Conference 7.286::digital

 OVERVIEW	A CONCEPT FOR A CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL 
 
 This summary outlines an organizational methodology and measurement criteria 
 structured to maximize the selling opportunities within a specific geography 
 or selling domain of an Account Group Manager.  To the best of my knowledge, 
 the concept is in total accord with the New Management System, our Account 
 oriented direction and with our stated goals of Customer Enthusiasm and 
 Profitable Growth.
 
 The concept is based on apportioning existing personnel into one of four 
 business segments which I have called PROSPECTING, DECISION, WINNING, and 
 MANAGING. There is an expectation that the sum of the four segments will blend 
 to accomplish the whole selling function.  The underlying rationale for this 
 concept is to approach the total, but constantly changing market of an Account 
 Group with an organization designed and rewarded to be flexible and adjust to 
 this change.  A major premise is that ongoing delivery and maintenance 
 business needs to be managed and goaled differently from the business of 
 closing larger, more complex new systems (SI type) business.  An overview of 
 the objective, function and measurement of each of the four segments follows 
 this summary.
 
 PROSPECTING
 
 The objective of PROSPECTING is to find out about opportunities and fill the 
 pipeline for the DECISION Group.
 
 The function is to interact with senior management of all the potential 
 enterprises within the Account Group territory, with the specific charter to 
 discover opportunity.  Success is knowing ahead of time, what each enterprise 
 later invests in.  The deliverable is to present to the DECISION segment, 
 every opportunity that can be found, regardless of applicability to us.  It 
 would include, however, an opinion of our success probabilities.  The sum of 
 all discovery is the total working forecast.  Where there is no Account 
 Manager, PROSPECTING also has the responsibility of assuring that future 
 proposals will be successful in the upper level funding and approval cycle.  
 PROSPECTING is aligned with Accounts.
 
 Measurement: percent of opportunity found vs. later actual enterprise spending
 
 DECISION
 
 The objective of the DECISION group is to select the best qualified, 
 opportunities and distribute those to the WINNING Teams in a manner designed 
 to meet the AGM business goals.  The group also has the objective of 
 consistent and correct reporting to our internal business systems.
 
 One DECISION group function is to decide which of opportunities that have been 
 discovered should be worked on by a WINNING Team.  This is the Business office 
 for the Account Group.  DECISION is also responsible for all reporting, for 
 attainment of AGM budget goals, allocation of resources, and planning for 
 future resource/training needs.  DECISION assures that sales expense does not 
 begin, until a "GO" decision has been made relative to probabilities, resource 
 skill availability, high risk issues, etc.  When a decision is reached to 
 pursue a specific engagement, DECISION then assigns the task to a WINNING 
 TEAM.  DECISION is not Account aligned, but chooses the "best" opportunities 
 from across the entire territory/geography.
 
 DECISION does all reporting to SBS, Sales management, IBU/PBU, etc. The 
 members of the other three segments would report activity in a very simple 
 structured mail message to DECISION.  The administrative staff consolidates 
 this information and data enters it into systems.  DECISION provides the 
 administrative support, proposal generation, resource escalation, Readiness 
 planning and other similar services.
 
 Measurements: Percent of opportunities assigned that are awarded vs. reach no 
 award decision.  Meeting all the AGM Business goals across all the groupings, 
 such as hardware, services etc.  Growth of overall market share in the Account 
 Group.  This is the only group measured on dollars and market share.  
 Availability of skills and Readiness to meet future customer demands.
 
 WINNING
 
 The objective of this group is to design cost-effective, competitive winning 
 solutions and close business in minimum elapsed time.
 
