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Hi John:
Sometimes despite all our best efforts in discovery to
track down the business issues and figure out financial
justifications we can’t get a true measure of the impact
that a problem has on the customer and his
organization.
It’s not because the customer is hiding something from
us, it’s because they just don’t have the hard numbers
and don’t know how to get them. They’re also unwilling
to pay us, or anyone else, to help them get the numbers.
So when we hear “better business decisions” and
“more proactive” and other fuzzy issues – what do we
do?
Vicki – Raleigh-Durham, USA.
Sometimes despite all our best efforts in discovery to
track down the business issues and figure out financial
justifications we can’t get a true measure of the impact
that a problem has on the customer and his
organization.
It’s not because the customer is hiding something from
us, it’s because they just don’t have the hard numbers
and don’t know how to get them. They’re also unwilling
to pay us, or anyone else, to help them get the numbers.
So when we hear “better business decisions” and
“more proactive” and other fuzzy issues – what do we
do?
Vicki – Raleigh-Durham, USA.
Hi Vicki,
Thanks for the question. The entire hard/soft evidence for a
business justification is always a tricky issue and it’s one that I
think we, as presales engineers, tend to give up on too easily. Of
course, often our sales partner will stop pushing for numbers as
well once they receive reassurance that the “project is a go”
anyway. I still treat this as a big yellow warning light and would try
two different approaches to get some kind of measurable to hang
my ROI on.
First – I would “peel back” their statements – either looking for
results they wanted to achieve, or a problem/pain they needed to
avoid. Here’s a simplistic example.
“We need to improve communications between our people.”
“Which specific employees and what do they need to
communicate to each other?”
“Who’s complaining about this right now?”
“How would you know its improved?”
“AND – if you could improve communications between
those people in those ways – what would that do to your
business?”
“Well – we’d be able to get the right information to the right
people at the right time”
“OK – so what information would that be, how do you
measure timeliness .. etc..?”
“Sure . and then we’d be able to make better business decisions!”
“Got it. Who’d be making which decisions and how would
they then be able to make them?”
“For example – right now it takes us 4 weeks to analyze and
decide if we want to <..> , ideally we’d cut that time in half,
because then we’d capture market share faster. A 0.5% gain in
our largest product is $20m / year just in the US.”
Now you are on your way to getting some real numbers.
The second approach, if all else fails, is to ask the customer to
subjectively qualify the impact.
“I understand how difficult it is to attach monetary results to
something like this. Yet you live with this every day – so if
you were to put a number on it from 1 through 10, what
would it be? Where 10 is mission critical, got-to-do-it, and 1
is an irritating but minor annoyance. “
Anything that rates an 8 or above is important, a 1 through 6 is
not that urgent and a 7 is a gray area. Then ask as a follow-up if
their answer is not a 8-10, “are there any 9’s or 10’s within your
organization today? What are they?” Now you have a number
and some form of measuring stick.
It’s not perfect – but it works.
Good luck!
To learn even more about this technique – read “Let’s Get Real
Or Lets Not Play” by Mahan Khalsa.
Thanks for the question. The entire hard/soft evidence for a
business justification is always a tricky issue and it’s one that I
think we, as presales engineers, tend to give up on too easily. Of
course, often our sales partner will stop pushing for numbers as
well once they receive reassurance that the “project is a go”
anyway. I still treat this as a big yellow warning light and would try
two different approaches to get some kind of measurable to hang
my ROI on.
First – I would “peel back” their statements – either looking for
results they wanted to achieve, or a problem/pain they needed to
avoid. Here’s a simplistic example.
“We need to improve communications between our people.”
“Which specific employees and what do they need to
communicate to each other?”
“Who’s complaining about this right now?”
“How would you know its improved?”
“AND – if you could improve communications between
those people in those ways – what would that do to your
business?”
“Well – we’d be able to get the right information to the right
people at the right time”
“OK – so what information would that be, how do you
measure timeliness .. etc..?”
“Sure . and then we’d be able to make better business decisions!”
“Got it. Who’d be making which decisions and how would
they then be able to make them?”
“For example – right now it takes us 4 weeks to analyze and
decide if we want to <..> , ideally we’d cut that time in half,
because then we’d capture market share faster. A 0.5% gain in
our largest product is $20m / year just in the US.”
Now you are on your way to getting some real numbers.
The second approach, if all else fails, is to ask the customer to
subjectively qualify the impact.
“I understand how difficult it is to attach monetary results to
something like this. Yet you live with this every day – so if
you were to put a number on it from 1 through 10, what
would it be? Where 10 is mission critical, got-to-do-it, and 1
is an irritating but minor annoyance. “
Anything that rates an 8 or above is important, a 1 through 6 is
not that urgent and a 7 is a gray area. Then ask as a follow-up if
their answer is not a 8-10, “are there any 9’s or 10’s within your
organization today? What are they?” Now you have a number
and some form of measuring stick.
It’s not perfect – but it works.
Good luck!
To learn even more about this technique – read “Let’s Get Real
Or Lets Not Play” by Mahan Khalsa.
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