Survival of the Adaptable

Whether its is a change in the circumstances at a prospective client, a change in project focus at a client, a change competitive environment, a change in the market, a change in technology, a change of people, or any other change for that matter, one thing we can always count on is that the only constant is change itself.

There have been lots of articles stressing the strategic importance of developing your ability to cope with and manage change. But as Darwin put it "It is not the strongest or most intelligent of the species which survive, but those most adaptable to change."

Trying to manage a change event is a reactive approach to a surprise and therefore is usually stressful. Adapting to change in an attempt to cope is not what I am talking about when I say adaptability. This approach leaves you managed by change instead of managing it.

Successful companies are proactive and anticipate changes and adapt ahead of time. They stay agile (agile = fast, flexible, focused and forget the past.) As you focus on closing out the quarter, and think about whether you will make the year, are you being proactive? Are you anticipating? Are you being agile? Are you winning? If so, you may continue to be successful, you may be ahead of the change curve as opposed to being managed by change. Or you may have a change coming that you can't yet see ! Watch out for the revolution.

If your direction is slowing, and you are losing more deals, then you're more than likely falling victim to the age old evolution. Survival of the fittest assisted by adaptability, and the museum of natural history for the rest.

Sales Process for Selling Software Application Solutions

Take a look at how the description of each phase of this pretty traditional solution sale process sets the stage for building relationships, gaining understanding and facilitating receptive venues for delivering your message so that you can differentiate and win more deals. Key is the right messge to the right person at the right time to get the right results.

This process allows your prospects team and company to collectively determine how you can best help them via your capabilities focused on their business requirements and success. Take a look at the following as if it were a simple list of 6 activities you made in the body of a letter you might write your prospect to confirm the evaluation approach you suggested while talking with them earlier:

1. Executive Discussion - we begin our investment in your project at the executive level to ensure focus on the partnership needed to deliver on our promise to you - a guarantee of success. This starts by discussing your company’s major business needs and vision for what you want to accomplish and the capabilities we have to help make it happen for you.

2. Needs Survey - a diagnostic step that provides a top down view of the business objectives as well as the critical issues you face, the reasons for them, and their impact on other aspects of your organization. The survey allows us to assess your perception of the capabilities needed to deliver a true competitive advantage and sustained growth. We dedicate ample time to each of your key staff beginning with the top executive or business process owner for an accurate and complete view of your business needs. We also challenge you to give us your toughest situation examples so we may prove we have the capability to meet and exceed your needs.

3. Pre-Proposal Review Meeting - This discussion identifies all the products, services, and investments identified for you to receive the benefits and returns you seek. The purpose of this meeting is to: 1) Confirm our survey findings with you and your executive team 2) Resolve all issues, and 3) Ensure that the proposal has been carefully read, understood and addresses all of your needs. Our intent is for you to have all the information needed to make an informed decision about choosing us as your best global partner.

4. “Proof Of Concept” Workshop. Once we are confident we have the right solution for you, and that we both agree on a way to do business together, we invest in building a Prototype Model of the solution or components of the solution you want. It is tailored specifically to your most challenging needs. We assemble the results of the survey into a presentation using your vision, your rules, and your data via our VentureFuel Suite™. The purpose of this event is to prove a match between your business objectives, your environment, and the specific, unique capabilities we offer. An important aspect of this step is to reveal additional new opportunities for improvement (often beyond those you may already have identified) and to show you how we can help you move from your current environment to your desired one. Depending on the level of depth you choose, this may be a no charge or fee based event. If fee based, the work done here is the beginning of the implementation process. Either way, this is a very effective way to eliminate all risk from the selection process.

5. Client References - Once we have confirmed that we add value to your business and are capable to best help you to achieve your objectives, we will provide you with client references to demonstrate proof of how we have helped businesses similar to yours to reach their goals.

6. Business Issues And Partnering Relationship Confirmation - At this point, we find it beneficial to have your Executive Sponsor (responsible for approving the solution and accepting our pre-negotiated contract) again meet with the our Executive Sponsor responsible for your success so that the business issues and partnering relationship can be finalized and we can get you up, running and achieving results as soon as you are ready.

The key ofcourse isn't the process but how you execute it.

To sell in China, software companies should be aware of Bing-Fa.

Thinking about how to help Chinese companies improve their prosperity in the battlefield of the global marketplace will go a long way in winning business (as long as you execute with local professionals and partners.)

China is the world’s oldest civilization and has survived when other civilizations have vanished. The Chinese have been admired for their virtue in, and love of, strategic thinking. Companies all around the globe, to some degree, study some Bing-Fa (a form of strategic thinking first applied to military strategy and which has since been applied to almost all human interactions), especially the most complete and one of the most popular Bing-Fa texts, that of Sun Tzu which written in the fourth century. Commonly referred to as Sun Tzu, The Art of War as it applies to business is on many global business leaders must read list.

