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Let’s play 20 questions: should the VP of Business Development run your next Engineering meeting?

October 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Would you voluntarily turn your Engineering meeting over to the VP of Business Development?

Think about it: Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, meet Sales and Profitability Goals.While the Engineering function is seeking 0% defects and elimination of wasteful processes once the work comes in house, the Business Development function has their eye on anywhere from 10-25% growth in gross revenue over last year, as they look towards 2010 and increasing overall net profit. 2009 is, well, 2009.

What type of questions – as a review of the State of Engineering for your company – might the VP of Business Development have for the Engineering Team if s/he were running the next Engineering meeting?

What if the VP of Business Development walked in to the meeting, thanked you for your invitation, and said: “Let’s get the cards on the table. I’ve got some questions and I need your input. In review…..”

1.What type of projects are you working on? What types do you wish you were working on?

2.What is the priority of these projects based on forecasting?

3.What type of industrial segments are involved in these projects? Are these the segments we do our best work for?

4.What type of project segments are involved: rapid turnaround, long term projects, medium duration? Are we balanced?

5.How long do you think it should take the Sales Team to win jobs?

6.What is the timeline for Engineering’s completion of these projects, once they are won?

7.What other projects can be anticipated arising from these initial projects?

8.How are these additional or add-on projects being identified by Engineering?

9.What is the rate of new project or add-on project acquisition by Engineering once the Sales Team wins a project?

10.What are the gaps in skill set among Engineering that prevent the Engineering Team from being more successful identifying Opportunities based on the hard-won work by the Sales Team?

11.How much of project completion time can be billed back to the customer?

12.How much of project completion time is eaten by the company?

13.What is the nature of non-billable (wasted?) time and how much is it costing the company per year?

14.How much Engineering time is spent on achieving KPI’s during the course of each project?

15.What is the average amount of time Engineering spends on achieving KPIs, including Lean and Six Sigma / Quality activities?

16.How do these activities directly impact overall project outcome in terms of time to completion?

17.How do these activities impact profitability?

18.How well does the Sales Team factor in Engineering and Quality costs into the project proposals?

19.What are the gaps in the Sales Team’s skill set in terms of understanding the value of Quality/Six Sigma/Lean processes in the overall project outcome, and therefore the project proposal?

20.How can these gaps between the Sales and Engineering processes be bridged for the benefit of Business Development?

Could you answer these questions? Do you go into each Engineering meeting prepared to answer questions like these? Do these types of questions enter into your project planning, as an Engineer?

Perhaps they should. Because Engineering shouldn’t be doing Engineering in a tactical, by-project vacuum. And Business Development usually takes a strategic perspective, rather than a tactical one – although sometimes it just looks like a lot of churning and burning and wild goose chases and dead ends.

What if your VP of Business Development is also an Engineer, or perhaps Director of Operations? How does this change your receptivity to their running your next Engineering meeting? Do you think being an Engineer or in Ops is going to change the nature of the profitability-oriented questions they are going to ask you? They’ve crossed over and now incorporate right and left brain, yin-yang considerations into their thinking. They take a high level, multi-factorial overview of things. They see the problem from around the table, not from one side or the other.

Does your company have KPI’s? Does your Engineering Department have KPI’s? How are these aligned with your Corporation’s KPI’s? Does your Business Development function have KPI’s? How are these aligned with Engineering KPI’s?

With everyone chasing their siloed interpretation of KPI’s – and probably bonus money- how is this situation affecting decision making, interdepartmental collaboration, innovation, employee and customer retention and overall profitability?

A lot to think about. For your next Engineering Team meeting. Bring these cards to the table.

And invite your VP of Business Development.

Like me, they may have a lot more than 20 questions to ask you.

 

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How accountable are you if you live in a cubicle in a siloed organization?

October 18, 2009 By 2 Comments

How do you go about your business when the guys and gals at the top talk Team and then make you feel like you are out there Solo? With so many sales and engineering organizations thrashing away at the specter of Q4 2009, is there really a Playbook for you to follow?

Do you have days when you don’t even know whose team you are on? Not even your own team? Because the rules appear to be: (a) constantly shifting; (b) only applicable to some; (c) only obvious to those in the “inner circle;” or (d) completely nonexistent?


So you retreat to your cubicle waiting for the dust to clear and for Someone to give you clarity. Or worse, you retreat under the desk in your cubicle with your head in your hands waiting for A Sign.