 This is a pool/group of selling and technical specialists that form short term 
 teams to perform needs analysis, design the winning solution, propose and win 
 an opportunity.  These teams have no dollar goals.  The only goal is to win 
 the order in the shortest cycle time.  Individuals may be assigned to multiple 
 teams concurrently as their skills are needed.  Individuals would work with 
 the team only in the phases of the cycle that needed their talent.  This is 
 this group that gives the organization the flexibility to seize the 
 opportunity regardless of the customer account that presents it or the time it 
 is presented.  It is expected that the majority of the Account Group personnel 
 would be in this group.  Teams are formed and disbanded as needed.  Members 
 are added or leave as needed.  WINNING team members are NOT aligned to any 
 specific account.  
 
 Measurement: Percent of assigned engagements won vs. lost to competition (if 
 the customer make no decision, that impacts the metric of the DECISION group).
 
 MANAGEMENT
 
 The objective is to cultivate the long term customer relationship.
 
 The MANAGEMENT group would be long term assignments to active accounts.  They 
 manage and guide every assigned WINNING Team through the selling cycle within 
 their account.  They assure the timely and proper installation and 
 implementation of closed business.  They process the follow-on and upgrade 
 business.  They manage the service contracts.  They respond to the smaller 
 point solution sales.  They utilize Distributor channels when appropriate.  
 They generate account plans and advise the DECISION group on assigning WINNING 
 Teams to their accounts.  They may commit to deliver the win.  They "pay" only 
 for services used and manage the NMS system Account P&L.
 
 Measurement: Customer satisfaction and Account P&L.
 
 SUMMARY
 
 The objective of this concept is to focus four groups of people on four 
 specific objectives: (1) Find every opportunity with no onus on whether it is 
 won or not; (2) Make the hard business decisions on how best to allocate teams 
 to meet the business goals of the AGM; (3) Concentrate on winning.  Design the 
 lowest cost best solution, the competitive solution, the solution that meets 
 the customer's business goal.  Close the order in the shortest possible 
 elapsed time; and (4) develop the long term profitable and enthusiastic 
 customer relationship based on delivery of effective solutions that benefit 
 the customer.
 
 Measurements are matched to corporate goals of customer enthusiasm and 
 profitable growth, but these can be finite and tough.  Only the DECISION group 
 deals with internal numbers reporting and meeting dollar goals.
   
 IMPLEMENTATION
 
 As best I can see, this concept could be implemented at the AGM level by any 
 AGM independent of the actions of other AGM's.  All of the Account level 
 reporting I am aware of could be generated by the Business Office.  Industry 
 cuts, product cuts, whatever was needed, would be generated all from the same 
 consistent database by the DECISION group.
 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                            |
|                DIAGRAM OF THIS CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL             |
+------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+
|  JOB GROUP-+- PROSPECTING   |   DECISION     |   WINNING   |   MANAGING    |
| GOALS      |                |                |             |               |
+---+--------+----------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+
|            |                |                |             |               |
| OBJECTIVE  | Find new       | Meet AGM goals.| Win new     |  Manage       |
|            | opportunities  | Do reporting   | business    |  Account      |
+------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+
|            |                |                |             |               |
| ACTIVITY   | Interact with  | Select         | Propose     |  Close all    |
|            | senior mgmt.   | engagements    | Solutions   |  business     |
+------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+
|            |                |                |             |               |
| METRIC     | Percent of     | Make budget.   | Percent of  |  Customer     |
|            | business found | Profit goals   | winning     |  satisfaction |
|            |                |                |             |               |
+------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+
 

 PROSPECTING	A CONCEPT FOR A CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL 
 
 ASSUMPTIONS:
 
 The assumption is that the more business opportunity we know about, the better 
 job the Business group can do selecting our best opportunities from the total. 
 An assumption is that we lose a very significant percent of market share from 
 customers and opportunities we don't even know about.  
 
 OBJECTIVE and ACTIVITY:  
 
 The objective of the prospector is to find every opportunity within the 
 territory or set of assigned accounts.  It is essential to include in the 
 scope of territory, all the enterprises not covered by the named account 
 structure.  Accounts which do not fit the profit model for End User sales, 
 would be referred to Distributors, followed and tracked.  The new 4 year 
 advertising campaign is designed to find $900M in incremental revenue, and it 
 is expected that 40% of that will come from accounts who have not previously 
 bought from Digital (source BJ in DVN).  Prospectors are the antenna listening 
 for and responding to those buying signals.  Prospectors are our ambassadors 
 of goodwill and company image.
 
