motivation

How To Run Customers Demonstrations

Even with the understanding that customer feedback is critical, organizations are often gun-shy about seeking it on non-production-ready products or services. The concerns they have about exposing the insides of the sausage factory frequently revolve around: appearing to lack confidence, committing ourselves to a long list of customer requirements, leaning on employees with varying communication skills, opening the door to unbounded customer support requests, impacting sales as customers wait for upcoming offerings, and generally jeopardizing the relationship with participating customers. Can those risks be mitigated? Yes, they can, by managing the demonstration. Below are some examples of what this means to me.

Let Go Of Defensiveness

First, on the fear of appearing hesitant and harming the customer relationship: In innovation, the reality is that we don’t always know what customers want, so we are in fact a bit uncertain. Would customers penalize us for admitting it? That hasn’t been my experience. Customers are frequently treated fairly badly by the companies they do business with. Most customers are thus thrilled to be sincerely asked for their input and positively elated when that input makes it into the product/service.

Listening Is Not Agreeing

Second, is hosting a demonstration akin to committing to implementing every suggestion? If left unmanaged, it might be, but this is where customer preparation comes in. Expectations must be set that although feedback will be noted, it will be compiled across a number of customers and considered through the lens of the organization’s strategy. Thus, there is a promise to listen, but not necessarily to agree. In my experience, most customers are OK with that.

No Proxies

Third, should the organization’s doers be the ones presenting, or should that be left to slick sales/marketing types? I believe the right of first refusal should go to the doers. Most doers rarely (if ever) see, talk to, or hear from customers. Therefore, most will relish the opportunity. The impact of this activity on the doers’s level of understanding of the overall business context and empathy for customer needs is almost magical. No doubt the presentations will be a little rougher, more raw, and less polished, but is that such a bad thing? Probably not! I would bet that many customers are a little tired of being managed, influenced, and sold to by public relations-types. Therefore, the rough edges are likely to impart an air of authenticity to the proceedings. That said, however, it probably does make sense for the Product Owner to open and close the proceedings.

On the above point, there is another side benefit to having less polished demos. Research has shown that people are generally reluctant to provide negative feedback if they think one has put a lot of effort into the thing being reviewed. Therefore, too much polish is probably harmful to the quality and quantity of feedback.

Image by John Cook via Flickr

Transparency

Fourth, might sales be delayed by unveiling future versions of the product? Sure, yet demonstrations are held with only a sample of customers, not the entire customer population. Thus, this potential impact on sales should be quantified and the cost/benefit of the feedback evaluated. Don Reinersten provides guidance on valuing information. I never advocate doing anything out of inertia; deliberate decisions are much better.

In summary, can all risks be taken out of customer demonstrations? No. Does the value of the feedback received exceed the potential cost of the risks? If the demonstration is properly managed, I think the answer is an emphatic “yes.” Customer demonstrations don’t have to be thought of as minefields of risks. They are events that can be prepared for the greatest benefit of all participants. As with most other processes, a clever organization will get better at it with practice. In the comments section below, I invite you to share your tricks to get the most out of customer demonstrations.

P.S.

A former colleague insists that no demonstration should conclude without the Product Owner asking, “Would you buy this today?” as a way to better assess the value that the customer perceives in the product. I think this is a great practice when the value cannot be marked-to-market through an actual exchange of money. The question will likely garner a lot of Nays, but the eventual Yays will more than make up for it all.

Works cited

John Cook, “Fresh Sausage Class”, Flickr, 11 Mar. 2015. Web, 15 Oct. 2015.

How To Influence Stakeholders Of A Transformation

I think we can all agree that in order to get an organization to internalize the Lean/Agile/Discovery mindset, a lot of stakeholders must be influenced. Moreover, the pesky thing about stakeholders is that they are all different. They believe in different things, adopt different values, have different experiences, and are subject to different pressures. A single message is thus unlikely to resonate equally well with all of them, or at least, that is my experience. Therefore, I find it useful to think of different ways to reframe my message. I now try to meet them where they are by casting the various benefits of a transformation (link to Why Bother article) in a different light based on the person’s concerns, or at least likely concerns if I can’t ascertain for sure. Here are some examples that have worked for me:

Line Managers

Line managers are typically responsible for demonstrably getting things done through their team. In traditional organizations, these managers have to report the team’s progress to superiors. It should thus be no surprise that their immediate reaction to a coach’s request to let the team self-organize is met with fear and doubt. Hell, most of the principles that underpin the Agile manifesto can be perceived as heresy. That fear is understandable. I’ve experienced it myself. It can be scary to remain responsible for the outcome while letting go of the traditional controls, however illusionary they might be. I have had success allaying that fear when I was able to establish convincingly that self-organization leads to greater ownership of outcomes, which leads to more creative solutions to problems, which are themselves the precursors of good results.

Executives

Business executives must also support cultural transformation. As an Agile coach and friend of mine is fond of saying, “If the boss isn’t talking about it, it’s unlikely to be viewed as important.” How do you get someone responsible for the Profit and Loss Statement to support a change that demands relaxing, if not eliminating the traditional controls of schedules, status reports, and feature/content contracts? The key is to make the case for a different path to great financial results. For example, the transformation is in part about developing the skill to differentiate and emphasize the high-value work at the expense of the lower-value one. By putting more of our investment toward our best bets, we tilt the business odds in our favor. And while we perhaps make fewer promises about the future – history tells us that promises based on false certainty are frequently broken anyway – we know that we generally hold a better hand, as in poker, than we did before the transformation.

Sales And Business People

In many circumstances, in order to get the invaluable customer feedback, we will have to seek the assistance of sales or business people. When I have requested access to the customer, I have often been met with the fear that comes from bringing one’s customer inside the sausage factory (this article contains tips on overcoming the fears). Those fears, real or imagined, must be weighed against the benefits of information value for the company and increased engagement for customers. I have found that people will agree that the ability to deliver more customer value and increase the loyalty of customers in the process is a win-win proposition.

The Doers

To me, the most important people in a transformation are the people who get the work done. Call them individual contributors, staff, or simply people (though, please, not the dehumanizing  “resources”). In most environments, that’s a mix of engineers, technicians, analysts, marketers, accountants, lawyers, writers, designers, and others. Most of them view any proposal for change with a cynicism cultivated by yearly process changes that usually only serve to make their lives more difficult for no apparent benefit. When done honestly, I consider a Lean or Agile transformation different, because it is culturally driven, not process-driven. To dispel the fear of abuse (a strong word, I know) by the next wave of process, I like to talk about the principles of autonomy, self-organization, greater business context, more authentic feedback, teamwork and collaboration, and impediment removal. I never promise that it’s all sunshine and rainbows. However, I do genuinely believe that it leads to a better quality of life for all. That usually resonates, and raises the bar for expectations, and I’m fine with that.

Meeting Them Where They Are

To effect a successful Lean or Agile transformation, all you have to do is change product development, marketing, sales, customer support, finance, manufacturing, and Human Resources, but that’s about it. Obviously, you are not going to change these functions yourself, so you need to influence stakeholders. To paraphrase Dale Carnegie, there is only one way to get anyone to do anything. You need to make them want to do it. Thus, as change agents, we need to learn how best to position the benefits that go along with a transformation. I suggest that targeted messaging should be one tool we have. Do you have a similar experience?