There is no room for siloed thinking in the new economic business paradigm. It simply makes everyone circle the wagons when the going gets tough. At that rate, the tough don’t even have to think about getting going. And a lot of finger pointing usually is directed at either the sales force or the engineering department.Which is really a good strategy since those two disciplines have trouble enough communicating with each other.

Divide and conquer is a “familiar” organizational dynamic. This strategy keeps everyone silo-ed within their own discipline or job function. It keeps the sales and engineering folks thousands of conceptual miles apart.And it keeps people from comparing notes and realizing how crippling and systemic this strategy can be.

Anthony Parinello’s “Think & Sell Like a CEO” is based on interviews with real live CEOs – and particularly those involved in the sales process. Parinello analyzes the mindset of the CEO and what makes the CEO capable of running his or her organization.

Parinello articulates that one of the main attributes common to the CEO is “having the ability to articulate problem-solving ideas in such a way that anyone of any title can easily understand” what is being communicated. Which goes into an overriding mission of horizontal corporate communication and a desire to unite the troops, not divide them.

You are the CEO of your job function. So think like one.Even if your organization is siloed.

What are the rules of Your Playbook? Not theirs. Yours. Try these on for size.

1.Every sale and every project has a boomerang factor. The sale doesn’t end when the contract is signed. The engineering project isn’t finished when you complete the part that is your responsibility and hand it off to the next guys in line to implement their part. Dotting “i’s” and crossing “t’s” does not indicate the end of your responsibility or accountability for that outcome. If you think you’ll never see the project again, well, go back under your desk in your cubicle.

2.Run your business like a 4 x 100 m relay. You’re going to receive incoming and you’ll have to deliver outgoing. Understand the dynamics of the entire race course. Because it’s not all a flat surface. And when I say “run your business,” I mean “run your job function.” You are the CEO of your job. You run an entire business out of that cubicle or your vehicle or your cell phone or your email or your interactive Internet platform. Isn’t it time to think about what you bring to the table?

3.If you are articulate, you will be anticipatory. If you are anticipatory, you will be accountable. And your accountability extends up and down that race course. Understanding the dynamics of your organization from the folks answering the phones to the guys delivering the mail provides critical insight as to why you are accountable and can’t hide behind your job function. You are the CEO. No more cubicle-thinking.

4.Form your Team within your job function. I am not suggesting anarchy or Machiavellian politics or end runs. Your job function depends on a number of individuals in your organization understanding the importance of their roles. Communicate each individual’s role and value to your team. They work with you (and for you) towards delivering an outcome that wins new customers and retains them, thus driving revenue for your organization. Yeah, YOU are the fulcrum of those horizontal organizational dynamics. Even if your organization is siloed.

5.The buck should always stop with you. If you go to work each day and do the minimum, minimally well, and focus on who you can blame if the job comes back to haunt you, I sure don’t want you flipping burgers for me at a fast food restaurant. How many times would the burger have landed on the floor before it landed on my plate? (Forget the 5-second rule). Ask yourself this question: would YOU want YOU working for YOU?

6.There is value in accountability, not safety.In a silo-ed organizational structure, everyone is hoping that the guys and gals at the top (a) recognize risk; (b) are willing to assume it on behalf of the longevity of the company; and (c) won’t sacrifice valuable employees in the process. News flash: playing it safe is just as risky as being accountable. It’s just that CEOs have a greater capacity for understanding risk and assessing its impact on their organization. As your own CEO, grow some antenna and learn to recognize and identify risk (not to be equated with job paranoia). Those antenna are valuable to you and your organization.

How will thinking like a CEO change the accountability you bring to the table, instead of the cubicle?

 

 

 

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10 Reasons Why Your Technical Expertise May Not Ensure Job Security

October 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Sometimes, regardless of where we sit around the table, we see the same thing the same way. Last week, I posted a blog entitled “What if an Engineer ran the next Sales and Marketing meeting?” My thanks to the extraordinary feedback provided predominantly by members of the following LinkedIn groups: Sales Gravy LinkedIn group, SME Society of Manufacturing Engineers LinkedIn group, Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) LinkedIn group and Sales Playbook! LinkedIn group – among other groups who responded. Regardless of whether these articulate folks were coming at this topic from a sales and marketing or engineering perspective, the feedback was surprisingly consistent.


Since we all collectively sat around the table last week, kicking this topic around, what did we share and possibly learn from this collaborative dialogue?

