Subcontractors

Like most Australians I am cheerfully, obnoxiously monolingual.  It's remarkable how infrequently this is an impediment to working in Europe.  Not one of my clients speaks less than 'business English' and most not just fluently but eloquently.  One of the great luxuries of my provenance is that I can travel the world assuming that the other guy has the skills to bridge the language gap.

Only when I'm asked to train a European non-English sales team is my (lack of) language a barrier.  Asian and Middle Eastern sales teams do not insist that suppliers like me are fluent in their language.  Conversely, a salesperson contentedly living and working in Lyon or Nuremberg with no ambition to climb the corporate ladder has no more need for English than her Sydney-based colleague has for French or German.  European delivery is literally the only time when I'm expected to do the heavy lifting in terms of language and on my own I fail miserably.

In consultancy terms, I have a capability problem: I'm forced to subcontract the face-to-face component of such projects to other suppliers.  Readers of this Blog won't be surprised that I find this hard.  The self-reliance, not so say solipsism, of my Headcount: 1 work life means I rarely have to play nicely with others.

Earlier in the month I delivered a programme simultaneously in French, German, Italian and Spanish.  Well, four terrific bilingual trainers did the delivery whilst I shuttled from room to room giving a somewhat adequate impression of being in change.  It all went off as planned and we all left with reputations enhanced.

Drastically short timelines had forced me to recruit the trainers en masse.  Someone I trust at another consultancy gave me a strong recommendation and that trainer brought in three colleagues.  In an instant my capability issue was solved.  However, from the outset the four of them made it abundantly clear that they had a wealth of shared experiences and I was the outsider.  For some reason this bothered me and it took a while for me to pinpoint the reason why.  After all I spend my professional life as an outsider interacting with large groups who share many experiences not the least of which is working for the same company in identical roles.

My disquiet stemmed from the fact that my dealing with them oscillated between that of individual suppliers each requiring my undivided attention and a cartel negotiating en bloc.  And they were a cartel.  There was an awareness, subconscious perhaps, that my ability to replace any or all of them  was practically zero, especially as the project had to be delivered so early in the new year.  The role of shop steward was shared around; at different times each declared that he or she was speaking on behalf of the group.  A picture emerged near constant back-channel communication over my project's shortcomings.

No man likes being talked about behind his back.

Then less than a week before delivery I was forced into an across-the-board financial renegotiation resulting in a fee increase that pushed the project to the verge of unprofitability.  I later discovered that the shop steward in question wasn't actually speaking for the four but the implication that he was improved his bargaining position at the time.  By outsourcing the recruitment of the team I took myself out of the loop.

Perhaps part of the problem was that without an English language component of the project my prominence was lessened.  My main job was running interference for the the trainers in the presence of a less-than-perfect client.  It's not easy to be a coach when you're used to being a player.

One of the major failings of my career has been my inability to develop other trainers to a point where clients see them as interchangeable with me.  My personal brand has always been too strong and I've taken a perverse pleasure in that.  Yet without that facility my company's capacity for growth is limited by my Headcount: 1 diary.  Right now my earnings are entirely tied to what I can charge for my own time.  Learning to work effectively with subcontractors is an obvious first step in moving beyond this limitation.

I'm 43 years old and I cannot do this job in this way forever. 

Happy Australia Day

Five takes on Australian identity: -

I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found in the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organised masses.  It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their nation.

Robert Menzies
Prime Minister 1939-41, 1949-66

Not lip service, nor obsequious homage to superiors, nor servile observance of forms and customs...  the Australian army is proof that individualism is the best and not the worst foundation upon which to build up collective discipline.

General John Monash
Commander of the Australian Corps 1918

When you play test cricket, you don’t give the Englishmen an inch.  Play it tough, all the way.  Grind them into the dust.

Donald Bradman
Cricket Captain 1937-48

You feel free in Australia.  There is great relief in the atmosphere - a relief from tension, from pressure, an absence of control of will or form.  The Skies open above you and the areas open around you.

DH Lawrence
Visitor to Australia in 1922

A fair go for all, regardless of ethnicity, race or religion, except for Poms, Seppos and Kiwis.

Anon

Niching

"The danger with your approach is that we risk niching the product with the individual customer."