 Along with the MANAGING person, the prospector would be responsible to assure 
 that there is no high level hidden veto that could preclude a sale when a 
 Winning Team is successful in winning at the selection group level.
 
 MEASUREMENT:  
 
 The metric might be total forecast identified vs. the reported gross 
 procurement.  The metric might be "no surprises" from among the identified 
 territory.  It is crucial to this concept that the prospector is not measured 
 on quality, probability, or revenue, else it would detract from or conflict 
 with the objective to just find it and make it known.  
 
 JOB CRITERIA:
 
 As with all four groups, the type of person who would be successful in this 
 role is fairly obvious, and we are fortunate to be blessed with many who 
 possess these skills.  Some might be "elder statesmen".  Their effectiveness 
 might be greatly increased by training on recognition of opportunity, 
 including opportunity that the enterprise doesn't even recognize themselves.  
 How many times has a person said they went in to work on "X" and found 
 something else?  Prospectors might currently reside in either Sales or Sales 
 Support.  Digital Services currently has a similar position in some major 
 accounts.
 

 DECISION	A CONCEPT FOR A CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL 
 
 ASSUMPTIONS: 
 
 The assumption is that the probabilities of business are unequal from account 
 to account and that these probabilities change much more frequently than our 
 ability to reallocate or re-plan resources fairly.  This change unfairly 
 causes both positive and negative impact on attaining fixed goals.  This leads 
 to unproductive focus on internal goaling and activity reporting at the 
 expense of selling.  The assumption is that it would be more efficient and 
 effective to concentrate this numerical activity in a business group trained 
 and chartered to perform these tasks consistently and accurately.
 
 OBJECTIVE and ACTIVITY:  
 
 The primary objective of this group is to assign work so that the AGM goals 
 are met or exceeded.  Assignments are made to WINNING team leaders.  Team 
 leaders select team members.  Successful leaders are given more and larger 
 assignments.  Less successful leaders are given less comprehensive engagements 
 and more team member time.  "Leader" is not a job, it is an assignment.
 
 Other objectives are to provide consistent reporting to the sales 
 organization, to make the business decisions of which opportunities to put 
 effort on, to manage the DEC100 and other reward systems.  This function needs 
 to estimate the revenue value, types of revenue expected, and estimated time 
 to close each assigned engagement (projected revenue), but that estimate must 
 not be a metric for the WINNING TEAMS to meet.  
 
 As positively as I can express it, a major purpose of this group is to remove 
 the administrative burden from the other three groups so the other three can 
 focus totally on finding business, winning business, and delivering business.
 
 This group sets/accepts the AGM budget based on the SUM of the account plan 
 estimates from the Account Managers.  Success, therefore, is meeting the 
 quarterly and annual numbers in aggregate, not necessarily by each account or 
 division individually.  Since this group has the power to deploy the WINNING 
 TEAMS based on total opportunity, if the total can be made, it will be made.  
 And everybody can be successful on their goal sheet because of the 
 flexibility.
 
 This group also provides the planning function to project future resource 
 needs for changing skills and knowledge requirements.  This should become very 
 obvious when high probability opportunities must be passed over because the 
 skills knowledge needed to win them is lacking or overloaded.  This would be 
 much easier to detect earlier at the AGM level rather than at the Account 
 level.  Longer term success depends on being able to accomplish education and 
 training ahead of the technology and demand curve.  With the aggregate view of 
 pending demand, probabilities and forecast, Digital Services should be in much 
 better position to manage the risk of investing in headcount and training for 
 having qualified people ready to earn customer respect from day one on the 
 job.
 
