A Path to Success

Strategy #14 From the Trenches - Climb ever'y mountain or how to "get out there"

You can learn about your business and the right target market by “getting out there”, going through every open door and testing your talent.

Did you realize it takes a decent amount of luck to be a successful entrepreneur? Some people don't want to believe this but it really does.

In order to fall into luck, you have to get out there and talk to potential customers, customers who have used your competitors and of course your current customers. One idea is to create a small set of questions you go over and over with those 3 groups of people.

Potential Customers:
1. How do you decide on your solution provider?
2. What is an example of superior customer service?
3. Is price a deciding factor for you?

Customers who have used your Competitors:
1. What did you like about my competition?
2. What did you dislike about my competition?
3. Is there something I can do to get your business?

You current customers:
1. How can I improve my service to you?
2. Is there something my competition is providing that you wish I did?
3. Do you plan to change the amount of work you do with me over the next year?

In a recent trip to the US, an attempt to survey me was made in just about ever store I went to including BestBuy and Hallmark. Both had customer surveys with a value proposition to get valuable feedback from your customers. Businesses do this to find out if they are doing a good job. It is a good way to "get out there."

Strategy #13 From the Trenches - Information vs Transformation aka How we learn through experiences

We learn in two ways: through Information and through Transformation. Transformational learning can be very helpful in the process of developing your business—ie. Pay attention to what you are learning through your experiences.

One transformational experience I have had in the past few years involves managing people on projects. It's easy to see when someone is telling you something they don't believe in. You can usually see it in their eyes. I reacted fairly negatively when I saw a situation that I knew had no easy solution. The project team had built an LDAP-based authentication layer into our solution as a "black box". You just plug it in and it should work. Of course, it didn't work out that way. When I found out from the tech lead, I had a melt down and told them to "finish it by Wednesday or else."

My tech lead started crying at my insistent attitude. The programming team made it work by Wednesday, but I can assure you that the resulting work was not without its own share of bugs. We're still identifying them as we go. The house was not built on a solid foundation.

This issue could have been handled better by simply enabling the team to identify what they could do and by what time in small increments. We could also have a regular, more SCRUM-like, approach to getting to "done." No need for recriminations -- I am sure there was something I could have done as the project sponsor to get them to "done" in a more productive and less stressful way. This was a transformation for me, and ever since I've decided to avoid a "do it or else attitude" towards anything.  You never get what you want. This was a transformation for me -- care to share yours? Leave a comment for us to share your transformations below.

Strategy #12 From the Trenches - Win/Loss Analysis or Figuring Out your Customers

It is important to take the time to figure out and focus on your target market. You can do this in part by documenting your successes and challenges and finding out what works for you.

Have you ever written down on paper why certain clients return to you on a regular basis? Have you thought about why the RFPs that you respond to don't always work out in your favour?

Taking stock of why you "win some", "lose some" is an important way to identify your target market. Identifying those that help you win also can be useful in winning more and losing less.

Let me tell you a story on how I took stock: I responded to an RFP for a large Canadian NFP to modernize their website to use a content management system. This was about 5 years ago when CMSs were still a bit of a novelty. During the Q&A session of the RFP process I was surprised to find well over 40 vendors in the audience. There were vendors of all sizes from small (I was partnering with an organization called VentureLabour.com whose system I used in another project) to huge vendors like Vignette and IBM.

Needless to say we didn't make the short list. The larger vendors were seen as more reliable and a sure bet, even though they potentially were not the right solution to the NFP. But as you may have heard "noone was ever fired for hiring IBM". In this case the winning vendor could not sign an amenable deal with the NFP and the 2nd place vendor, an integrator out of Ottawa who implemented RedDot did not even get a chance to respond. For some reason the NFP chose vignette, probably for the name and probably because they provided the software for *free* but charged for the services. I don't know the exact details, but I can honestly tell you that unless I had a direct connection to get the deal I had no chance in competing for this deal. The most amazing thing is that the current home page design for this pan-Canadian NFP is still using the design we came up with -- for free. But we didn't get the implementation services work. On the win/loss analysis I put down -- don't compete with the likes of IBM and Vignette on RFPs no matter how good you think your technology is.

UPDATE: Thoughtful Gmail Design

I was recently composing a message in Gmail that mentioned "attaching a file" -- and then I clicked send by accident. Well, instead of sending an attachment-free email, I got the dialog box below. This is intelligent, thoughtful design. It's pretty simple to scan the email for keywords related to attaching text and popup an alert like this, avoiding an embarassing situation. This is why I love Gmail...

 

 

An UPDATE:

This functionality is NOT part of the core Gmail -- it is part of a Firefox add on called

Better Gmail 1.0

There is another feature that is really interesting that allows you to auto-preview on emails by right clicking on them -- also very nifty but NOT part of the core Gmail software, yet.

Strategy #11 From the Trenches - What is in and what is out?

Try to work as many details as possible into a contract before starting so it is clear what you are doing and not doing.

What are some details that are worth figuring into a contract?

- What is out of scope? It is easy to include what you will do, but try to remember to include what you will NOT do. For example, in a content management project, the client should be entering their own content, unless they want to pay you for the work of entering content.

- Price out separate parts of a project at separate costs if you think that is more fair. This may be the difference between you and someone else's flat fee project.

- Who are all the people that will be working on the project? Include the subcontractors -- who knows if someones presence or absence may swing the deal your way.

- Provide a change management process. What are your expectations when there is a change? How do you decide what is in scope and what is out of scope during change management?

- Describe clearly the payment method. 50% up front, 25% on delivery and 25% after 30-60 days is usual. There are many that start a project on no money up front, but you shouldn't expect any money out of these type of projects. No money up front usually means no money, ever.

Strategy #10 From the Trenches - Your pricing is determined by YOU!

Price yourself fairly and stick to your guns or you will end up working for free. Pricing strategy is a complicated thing but most people know what value they bring. It is based on

a) experience
b) expertise
c) subject matter

A Java programmer with 10 years experience, coding in Java for all 10 years is more valuable than a Visual Basic developer with 2 years expertise who has done stints in ASP and Cold Fusion over those 2 years.

Experience has to do with overall length of time doing something, whereas expertise is the amount of time doing 1 thing.

I like to think of these 3 factors as an easy method to price your per hour cost which can be used as a benchmark to estimate project cost. It can be used as a starting point.

1. Give a maximum of $40/hr to each of the 3 elements.
a) experience = 40
b) expertise = 40
c) subject matter = 40

This equates to a maximum hourly fee of $120 per hour. If your industry charges more as a maximum (say $500/hr for lawyers) split the hourly into 3 equal chunks.

2. Rank yourself from 1 to 5 on each of the 3 levels:

In the case of $40/hr each level is worth 8 bucks per hour.

3. So if you gauge that you have all the experience in the world, but you don't have much expertise and very little subject matter experience you should no charge too much.

experience of 5 = $40
expertise of 2 = $16
subject matter of 1 = $8

You should in this case quote $64/hr out of a total maximum of $120/hr.

You may find this analytical approach will work for you more often than not, simply due to the fact that it is rooted in reality and does your client a favor. The reason is that if you are charging half of what the others are charging you are probably out of your league and should not be getting the project. On the other hand if you are above everyone, that does not necessarily mean you are out of the running. Stick by your per hour and you'll get it more often than not.