As Sun Tzu said “victory is determined before the battle begins” and “the highest form of victory is to conquer with the right strategy.” But we must not lose sight of the fact that strategy without execution (even if execution simply means to reveal the strategy) is hallucination. In today’s global economy, execution of the right channel strategy with the right timing is becoming more important than ever, and can seem more complicated than ever. Also, execution of the right business strategy for your customers is more important than ever. The good news however is that many of you have systems today capable of helping companies to harmonize and formalize their strategies to meet the cycles of complex foreign and domestic policies and companies allowing them to adapt the ever-changing needs of a highly demanding world. These systems help companies prepare to seize favorable opportunities. I like the definition good luck which says it is that place where preparation meets opportunity. Without strategy, preparation and the ability to execute swiftly and decisively, opportunity is lost. Your solutions can help companies seize strategic opportunities and your approach may be best served by focusing your messaging around that.

It is not always the most intelligent, strongest, nor the least expensive who will enjoy the most prosperity in this highly competitive world in which companies compete. Rather it is the ones most responsive to change. It is the companies who are able to deploy the right strategies for the moment. Companies who are prepared to take advantage of situations as they change and who can react with the right timing.

Companies globally, recognizes the low labor cost advantage which companies in some regions, including China, have are becoming less of an advantage and competitors are reacting by becoming more effective and efficient through the implementation of adaptable systems. These systems are helping them improve their position relative to the Chinese low labor cost advantage therefore, over time, Chinese companies will also need to become more effective and efficient. Chinese companies will need systems capable of helping them deploy flexible strategies in order to remain competitive and in order to maximize their prosperity.

Demands made by the market must be seen as opportunities. In order to be most effective the systems companies use must be capable of handling highly sophisticated management and optimization strategies in a straightforward way. The complex must be made simple. Communication of new strategies must be automatic so that everyone in the company is organized with the discipline to execute the new strategies immediately and with unity. The systems must also be capable of communication over multiple sites, in multiple regions all across the globe. Everyone can be aligned with the same purpose while at the same time having the fear of doing the wrong thing reduced or eliminated by having the formal system directing what to do and how to execute on documented strategies.

There is an old story I once read about from China, of a person who had been hit with an arrow and sought help from an outer practice doctor (there are also inner practice doctors.) The doctor sawed off the arrow and told him he was finished and that the man was free to go. This doctor’s job was done but the cure was not complete. Integrated, adaptable, real-time systems can also eliminate the “saw off the arrow” syndrome by communicating the entire cure through holistic optimization strategy.

Leadership, as well as all others within the company must also have complete ability to see what is occurring continuously. They should be able to have formalized key performance indicators (KPI’s) as to how the company is executing vs the strategy. This should be done at an executive level, a management level and an operational level that are all aligned to a common set of objectives and goals. These KPI’s codify the relationships amongst people within the company and delineate their respective duties and responsibilities in the form of clear measures. Through continuous analysis, multi-dimensional visual representation, and alerts, all the insights necessary to carry out the strategies and identify areas for improvement are revealed. The alerts, which are triggered on events, are certain to be sent to the right person at the right time to facilitate the right action to keep the strategies on track. A system so designed, is a way for the leadership of the company to communicate at all times with every single person, ensuring unity of purpose. This is simply not possible with out technology. Without technology such as this, and to quote a Chinese maxim, “the Heaven is high, and the Emperor is far away” meaning that despite whatever policy or rules exist, people end up just doing whatever they please within their own sphere of influence.

Companies facing death at the hands of fierce competition have given birth to new idea and actions to help them survive. Resulting from this are new systems capable of allowing companies to define definite sets of basic rules the ability to combine basic rules into strategies for deployment. In music there are 8 basic note from which an infinite number of musical tunes can be created. It is the same with modern adaptable systems. These systems allow them also to define, ahead of time, events that trigger those strategies as well as the adaptable workflows that should result. Some systems are even capable of triggering actions from insights gained by real time analysis of actual performance and conformance to the strategies.

There will always only be 24 hours in the day. Companies need to make best use of those 24 hours. Brute force by labor alone and by stocking a lot of inventory, will not be enough for long term competitive advantage.

The essence of successful warfare strategy is deception and surprise. It is also to put yourself in the position of your competitor, anticipating what efficiencies they are working on in order to disarm their opposition. Develop your own long-term strategies to seize even the smallest of advantages. While companies may be flocking to China to take advantage of low labor costs today, Chinese companies must prepare for the competition yet to come, and implement new ways to optimize labor, inventory, space and assets now in order to make themselves secure against defeat later. Hope that the competition will not catch up is not a strategy. Eventually they awake. Adaptable systems allow for continuous improvement as underlying cause for problems are found and strategies are formed to resolve them. Continuous improvement is happening all over the world, and competition is heating up at an ever-increasing rate. Taking proactive measures now to ensure adaptability, by implementing systems capable of helping you define and execute a sophisticated and ever-evolving set of strategies, is the only effective long-term path to defending and improving prosperity.