 MEASUREMENT:  
 
 Primarily, meet the AGM metrics.  Also, cost control of utilization of 
 resources outside of the AGM unit.  Having the needed skills within the AGM 
 group, closest to the customer, to meet needs.  Percent of opportunities 
 assigned to Winning Teams that end in purchase rather than "no decision".  
 Timely and proper reporting to our internal business systems.  Management of 
 total discounts and allowances.
 
 JOB CRITERIA:
 
 As with all four groups, the type of person who would be successful in this 
 role is fairly obvious, and, again, we are fortunate to have many who possess 
 these pragmatic business skills.  Experience in operations, in depth 
 understanding of our business systems and ability to focus on meeting the 
 AGM's goals are paramount.
 

 WINNING	A CONCEPT FOR A CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL 
 
 ASSUMPTIONS:  The assumption is that more engagements will be won if they have 
 been consistently qualified, and if the personnel on the teams are trained and 
 able to focus only on competitively solving the customer business problem.
 
 OBJECTIVE:  A team works under the direction and guidance of the Account 
 Manager at all times.  Every team has a team leader.  A team leader on one 
 team may be a team member on another team.  The objective for the team is to 
 execute the principles of the well known PDIM model.  Some team members will 
 assess the customer needs, trial test alternate concepts with the customer, 
 choose a straw design approach, and then work with other more in-depth 
 technical members of the team to flesh out a finite solution.  The team needs 
 to evaluate every avenue to include educational and other support services 
 that will add to profit and increase probability of success.  The team will 
 bring in the expected delivery personnel to review the final proposal.  The 
 team accomplishes the "technical sell".  The team will then follow the 
 solution through closure and turnover to Digital Services delivery personnel 
 or the Project Manager for implementation.
 
 MEASUREMENT:  
 
 The metric is simply to win; percent of wins vs. losses.  Close each 
 opportunity within the amount of elapsed time agreed to in the engagement 
 assignment.  It is crucial to this logic that the dollar value/amount, or 
 utilization of any preconceived product or service is not a criteria or 
 metric.  The teams must be totally free to utilize any combination of Digital 
 or third party products and service that will best meet the customer needs and 
 beat the competition.
 
 JOB CRITERIA:
 
 As with all four groups, the type of person who would be successful in this 
 role is fairly obvious, and, again, we are fortunate to be blessed with many 
 who possess the expertise of these technical and selling skills.  These 
 persons need to be able to focus on customer need, need to be able to quickly 
 design a winning design approach, and need to be able to assemble the 
 essential DEC and third party products which will integrate in support of the 
 customer objective.  Extensive system and product knowledge is crucial.  
 Ability to utilize corporate resources (VTX, NOTES, PARTNERS, PROPOSAL SYSTEM, 
 SOFTBASE, RESOURCE CENTERS, BENCHMARK CENTERS, etc.) and quickly employ the 
 Escalation Process, when needed, is also crucial.  Goodness is not having to 
 use higher cost resources outside the Account Group.  Not using Practices 
 groups and highly skilled special resources when they are needed is stupid.
 

 MANAGING	A CONCEPT FOR A CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL 
 
 ASSUMPTIONS:  
 
 The assumption is that growth and profitable success will result from 
 consistent longer term relationships which can be developed through an account 
 focus.  The assumption follows that this will be more successful if the 
 Account manager is not measured on revenue, but only on customer satisfaction. 
 The assumption is that profitable revenue follows satisfaction, not the other 
 way around.  An important assumption is that the Account Manager is still in 
 command of all activity relative to their account. 
 
 OBJECTIVE and ACTIVITY:  
 
 The Account Manager is responsible for account control, payables, delivery of 
 purchased systems, Discount agreements, and the account plan.  The account 
 plan of projected revenue becomes a planning number to the business group, not 
 a metric.  AGM budgets and WINNING TEAM headcount would be based on the sum of 
 Account plans.
 
