Many companies in IT and telecoms are on the journey towards being capable of offering true solutions to their clients. The Holy Grail is to have a healthy percentage of services, relationships at C level, influence and loyalty in client relationships, all resulting in high margins, a strong annuity stream and a stable and valuable business.
Some people view this as a journey just for the sales team – but in fact this transition has an impact in all areas of the organisation.
Like Ben Hur driving his chariot, the leaders of a company going through this transition need to use all the muscle power they can muster to make sure that all areas of the organisation stay in alignment as the change progresses. If one of the ‘horses’ gets too far ahead it could pull the whole chariot apart (Try watching the race in the original 1950’s film on YouTube and you’ll see what it takes!!)
What if delivery teams are ahead?
Perhaps you have brilliant delivery capability and propositions but your salespeople are not able to communicate them effectively, or engage at the right level in companies to gain the required traction. If that’s the case clearly you won’t get the market positioning and returns you deserve from the hard work you’ve put into R&D. Also skilled delivery consultants won’t hang around if they are working on projects that are not challenging and leading- edge enough for them. Having potential is good but not if it remains as potential!
What if sales are in front?
Sales are effectively selling the promise of a business-led solution to your clients, but this experience may not be carried through into delivery. Maybe your delivery consultants are died-in-the-wool techies, with little awareness or interest in business benefits. Maybe you’ve got a disjointed offering with product silos so it is difficult to get the elements of the solution to fit together in a seamless way. Maybe you just don’t have enough people with the right skills and your good people are over-stretched. This is undoubtedly a difficult balance to create – if you work on the basis that ‘we’ll sell it first then work out how to deliver it’, there are risks of delays, quality problems and client dissatisfaction. If you recruit delivery people first there is a risk of having expensive people ‘on the bench’ waiting for the sales to come in. A services business is more difficult to scale than a product business, and you can’t deliver a high percentage of your annual sales in the last month like you can with a product business. If you get the balance wrong it may result in a ‘them-and-us’ mind-set between sales and delivery which will quickly become visible to clients and affects your reputation and credibility. Sales progress is likely to falter as the team lose faith in the company’s ability to deliver. You may even lose your best sales-people.
What if the finance team is lagging behind?
Moving from product sales to full solutions has a dramatic effect on the profile of your business and your finance team need to keep up in the way that revenue is recognised, commission is paid and KPI’s are monitored. Is your commission structure driving the right behaviour? Is the way sales and revenue are recognised in line with the true profile of project delivery? Are your KPI’s focused on the right things to help the leadership team to steer the company through the transition? A finance team accustomed to a product business may not have the required knowhow to restructure your financial processes. The IT industry is littered with companies that have fallen into these pitfalls. Mistakes of this kind can have a fundamental effect on shareholder relationships.
What if your managers are not keeping up?
Your managers may be more suited to the company as it was, not as it is becoming. Are they reinforcing the right things? Are they role models? Are they too focused on revenue and not on profit? Are they too focused on quantity of sales activity and not enough on quality of relationships and opportunities? Do they have the right management style and credibility to motivate and retain the clever new people you are bringing in?
The Ben Hur of this particular story is undoubtedly the CEO or MD of the company. It is his or her job to keep those horses in step. This alignment doesn’t happen by accident and just like in the legendary chariot race, it takes constant vigilance and regular adjustments.
A major part of the task is to build and maintain a united leadership team who are aware of the challenges and work together to make wise decisions and address any disparities. All too often the challenges in the organisation are mirrored in disagreements in the boardroom.
The CEO and his team need vision, perspective and insight to guide the journey. This can be challenging for an entrepreneur who may have developed the company from scratch. It is easy for them to be too close to the problem and find it hard to be objective. It takes a wise person to recognise that the thinking that got you to where you are today is not necessarily the thinking that will take you to where you want to go.
It is at these points that it can be useful to have an external, objective and supportive sounding board who can help in freeing up the mind and planning the way forward
