The Power of the HTG SWOT

I was blessed last week to spend a few days with Michael Cocanower and the team at itSynergy. We were invited to come in as part of the HTG SWOT process and take a look under the covers and give some ideas to the team on ways to break through the barrier they are facing – revenue around the $1M level. I see this happening quite often as companies grow – it seems to be the step that happens when a company has leveraged all their personal relationships and client referrals and are up against the need to build a true sales organization. It is so frustrating and Michael was no different than many IT owners – he is ready to break through this challenge and move on to the next level. There are numerous ceilings that we need to break through along the path of growth – which is why being involved in a peer group with others who have been there before can be so helpful.

We met with the team as a group and individually. MSPtv was on hand to video our interaction, and will be creating the second TV show in our series of SWOT makeovers in the near future. You can catch it on MSPtv in the next month or so. We discovered exactly what Michael was experiencing – he had self-diagnosed a major part of the barrier. The team at itSynergy is technically talented, and while they have been working to build a sales organization – they haven’t cracked the code on that one quite yet. So HTG team members Steve Riat and Lyf Wildenberg (who accompanied me on this SWOT) were busy creating a plan to help drive sales to the next level.

Michael’s approach has been to focus one of his sales guys on the medical vertical, and have the second doing general SMB sales. But the culture at itSynergy was very much technically driven and controlled. It is the way many IT companies operate today – they come from a technical perspective and the sales culture is controlled by and actually stymied by that approach. You can’t build a culture of sales excellence if everything is created by and driven by technology. Sales is about people and finding pain and solving that. Technology is a tool for sales people to use – but it is not the first response – and it can’t control how clients are served. That is where many companies fail. They allow the technical side of their business to have a strangle hold on what happens in the sales process.

Where does that show up? Consider who determines what solutions you will take to market. My bet is that it is the engineering team – not the sales folks who actually are listening to customers. Why should a sales motion be controlled by what engineers want to sell or support? That is backward to the way a true sales culture operates. Sales determines the need and finds solutions to address those needs that can be sold to the customer. Of course the engineering team needs to evaluate things to be sure they actually work and will solve the issue. But most companies never consider how solutions get created, or supported, or tested, or priced, or marketed – from a sales perspective. It always has engineering overtones. That is how most companies think.

If you want to succeed in building a sales culture – you have to change the approach. You have to come at things from a sales perspective first – not as an afterthought. You should never be asking the question “can we sell this”. If you approach it with a sales mentality – you are creating an environment that allows your team to succeed. The transition is easier to talk about than to do. Habits are difficult to break – and engineering has been king a very long time in most organizations. But in the new world – that has to change and reverse completely. It isn’t going to be about what you can implement or fix – it will be about what you can sell.

In the case at itSynergy, we recommended some pretty basic things:
1. Train the team in effective sales
2. Create an effective sales management program

Basically there is a need to create a sales organization driven by a sales culture. This is true for 80% plus percent of HTG member companies. It is our Achilles heel. It has been an aggravating problem to this point since most of us have been able to stay successful serving our current clients and growing slightly using relationship based selling. In the new world – the cloud world – that is not going to be enough. We are moving quickly to a much more transactional based sales motion – we have to be able to find and add new clients. We have to be able to grow our client base and sell new products to new people. It is a very different landscape than we are used to farming. Basically we need to learn to hunt. That is uncomfortable and challenging. But it is essential for our long term survival. Are you in process of transitioning your company? If not, now is the time to get started down that path.

One More SWOT Under the Belt

I was blessed this week to spend a couple days with Russ and the team of RJB as we performed a SWOT here in Philly. Russ is part of HTG14 and had requested some outside eyes to take a look at where his company is and help provide some guidance on where they should tweak a bit. Joining me were Michael Cocanower (HTG2) and Chris Chirgwin (HTG14). We arrived on Tuesday evening and started bright and early on Wednesday. The entire day was spent with Russ, his strong management team, and his staff at large. We met in small groups, large groups and one on one. As SWOT participants we turned over the rocks, looked in the closets and dug around all aspects of his business. As is always the case, we uncovered a few things that were news to everyone, but most of our findings were known or at least suspected. We ended a very long day with a great sandwich at Pat's King of Steaks where we got cheese steak "wit" and added some American cheese.

Day two we turned the tables and the management team at RJB grilled Chris, Michael and me for almost three hours with questions they had. The theme for this visit was growth and how to prepare for it - what things need to be put in place to allow the business to scale. Later in the day we presented our finding to the management team and then the entire company. We left them with some pretty large shifts in how they currently do things, and a task list that should keep them focused for the next months at a minimum. But the story doesn't end here. We also set up accountabilty for all to make sure that things really do change. It is so hard to stay focused on the transition when human nature pulls us to return to our comfort zone or past way of doing things. We aren't going to let Russ do that, nor his team for that matter.

One of the questions I answered over and over is why we do this. The answer is quite simple. Everyone who participates in the HTG SWOT process wants to make a difference. And the best way to do that is to give back. We all have warts and issues that we know exist in our businesses. So the fact that people need help is no mystery. But when owners give their time to help another, they learn more than the company being visited in most cases. I am sure that Chris and Michael would say that is true here. RJB was the focus, but the three of us all were talking to ourselves often as we gave suggestions and counsel to the team here, and we all have a list of things to go home and work on in our own company.

Expect to see some great things from the RJB team in the days ahead. It won't be because of our SWOT, but because of the focus and teamwork they will put together to make their company even greater. We may have played a small part in helping them realize just how well positioned they are to succeed, but the hard work will be done by Russ and the team and we will be watching and smiling and looking back saying I remember when.......

Check out the new ChannelPro magazine

Just got the Dec ChannelPro magazine and guess who is on the cover – our own Michael Cocanower from HTG2! Way to go Michael. It is not available online yet but I expect it will be up there shortly. HTG members were on the cover 3 of the 10 issues this year – let’s make it more in 2008!