 Invitations to CLF, DECWorld, Seminars, Corporate visits, Technical Reviews, 
 etc.; processing follow on and point solution orders, education and training, 
 services business, system hardware and software maintenance and tuning, etc.  
 Very important is that the AM would guide and direct WINNING TEAMS, they work 
 for her/him during the period of the engagement.  The AM closes the solution 
 order business, not the WINNING Team.
 
 MEASUREMENT:  
 
 The primary measure is customer satisfaction.  Growth of market share or the 
 ratio of spending between DEC and non-DEC is a fair measure of satisfaction, 
 but fixed annual dollar goals especially in a volatile economy may be 
 impractical.  Ability to obtain an on-site office, permanent access badge, 
 membership on customer committee's, being invited to customer events or 
 playing on the customers softball team could also be metrics of customer 
 satisfaction.  Ability to deliver the revenue of SI projects, once sought and 
 accepted (same as the WINNING TEAM) is also a measure.  Accuracy of the 
 forecast part of the account plan might be a minor metric.  Services revenue 
 might be a metric.
 
 JOB CRITERIA:
 
 This is another function for which many in our field force are well suited.  
 Those who listen especially well, pay attention to details, have excellent 
 social and people skills would more likely be successful.  Willingness to 
 commit to a longer term assignment is also important.
 

 EPILOGUE	A CONCEPT FOR A CUSTOMER ORIENTED SELLING MODEL 
 
 ASSUMPTION:
 
 We are not good enough to look out one year in advance and accurately guess, 
 with the impact of defining someone's future career, the probable business in 
 any one given account or division.  The sum of many account's might add up to 
 a pretty accurate total result, but one individual can pay a harsh personal 
 price for that logic, and another reap an unjustified reward.
 
 We are unable to swiftly deploy skilled resources to an bluebird opportunity 
 on short notice and still have a win-win result on personal rewards.  
 
 This concept is designed to provide more responsive flexibility with more 
 winners.
 
 SCENARIOS:
 
 Perhaps two scenarios might help to illustrate this concept.
 
 A successful account might be one that began with an ambitious account plan, 
 with expectations of significant revenue, but customer business reversals 
 early in the year caused a delay of plans.  Since only the Account manager and 
 the Prospector are committed to this account, the resources planned for 
 projects can be diverted to other opportunities without negative impact on 
 anybody's metrics.  The AM is able to keep the customer satisfaction high 
 through responsive maintenance and support service.  The prospector maintains 
 relationships, but spends less time there.
 
 Another account might be the reverse, expectations were not high, but the 
 prospector found some new opportunity that had been unknown at the time of 
 annual Account Team planning.  The Account manager is not strapped with lack 
 of resources.  A WINNING TEAM can be quickly assembled to respond to the 
 engagement, and when it is complete, is reassigned to another opportunity.  
 The Account P&L pays only for what it uses.
 
 THE LAST WORD:
 
 How can we lose if we goal a set of highly experienced diplomats to find every 
 possible opportunity we could pursue, goal a group of pragmatists to select 
 those we have the skills and best probabilities to win, goal a group of 
 creative tigers to win every engagement on their plate, and then goal the 
 final group of cool heads to make darn sure the other three groups don't muck 
 up anything in their accounts.
 

Dave: 

  Right on.  Excellent model.  

  I recently completed a study of the sale of a certain piece of software.

  The cycle went something like this. (I have some very detailed real
  customer models.)
 
