Archives for February 2012

After my post about Breaking the Habit of Intervening (and related comments) I got to thinking about the true success factors for those people who fill the positions of Consultant, Client Account Manager, Customer Relationship Manager, Project Manager, etc.. There are times when customers get fed up with their Account Managers and demand action by you, the owner. Sometime it’s about the Account Manager’s technical skills; however it has been my experience that is more often about the Account Manager’s intrinsic skills, capability, style or approach.
So I decided to list what I believe are those key success factors for people in this position. These are characteristics familiar to you, the owner, since you likely have most of them and they have been key to your success. While they may be intuitive, many small to mid-size businesses don’t make the effort to:

• Articulate and prioritize these key success factors (along with others in their particular business)
• Look for specific ways to identify or test for them in the interview process
• Consciously develop ways to improve them up during the training and development process
• Create specific methods and measurements for review and accountability related to these factors

So here’s my list of the key success factors for a Client Account/Relationship/Project manager – someone who…

• Instills confidence in others whether on the phone, in email, in person
• Knows when to stop talking
• Listens more than they talk
• Asks good questions
• Willing to say ‘I don’t know’
• Able to say ‘I don’t know’ in a way that still instills confidence
• Willing to tell you something you don’t want to hear
• Able to tell you something you don’t want to hear in a way that still instills confidence
• Takes responsibility
• Appropriately articulates the client’s responsibility in the success of the project/relationship
• Admits mistakes
• Learns from mistakes
• Can point out mistakes of others without causing them to feel incompetent or become defensive
• Responds to mistakes by any perpetrator in a way that instills confidence
• Flexible communication style
• Perceptive in identifying other’s communication style and adapting accordingly
• Understands technology as a tool to accomplish an objective – not an isolated activity
• Anticipates problems, conflicts, log jams, etc.
• Proactively finds alternatives to get the job done
• Proactively communicates with the right people
• Able to influence others in an appropriate way to get the job done
• Interested in what’s going on in the world, community and industry
• Likes to learn
• Has common sense, practical approach

Of course no one has it all – but I would rather go into an employment relationship clear about areas of weakness so I could deal with it proactively. Of course identifying these in the interview process or early in the employment is not necessarily very easy – a subject for future posts.
What would you add (other than very industry specific characteristics)? Do you specifically identify these during the hiring process or early employment period? How?

Confusing the concepts of costs and investments can hurt the future of your business.
No business grows solely by cutting costs. It grows through wise investments.
One client didn’t want to spend money on new computers because it would “cost” thousands of dollars. However when we looked more deeply, he was losing significantly more than that each year by not making the investment. Here’s how:

• His employees were wasting hours each week because of the time it took to access and refresh the primary software applications that they used. That was time that would be recovered with new computers.
• He was also paying his computer support vendor more money to fix or simply maintain the mishmash of old systems and different configurations.
• He was missing out on new capabilities and efficiencies that could help him serve his clients better and more profitably

I call this tripping over dollar bills to pick up pennies.
When it comes to evaluating investment versus cost, a good place to start is by considering technology upgrades. Training is another, as is hiring temporary help to complete certain projects, rather than diverting experienced employees from the primary focus of developing business.
It’s a good policy to ask your employees for their perspective. After all, they’re the people most familiar with many of the tasks, so their input can be indispensable.
In no way do I advocate a philosophy of simply throwing money at a problem. Instead, I urge you to examine all cost decisions in light of the potential for a timely return on investment.
That’s how you will prosper.

Choosing to build your business as a valuable asset versus a paycheck has a significant impact on how you invest your time and resources. An asset requires a strategic perspective and a consistent focus on management (hence the term ‘asset manager’ in the financial world). A paycheck requires putting in the time to do the job you get paid for (and for business owners, that’s one paycheck for a lot of different jobs).

Many owners fall into the trap of working so hard for a paycheck that they lose sight of their business as an asset. That is, until they want to sell and wonder why the business isn’t worth as much as they think it should be.
If you want to build an asset that pays its manager a salary, throws off a good income return and delivers a strong capital gain you need to focus on the right things to make that happen – like these ten I wrote about a while back. the sooner you take action the more value you will gain (think compounding).

As Seth Godin says with his elegant simplicity, don’t confuse building a job with building a business. Either approach is fine – as long as it is a conscious decision.
Other Posts related to this subject:
Nearly every post I have written…
One of my recent favorites…