As it usually does the comment came from a sales manager at the back of the room.  Salespeople are paid to be ambitious (let's not say greedy) and, practical souls that they are, tend to view the contributions of external consultants like me with a suspicion that regularly crosses over into contempt.

Niching, in the marketing sense, is one of those words that stupid people toss into a discussion to seem more intelligent.  Apparently we are all marketers now, which creates endless frustration for those of us who actually know what we're talking about.

Let's start with the definition: -

niche (n) a specialised but profitable corner of the market: [as adj.] important new niche markets.

When did having a profitable corner of a market become a Bad Thing?  Somehow owning a corner isn't ambitious enough.  We could have an entire wall or even half a room if only we weren't so conservative.  The confusion stems from the differing outlook of sales (where the aim is to have the customer do something specific, usually in the short-term) and marketing (which attempts to get the customer to think or feel a certain certain way over time).

For action-focused salespeople, the worth of a customer should only be determined by his or her current and future actions: either buying our products or not.  To say that an individual has 'niched the product' is meaningless.  Yet in many sales teams there is a strange, pervasive sense that we can remedy this non-existent threat by asking it away.  This is how we get those horribly jarring questions at the end of bad sales calls: -

Why are you staying just one night at our hotel?  Why don't I put you down for five?

The logic is that by demanding that the individual customer do more for us we can't be accused of niching ourselves.

Marketers, who should think deeply about such things, know that a niche (aka a 'segment') is a description of an aggregation of customers that have a certain, consistent set of needs.  If we can meet those needs and make a profit then we just need to communicate this in a meaningful way.  If not then turn your attention elsewhere.

Salesmanship requires passion and persistence.  A big part of marketing is dispassionately doing the maths and being prepared to walk away.

You might be a bad client if...

Are you a bad client?  Maybe you are but just don't know it yet.   From time to time we all need a little help in recognising our shortcomings.  As the joke goes, everyone thinks they're funny and no one thinks they're bad in bed, so here's a handy spotter's guide.

You might be a bad client if you...

1. Get your advertising agency to write your internal emails for you
2. Insist that the entire project team sit in on four-hour teleconferences that are really just a procession of one-on-one conversations between you and individual suppliers
3. Openly refer to your co-workers as idiots who cannot think for themselves
4. Don't bother printing out materials ahead of teleconferences then complain that you can't open the PDF file on your iPhone and then insist that the tabled multipage documents be read aloud
5. Talk to your legal department before picking up a phone to discuss a problem in person
6. Demand a discounted fee for the privilege of working with you for the first time
7. Refer to internal processes by acronyms and individuals by their first names and get annoyed when asked to explain what you mean
8. Respond to verbal questions via email and emailed questions verbally
9. Schedule daylong meetings  the week before Christmas that start at 9am (and so require people to fly in the night before, thus spending more time away from family) and then fail to produce a daylong agenda
10. Let relationships between suppliers fester to the point where turf wars develop
11. Demand 'world's best practice' proposals where cost, timing and every other conceivable parameter are ignored because you can't be bothered thinking through the inevitable and necessary limitations your company will impose on the project from the outset
12. Insist on having a personal but not necessarily amicable relationship with subcontractors thus disrupting your suppliers' delivery chains
13. Fail to master MS-Outlook and so force everyone around you to second guess whether your hour-long meeting will take fifteen minutes or half a day
14. Identify a non-problem, insist that it be solved and then accuse everyone else of acting like old maids when it doesn't come to pass
15. Can't imagine how salespeople of different nationalities might just get along over drinks and dinner
16. Aren't really sure if you're negotiating in £ or € (seriously)

Glad to have that off my chest.

It begins

I'm sitting at St Pancras station waiting for a train to Paris. My working year begins in earnest this afternoon with that fiddly, unnecessarily complicated, multiplayer project that drew down so much of my emotional reserves at the end of last year.

There are a myriad of little decisions still to be made, none of which are singularly vital but which nonetheless have the potential to run into one another and thus damage the overall project. The danger is that as there's no clear sense of who makes what decision we end up with yet more turf wars. My kingdom for a strong client, etc.

The time to ask for forgiveness rather than permission is nigh.