                      Duration                        Result 

 1.  Sale          Up to One Year                     Customer buys software
                                                      for evaluation purposes
                                                      Or for a small pilot
                                                      or proof of concept
                                                      Maybe a little hardware.
                                                      Revenues to Digital:
                                                          $150K

2.  Customer Pilot   Up to One Year                  If customer is happy
                                                     he purchases some a
                                                     microVAX and a little
                                                     more software in order
                                                     to develop a production
                                                     system. 
                                                     Revenues to Digital:
                                                          $200K

3. Development of    Up to One Year                  More purchases of
    Production                                       of Hardware & Software
    System                                           Revenues to Digital
                                                         $400K

4. System Goes in
    full production  One More Year and several       Large system sale.
   And then gets         years beyond                (6000 or 9000)
    expanded to                                      Lots of hardware,
   support large no.                                 software, maintenance
   of end users                                      etc.
                                                     Revenues to Digital
                                                         $2M
 

At every stage the behaviour and needs of the customer are different.
Different skills are required from account manager or sales person.
I suspect, that in today's system a new sales person taking over
the account at Phase 4 makes Decathlon or DEC100 even though he/she
did not of the hard preliminary work.  And the poor individual that 
spent a year of sweat and toil for a small order might get punished. 
    
    
d
    

    
    
    	Dave,
    
    	This is an excellent model you have generated. Would
    	it be appropriate to submit it to DELTA for comment?
    	I believe it would be worth a pilot to see how it would
    	work for us in the 'real world' revenue sense.
    
    							Kim
    

    This concept is so basic and simple that it could be equally applied
    right across the Corporation wherever "multiple choice options" are to
    be evaluated.
    
    For example:  A new product design group.  1 team to "prospect" various
                  options regardless of the outcome.  A "decision" team to
    		  select the right one.  A "winning" team to implement, and 
    		  a "management" team through to end of useful life.
    
    		  You might say this is the current model but the
    		  difference would be in the way each team was measured
    		  (the metrics we all know and love!), and the flexibility
    		  of resources between teams/projects.
    
    		  A manufacturing facility.  Prospectors to look for new
    		  business opportunities (both internal and external to
    		  DEC); Decision team to select; Winning team to implement;
    		  Management team to maintain.
       
    		  Again the difference is in the measurement applied to
    		  each team and the flexibility of resources across teams.
    
    I say go for it!
    
    Mike

    
    
    	Dave??? How about it? Can we get this submitted to DELTA?
    
    						Kim
    

    Thanks for the encouragement, both posted and sent via mail.  The
    suggestion has today been sent to DELTA.  Several of your comments were
    forwarded with the suggestion.  Please continue to comment here.

    Dave,
    
    IMHO, one word for your model and efforts. OUTSTANDING!!!! One thing I
    did learn from posting 1797.0 was just how many people shared my
    feelings but didn't want to do it publically, for obvious reasons.
    
    Also, I believe your only chance of getting these ideas adopted and
    used as instuments of change lie in support from the masses. And I
    don't really know how to do that. However, you have my vote and
    support. If there is anything I can do to help please don't hesitate to
    call.
    
    Gene Haag, Network Consultant
    Minneapolis, Minnesota
    DTN 442.2255

    Model in itself is fine. I would like to add a warning though.
    
    We have a problem of values, which to my opinion includes both
    metrics and the ways we work in general.
    
    We have a tendency to value fireman's work above preplanned
    behaviour and your model could certainly help in that.
    
    At the moment we have another more difficult and in a sense opposite value
    of producing monstrous protocols and procedures, which people who are 
    supposed to follow them have no time to read. When they anyway are tried 
    in practise they often slow down the whole process and paralyze the 
    operations. And indeed, they are often used as an excuse of not being 
    ready on time.
    And don't say that it must be so because Digital is so big. In
    computer business today, we MUST be good, quick and flexible all at
    the same time to be succesful regardless of how big we are. The letter 
    from the CEO of GE (it is somewhere else in this notesfile) described 
    the situation quite well.
    
    I believe to the old frase of quality, which says that it is
    			a right thing
    			in a right place
    			at the right time.
    I believe that we fail most often in the last one. It may indeed be the
    most difficult to achieve.
    
    So shortly:
    If your proposal is implemented, hopefully it is not implemented in a
    way which would make it just another bureaucracy. It could even speed 
    up things by defining the responsibilities and decision makers more
    clearly.
    
    --Ritva