Power of "Homework" !

Being in this industry, especially in the division that takes care of Telecom Service Provider market ( the ATT, Verizon, RelianceCom and Bhati types), is a continuous challenge.

It is difficult to make them all happy, all the time. They all want the latest technology all the time with least number of defects that can cause their networks to go down even for a few seconds. Very tight SLAs. Very tall competition, for them and for the equipment providers like us too.

Last week I visited one such big national career of a European country. They have had their share of displeasure and often in recent past, they have pondered to buy equipments from our competitors.

And, when the engineering person is being called to such a customers quarterly business review, it is normally not a good sign ;(

Needless to say, I dedicated pretty much a week to doing homework before I landed there.

- What have been their history with my company ? How long have they been doing business with us ?

- How have been their experience with us ? Every six month period at time over last 3-4 years ?

- What are their current cribs ?

- How are our competitors doing in that country and in Europe in general ? Have they been able to take away some business or they have given away more business to us ?

All these data to be analyzed. And interpreted and need to be told in a manner that makes our position stronger, especially when the customer is not happy.

Once analyzed, I did notice there are two or three key areas where there are real genuine reason for the customer to be unhappy.

But equally more important data point was that, in last three years the share of equipments bought by this company from us, is increasing against our two biggest competitors. There was no way to get the data which areas our customers are struggling in.

After analysis, made a simple slide deck that talks about every concern area found during analysis, and showed trends how they have gotten better over last 3 years.

There was just one job left. Critical one. In the business review meeting, I wanted to go first, before customer to present our data.

So that by the time the customer presents the same concerns, they have seen the better side of it.

Doctoring the schedule you may say ! That was easy indeed. Just asked for its, saying let the "English" presentation get done first and then we can go on for all other topics in local country language.

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The trip did end very well. Customer was lot less worried than they used to be. We did not get trashed.

The VP, Finance of the customer said, over lunch, that its them who always need technology 3 years in to future now, and want to pay the money 3 yrs later :) Talk about internalization of issues :)