I love technology, but if there is one thing I have learned
over the years, it is that it is really irrelevant how much you know about the functionality
of a particular widget. The decision to buy a service is no longer
about how “shiny” or “rich” a service is, but how it can be relevant. We have
reached a tipping point where the traditional buyers of procurement and IT are
no longer front and centre in the buying decisions. These individuals are being replaced by the
Business Unit owners and customer facing functions, a shift which requires a
fundamentally different type of conversation and one which is causing many challenges
for numerous ICT related industries.
“Big bets”, or big changes, are increasingly a thing of the
past, especially as ICT services become more on-demand. This change gives
customers the ability to transform much easier than in years past. Therefore, businesses
need to evolve their thinking toward a new approach of differentiation…one
towards relevance as it pertains to the business and the new decision
makers. We need to shift our language
from the bits and bytes to understanding the challenges and opportunities that
exist and what it can mean for the business. As businesses start to become more
granular and focused, on tracking outcomes from individual initiatives, their
expectations from suppliers equally change.
One of the things I love about my job is the opportunity to
listen to business owners regarding their ambitions for their business, their
key challenges and where they would like help. In speaking with them, I begin thinking about
the role I can play for that person in translation and/or understanding of what
he/she is trying to achieve and the solutions out there that could help to
solve their business challenges. If you are going to be meeting new business
people there are three key tips I would suggest you do ahead of time. First, learn
about who you are meeting with, what are their priorities and key goals?
Secondly, how do they actually measure success for their business and industry?
Finally, how can you help them to bridge from your understanding of feature and
functionality with the insights of the above?
Let me be more specific, I am not talking about simply
writing a script to accomplish what I’ve suggested above. You need to truly embrace
and understand these questions and make them part of your approach to doing
business. If you are able to do this and can then change the way you have a conversation,
this will leave you feeling like you have had a positive impact on someone’s
life and or business. Now this is not to say I will stop talking about
technology. I simply love technology, but I love it for the same reason I write
these blogs. I want to know the impact technology can have on people and to
understand how we as individuals can influence and shape the evolution of
technology. Technology plays a growing integral part of our daily lives, from
the watch on your wrist to the self driving car; our lives will continue to be
impacted hence the need to understand how we want technology to add value
versus trying to make the functionality of a new widget work for us.
I am reminded by a
great Simpsons episode (stay with me now) where a techie is attracted by Homer
Simpsons offer of fast internet but when the techie asks: “I'm interested in upgrading my twenty eight point eight kilobit
internet connection to a one point five megabit fibre-optic T-1 line. Will you
be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring ethernet
LAN configuration?” – Now you could be forgiven for thinking and those
things are what? - but in basic terms he is looking for an internet upgrade and
one that will not require him to change any hardware at his home thus keeping
his costs low so as he can visit the comic book store and buy more magazines
(seriously!). Now of course the obvious question is, “well then why not say
that?” I often find myself having to remind people that functionality is great
but unless it has relevance to the person you are trying to sell to (or in the
case of this Simpson episode – buy from) then there is not much point in
starting a conversation.
In the case of Homer Simpson and similar for many businesses,
there is a need for a new type of translator – one which can help people and
businesses translate features and functionality to demonstrable business
benefits, in the language of the customer or partner. This is something that I
love to do and moreover enjoy seeing that “light go on” when the translation
has been successful and everyone around the room gets excited about the outcome
they are then working towards. Without these translators of the future, it is
going to be akin to a meeting of two foreign countries, where gestures and
pictures is all that is able to be used to explain anything which will
ultimately result in a loss of translation moment and leave many people with
that Homer Simpson expression as their only answer … “Can I have some money
now?”