1.Ultimately, whether you are in a business development / sales and marketing function for an engineering-intensive company or whether you are part of the technical team for that company, you are responsible for revenue generation. The sales and marketing function sometimes seems like it has a revolving door associated with job longevity. However, in case you haven’t noticed, unemployment rates among various engineering disciplines are not decreasing. We all ARE in this together.

2.Revenue generation involves a lot of CONSISTENT heavy lifting by everyone involved.It’s stressful stuff. There is no free pass to anywhere. No easy solutions. Are you responsibly doing your job or just playing it safe, collecting a paycheck and hoping you don’t draw too much attention to yourself one way or another? Are you engaged with your customers and other members of your organization, learning about the factors impacting their business decisions? Do you engage in self-improvement and continuing education – outside your major area of expertise? Are you becoming a Master at your craft or are you content with mediocrity, thinking that being merely competent will be satisfactory to make it through the next performance review?

3.Even if you do the right things the right way, there’s no guarantee that the market won’t bottom out.Collaboration involves assumption of responsibility and assumption of risk. And in this most challenging of economies, risk is being redefined weekly as industry recalibrates goals, objectives and deliverables. So even if all the stars are aligned, there are factors impacting the marketplace that are bigger than all of us. We’re living in this one right now.

4.There is absolutely no room for a siloed approach to the interconnectivity between the sales and marketing function and the engineering function of a company.And this feedback rang loud and clear from the folks on both sides of the table. If you treat your business development specialists like they are ignorant, motor-mouthed sales folks whose job it is to procure projects for the engineering department so the engineers can provide glorious solutions for customers, go read a newspaper – if you can still find one. Dinosaur approaches will go the way of, well, dinosaurs.

5.Seek hybridized, win-win solutions, one at a time.There were quite a few engineers who had crossed the conceptual abyss and became involved in marketing, sales and management. And these folks articulated their revelation that regardless of what side of the fence you are on, if you are not demonstrating the value of your organization to your customers – CONSISTENTLY – you will not retain their business.It’s not about your products and services, it’s about the resources and solutions you provide. Are you an advocate for your customers?

6.Collaborative relationships start at home. In both the sales and marketing LinkedIn groups as well as the engineering LinkedIn group feedback, there were case studies of companies who encouraged highly successful collaborative and trusting relationships between their business development arm and the engineering discipline. Any of you who have been out there for any length of time know that there has to be trust.And I am not being idealistic. Trust is built on confidence. So what are your companies’ respective areas of core competency? Build a sales and technical culture based on them. Again, if you have to.

7.There’s no room in this economy for technical and engineering staff with an attitude. Engineers who sit in their cubicles looking down their noses at projects they feel are too simplistic to showcase their engineering know-how to the world have spent too much time in their cubicles. Have them spend a week with your business development folks making sales calls with prospects and current customers. The business development process isn’t all about selling their engineering skills. It’s about relationship building – just in case the bottom falls out of the market … again.

8.There’s no room for rock star sales people who are enamored with their ability to win business by creating unrealistic customer expectations on price, timeline and deliverables. Come on, guys. You know you are only as good as your last sale. So don’t leave the engineering staff holding the bag. Spend at least one hour a week working in-house with your favorite engineer so you can listen to the type of questions and conversations he/she is having with the customers you have won for your company. And the engineer, in turn, can listen and perhaps participate in the conversations you have with prospective and current customers to nurture the business development process.

9.Nobody’s area of expertise is an insurance policy on their longevity with their organization. If the new economic paradigm is about providing value to your organization, then you need to understand that anyone in your organization can become responsible for impacting business development – even the receptionist or the delivery person.The last time I checked, business development always has been and remains a team sport.

10.The future of engineering-intensive manufacturing may just be in the development of a workforce characterized by hybridized, interdisciplinary, technically-oriented business development experts. Now that’s a mouthful.This workforce will be coming out of the engineering schools and graduate schools, vocational schools and high schools. This workforce will be created by the necessity of the new economic paradigm and the ability of management to communicate this vision to their employees.Whoever can learn to understand the dynamics of technical and sales processes – and communicate them internally and externally to customers -will have a leg up on the competition.

So where do you fit into this emerging picture?

 

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What if an Engineer ran the next Sales and Marketing meeting?

October 5, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The most dangerous salesperson for your organization is an engineer who understands the dynamics and language of the sales process. So let’s take that a step further. What if an Engineer ran the next Sales and Marketing meeting?