Every second of every day, the bar is being raised for performance of your customers and prospects. To win new business, you must have systems that respond to those demands, now and in the future.

Managing the challenges of a global economy gets tougher and more complicated every day. Adding to the problem is the fact that the pace of change is accelerating exponentially. Now, more than ever, brute force solutions erode margins.

The way to penetrate China, is to think globally & strategically, and then to execute locally.

Together Everyone Achieves More - with a constellation of alliances

In moving forward with your vision and strategy you need the strength of global Alliances to reinforce your message, and to compete effectively. The competition is rarely just another company. As Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, author of The Alliance Revolution (Harvard University Press) put it, the real competition is often a constellation of competitors TEAMing thus Together Everyone Achieves More !

In order to compete more effective a major objective of your alliance program should be to work more closely with the partners. Systems Integrators, complementary product partners, implementors, consultants etc often see deal flow which is incremental to yours. They also tend to team up with friends to the exclusion of companies perceived as threats. "If yur not with us, yur agin us!" holds true in the real world.

The 5 F's General Framework I have used successfully with a number of software ventures is a hybrid of Ben's approach ( which can be found on www.alliancestrategy.com ) and what works from my own experiences and observations of my competitors approaches :

1. Focused (strategy before structure) - It is the strategy and the existing relationships (both friendly and competitive) which matter most in guiding partner choice, - then, partner choice and your mutual goals that guide the structure of the deal. The sequence is important. Companies that have followed this lesson are usually alot more successful in alliances than those who have rushed out to "sign up some partners" without thinking it through. Also, you need to create an organizational process that incorporates evaluating alliances as an option. Alliances will work for some things but not for others. You need infrastructure for tracking progress with alliances. To be successful, you need to be focused and proactive in evolving an alliance strategy. Joint goals will help drive effective investment of resources for all parties. As Ben says "Execute alliance strategies, don’t develop strategic alliances."
2. Fast (quick progress before perfection) - Execute! Strategy without execution is hallucination. If your expectations are reasonable they will often be fulfilled. The key is to grab opportunities for change and not ignore them, but to do something about them. Then fine tune with the wisdom of experience. Alliances are a way for you to quickly manage incompleteness in either your products, services, domain expertise and or market coverage. They help react quicker and often more credibly to competitive threats or market opportunities by TEAMing (Together Everyone Achieves More.)
3. Flexible (agility before compliance) - The only constant is change itself. Hanging loose in the relationship is key initially. Strategy should evolve from an assessment of your external competitive environment, your internal capabilities and resource availability, your appetite for balancing the investment/risk/reward formula and your mutually desired goals. Then, you can develop tighter tactics and policies. Some alliances may center on rounding out gaps in your product suite. Some will involve making “connections” with those surrounding the point of decision such as Systems Integrators (such as IBM, or Accenture etc.) Infrastructure Players may be important to you, or Players who can help expand your solution footprint, General Contractor & Reseller Players as well as other types of players on a pragmatic basis. You also need to stay close to developments within your market such as what is happening today with RFID mandates and directives coming from the DOD, Wal-Mart, Target and the FDA etc.
4. Families (constellations rule) - As Sun Tzu's said: "He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious." A variation on Together Everyone Achieves More – TEAMing. Create portfolios of alliances, not stand-alones – the competition isn’t just the company you sell against; it’s usually the group of companies who have chosen to TEAM. Now if your rivals don’t "get it", and you do, you jump to the lead position much quicker. Like in all families, the ones with good relationships work better. Nothing is more wasteful of time than setting up hand shakes, and press release ware with Alliances which do not result in additional business in some form. You need to focus on those relationships, which will result in mutual market expansion and additional real revenue business for all parties - then you need to build trusting relationships with the people involved to earn the right to work together.
5. Forget the past (don't let the past constrain your thinking or creativity - strategy can make the future happen.) - Do not assume that because your competition is in alliance with a company, that there is nothing you can do. Just the opposite. Look for opportunities to reducing the effectiveness of your competitors evolving alliance constellations. One of Sun Tzu's first moves in war was: "Disrupt the enemies alliances." Use preemption in some cases to get a corner on a market. Change the rules in another situation or even change the game so as to reduce their alliance's effectiveness. Offer more value by becoming your partner.

Without executive involvement and committment as well as a supportive internal infrastructure, the alliance strategy will usually fail, no matter how well thought out. Keep in mind that many companies bungle up this part of the business and if you get it right it can be a tremendous competitive advantage for you.