You do what you have to

Years ago I was working on a site in England. We have customers all over the globe and many of them require assistance from us to install and maintain their systems. In the early days, I would travel to many of these sites for installation, troubleshooting and training.

Anyway, I was on a site in England and the rules prevented me from working weekends. I would prefer to work 7 days a week to get the project done, but rules are rules. On the weekends I would usually hang around with my English and Welsh friends, hit the pubs, visit the countryside, etc.

One Friday morning I got a call from headquarters about customers in Jakarta, Singapore and Hong Kong that were having problems. Since I had nothing to do that weekend, I scheduled a flight to Singapore, Jakarta and Hong Kong. I left Friday after work, around 1800 and arrived in Singapore Saturday afternoon. The site rep for the Singapore job met me at the airport and we went directly to the site. I fixed the problem within a few hours and was on a flight to Jakarta by 2100. I arrived in Jakarta before midnight and again went directly to the site and fixed the problem within a few hours. I was on a flight to Hong Kong by 0400. I arrived in Hong Kong early Sunday morning and spent a few hours looking for the site rep. At this point I had no idea where the site was located. However, I did know it was on top of a skyscraper and had a radio tower.

After several hours of trying to contact the site rep and with time running short: I had to be back on the job in England by 0900 Monday. I had no choice but to find the site myself. I took the tram to The Peak where there was a panoramic view of the Hong Kong skyline. I filled the pay-per-view binoculars with tokens and started scanning the city for a radio tower on a skyscraper. Of course, Hong Kong is more densely packed with skyscrapers than any other city in the world. And of course, every skyscraper has a radio tower. I was getting desperate. After an hour of searching, I found the radio tower by its company logo. I made a note of the building and scampered down The Peak keeping the tower in site at all times.

I got to the base of the building with a few hours to go. Keep in mind it was a Sunday and a Hong Kong holiday so no one was around. The building was locked. I waited by a fire exit until people came out and as the door was closing I quietly slipped into the stairwell. I climbed 67 floors to the roof where I found the door to the site, a door with a combination lock. It was one of those push button combination locks. I tried several combinations to no avail. I tried knocking to no avail. Eventually, I was escorted down the 67 floors by two armed security guards and unceremoniously thrown out the back door.

I got to the Hong Kong airport after being stuck on the highway in an overheating taxi just in time to catch my flight. I was back at Heathrow by 0700 and back on the job by 0900 Monday morning.

I did what I could, two out of three ain't bad.

The nuclear option

We started the preliminary financial planning for our nuclear option today. It was so preliminary, in fact, it took less than ten cells of a spreadsheet. Anyway, the nuclear option is to open source most of our software; essentially give it away. We'll make money on maintenance and support. Maybe.

We obtained a research paper from MIT that describes business models around open source software; so we'll see what we can learn and adjust our plans accordingly.

Our revenue per sale will go down by about 75%, however because the software is free, we hope to increase the volume to offset the lower price point. And we hope the exposure will bring us into new markets previously unavailable to us. The marketing strategy we can borrow from one of the many successful open source companies currently in existence. The key to this of course, is the products. Are they really useful outside of our current niche? Will companies in our niche drop our competitors for an open source solution? I guess we'll find out.

The end of specialization

Yahoo! recently introduced some new products and opened up their technology to developers . We can integrate our products into Yahoo! to produce a much richer product offering. A Web 2.0 enabled product set. This could be a great opportunity for exposure in a new market and a competitive advantage. It sure would help to have a marketing department.

I'm done whining about our marketing department. It's time to take matters into our own hands. Anyone who doesn't produce at 110% will be marginalized (given menial and tedious tasks) and the producers will be given the important tasks. So we may have engineers doing marketing and accountants doing engineering but at least the important work will get done by the best minds available. This marks the end of specialization. I'll keep you posted.

Honeymoon is over

Well the honeymoon is over. Our new sales guy has been here one week and our CEO is already complaining about him. Apparently he sent out a quote that didn't include a sales pitch. The quote went out in a simple two sentence email. It didn't have any marketing words about how great our products are and how they are better than the competition, et cetera. This sounds like a marketing issue, but what do I know.

Our old sales director was either afraid to send out quotes because of the lack of marketing material or would send them with a fifty paragraph email. Absolutely no one reads a fifty paragraph email.

I guess you just can't win.

So far I like the new guy. I'd rather see the calls being made and the quotes going out.

And now we have our CEO writing the marketing material to include with the quotes and calls. It just might work.

Perceived glory days

Watch out for sales people that talk too much about their old company and its products. We've had two that would bring up old company's products in comparison to our products or as part of a solution sale.

If a sales person tries to include products from their old company as part of a solution sale, fire them on the spot. If a sales person compares their old company's products to your products and makes statements like "our product did it this way", fire them on the spot.

A sales person should be entirely focused on the products they are currently selling, not living in some perceived glory days of the past. There is a reason why they are not still at the old company.

And sales people are not good product managers. Even though they know it all, they are generally only interested in the features required for the current sale and not the entire market. Sales people are good for providing customer feedback but not product strategy. So don't listen when they tell you to make your products like their old products. Instead, fire them on the spot.

Both of the sales people that had this behavior were tremendous underperformers and of course it took us too long to fire them.

Minimal thinking required

Our new sales guy sent out his first quote today and it's a lot more professional than we're used to. He may be the first sales person I've seen that can actually write. I once thought of giving all sales candidates a writing test but figured that would scare off some potential talent. Plus, the writing should be handled by the marketing department anyway.

Speaking of which, our marketing guy actually delivered the FAQs we had asked for and did a decent job. Amazing.

He was still a little gun-shy about making decisions on his own. The previous sales director had him so beaten down he couldn't say boo without getting his head bitten off. So we are trying to give him work with minimal thinking required. Eventually, we'll re-train him to be better than he was; much like the 6-million dollar man.

Which brings up an interesting hypothesis. If you want to drastically change an employee's behavior, bring in a specialist to brow-beat and intimidate them into questioning every decision and move they make. Once you get them down to that whimpering state you can start molding them into the image you prefer.

It's probably easier to hire the right person to begin with.

Three to six, six to nine

Our new sales guy started today. I like him but I'll reserve judgment until we get some results. Our typical sales cycle is about three to six months so we'll give him six to nine months and then bring down the hammer.

We did a legitimate search for this guy; he wasn't a friend or associate of any employees and he was well vetted. We checked all his references and extensively analyzed the pros and cons between him and the other candidates. I think it's safe to say our sales department is stronger now as it probably couldn't get much worse.

Our marketing guy actually comes out in public now. He had been pinned down behind his cube by our previous sales director who had him too scared to blink. In fact, he once came to work, saw her car was the only one in the parking lot and turned around and went home. And she once said to our CEO she was actually afraid for her life around him. I hope you're laughing right now because I got a good chuckle out of that one. Ironically, he pushed us to hire her over another candidate that we liked. Absurd.

Anyway, that's in the past. She's gone and the new guy, who we all like, is in place. And again we are hopeful.