Industrial Interface, had a great post called Top Ten Things That Annoy Engineers. And while this post is humor from the trenches, the top thing identified as annoying engineers the most was “non-technical marketing decisions/timelines.”

Let’s face it. An Engineer just might be the head of your company, if you are a small to mid-sized business. In larger companies, departments tend to be fiefdoms and job functions remain siloed. The conceptual chasm separating sales and marketing from engineering is right up there with the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You know, where Jones is contemplating crossing the abyss to get to the Holy Grail, and there is no visible bridge across a canyon that drops into the infinite? Remember that scene? Talk about “leap of faith.”

What would happen if an Engineer ran the next Sales and Marketing meeting?

1.The meeting would be efficient. It would run within the time slot allocated. Perhaps even less time. Which would provide process improvement metrics because the goal -from the engineer’s perspective – might be to accomplish more in less time. On the other hand, the goal – from the sales and marketing perspective – might be to accomplish less while devoting more time to someone’s “great idea” that may not have a straight forward engineering solution in the first place and is being thrust on the table, much to the surprise of the engineers. Nothing like getting blindsided in those Monday morning meetings, is there?

2.The meeting would reach definite conclusions about the topics being addressed. No room for “maybe” or “let’s table that discussion until next time, when we have more information.” Engineers would demand that sales and marketing folks do their homework before they introduce the subject. The engineers would be annoyed that sales and marketing folks would take up a lot of their engineering time coming up with the questions that should have answers in the first place. Sort of like chasing one’s tail just for show.

3.The meeting would be boring from the sales and marketing perspective, instead of pointless from the engineering perspective. There would be lengthy discussions at a technical level never traversed by the sales and marketing folks, which effectively shuts them out of the discussion.And while these sales and marketing folks may not be bright enough to be engineers (and then again, perhaps they DO have an engineering background), the sales and marketing folks simply see the same thing from a different perspective than do the engineers. Which, the last time I checked, was the basis of customer-driven design if all voices around the table are speaking in dialogue.

4.The engineers would get up from their side of the table (yes, even a siloed perspective to seat selection) to retreat to their cubicles or offices to attend to what is most important to them: completing their projects.The sales and marketing folks would stay in the room and continue to discuss what had not been fully fleshed out . They would come up with even more ideas for the next meeting. Perhaps one of the sales and marketing folks would think of an engineer or two they felt they could enlist for assistance in determining the feasibility of the next new project idea.Ah, a Skunkworks in the making!

5.The amount of work the engineers had to accomplish would diminish over time because meetings with the sales and marketing folks did not result in new product or technology development.Due to the requirements from the Engineer running the meeting, most or all sales and marketing ideas would be shut down when introduced because insufficient information was being presented from which the engineering staff could determine feasibility. As more and more ideas were rejected, the sales and marketing folks would simply shut down and stop being creative and just stick to selling and marketing the status-quo.

6.Sales would drop because the company had no new products or technological advances. As no new innovation came out of the company, that company’s brand was eroded by competition whose sales and engineering staff worked more collaboratively. As revenue dropped, management began looking for strategies for cost-containment. Since revenue was driven by sales, the company would favor retaining those sales and marketing folks directly responsible for driving revenue. The company would also be looking seriously at retaining senior engineers with the most knowledge and the engineering staff who worked most effectively in a cross-functional manner, namely, with the sales and marketing folks. Just in case those engineers had to be enlisted to serve a sales function as more staff was pruned.

Humor is always appreciated, especially in light of the daunting economic environment which faces us all. The IEEE has yet to post current rates of unemployment for engineers updated from April 2009. However, you know what you are going to read once these data are available.

The days of  Engineers are from Mars and Sales and Marketing folks are from Venus is officially over. I addressed this topic in my July 04, 2009 post. Yes, I admit it. I was blogging on July 4th. Organizations that encourage cross-training among their staff, rather than silo-ed approaches to problem solving, are going to be ahead of the curve.  Check out my August 21, 2009 Personal Branding post on this topic.

Let’s face it, do you have to wait until your organization prunes its ranks to a place where you have no other recourse but to join forces with the remaining sales and marketing and engineering staff?

This is not a kumbaya approach to the engineering-sales/marketing interface. It’s just realistic.

Where are you planning on sitting at the next meeting with marketing and sales? So what do you plan on doing to improve this situation, starting today?

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