to buy, I need to focus on helping the customer to understand where they are, help them see potential gains and focus areas, then address potential risks, gains, weigh costs of multiple scenarios against present situation, long before we start talking costs of the total solution and how much it will cost not to have this or that problem.
So the customer should in our meetings and talks see value coming out of their invested time, not only hearing my opinion, because since I work the topic I probably know what I’m talking about. The conversations should lead the customer to make choices, preferably towards a mutual benefit, for obvious reasons. They grow, we grow.
I find that some manufacturers understand that better than others, some others are more focused on selling of their products while perhaps forgetting about further developing their product to keep up with the rate of sales.
The last ones keep reminding me of all the calls I get as a private person, trying to sell me a piece of heaven through their for example electricity services. I’ll have a chat, because they might have something that they do, fitting me better than what I presently subscribe to, but I also find a lot of smoke being blown up my behind, and so I get factual; asking for a service allowing me lower costs and ability to foresee my costs, 3 years ahead. This is same as what I expect from a functional SAM program.
The fun starts right there, hearing them backing out of the conversation, because they make assumptions based on what I just said and conclude they can’t offer me what I ask.
All I said is that I wish to have lower costs (than I have now) and I wish to plan 3 years ahead.
So far none of these geniuses have asked me details on how much I pay presently and how I have set up transparency forward, nor the cost of it.
Why aren’t people asking questions when someone has clearly stated their requirements?
One of the main reasons I love working for Atea, is that one of the core values is curiosity, and so questions are being asked in order to understand the customer and their needs as a second nature. One of the biggest challenges hindering me from doing my job is people holding their cards to their chest thinking I’m a potential aggressor, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The trouble for the customer is to find out who they can trust (from their point of view) and as you all know, in life it’s very hard to know that. I think most of us take some risks choosing who to trust. It’s like playing games as children trying to understand who speaks the truth, who exaggerates, who is trying to trick us… I wish it would be as simple. The problem with software and it’s management is fairly comparable, you might be able to trust a product to some degree, might trust their support system, on time updates, and at some point feel let down all the same, although all worked beautifully first year, or even longer. So it’s not only who to trust, but also when to trust, to which degree and how to see when not to trust. The fact is, money talks. If I pay, I expect and if my expectations aren’t met, I find myself another vendor. Therefore I treat my customers from the same principle. I try to make sure we speak the same language, while being on the same page, while sitting in the same boat, and that we are rowing in the same direction. I see the relationship building from long term perspective, avoiding tactics straying from long term strategy. Because the fact is, while everyone talks strategy, I’m a pro, so I want to focus on talking logistics with the customer.
However I’m not the right person to talk about trust. I’m almost as paranoid as the average security guy, over protective of my customers, but I also ask myself, if I can be trusted, because I’m human and sometimes I make decisions from a limited perspective. I might want to shine, my ego has become bloated in some context, or worse, I feel down by too many lessons at too short of a time, am I the best advisor then? How to always maintain perspective of the customers (as an organization, not only the person I work with or towards).
How to help them to the best decisions short of taking on their environment and managing it for them?
Thing is I’m a big fan of a bonus-manus system. High risk – high yield -scenarios. Building a relationship where we share profits, risks and of course penalties, at least to some degree, allowing mutual trust due to mutual self-interests. Is there a better kind of trust? It certainly is quantifiable.
I call this approach “balls-out”, because I take on a degree of risk from the customer and share in success and failure alike. What I found is that many are happily talking about one taking on some of their risks, but much less enthusiastically want to talk about sharing profits.
So my question to myself now is: are we all so egocentrically self-absorbed we miss out on the benefits of a symbiotic relationship, simply because of the fear of missing out from “whatever scenarios”?
Haven’t we really evolved beyond petty brain-stem fears?
