Chapter 24: Finding the Right Fit

Jeffrey Rodek

Developing a Profitable Relationship

Listening to your customer is simply the most important thing you can do to build a profitable customer relationship. The second critical thing is to understand where you can add value and just as importantly, where you cannot - you have to understand the limitations of your domain expertise.

Quick returns on investment and quick wins are needed, especially during the early stages with a new customer. That way, they're winning and your winning and you're building a rapport and building success. You also have to recognize when you can and when you cannot help. For instance, if you listen and they have a pain that they thought you could solve, but you look at it and realize that you cannot help, you have to make the hard decision, the right decision, and refer them elsewhere so that they can get a solution. It may be a loss in the short term, but it is better to win their respect and do right by the customer. If you have the opportunity to say what you can do, maybe they will come back to you later. The alternative is to push something that is not really a fit, which inevitably is unprofitable for you and an unhappy story for the customer. This of course is no way to build a trusting relationship. Ultimately, if you have a solution for their problem, attack it and get some quick wins. On the other hand, if you don't have a fit, you have to pass on the opportunity and recommend the best company for their needs.

For example, our company can often install a new application in two or three months start to finish. With this approach, customers will likely enjoy benefits from their investment very quickly, at a time when many companies are looking to have technology investment paybacks within a year. That's what I would describe as a quick win. The customer is seeing positive returns very quickly.

In listening to the customer, you want to make sure that their requirements are understood and that their expectations are aligned with yours. There should be no communications failures. Taking the time to listen, to build requirements, to build a plan, and work the plan usually leads to success. A second challenge that we face is making sure that the employees of our company are aligned to customer success, as well as some of the more obvious goals in the company, like revenue and profits. When I worked for Federal Express, Jim Barksdale, who you probably remember from his Netscape days, was our COO. I recall being in a meeting with managers from the pickup and delivery operations of Federal Express when Jim was asked what was most important to him: cost numbers, service, or the employees. He told them if he only wanted one of the three, anybody could do it, but because he wanted all three managed, he needed talented managers like them. At Hyperion we like to think of it as the three legs of a stool. Customer satisfaction, profits, and taking care of your people are all equally important - the stool cannot stand on two legs alone.

We take that balanced approach at Hyperion. We have customer satisfaction, profit, and employee satisfaction goals. We have been working hard at this notion, especially in the past year. I have told the story about Jim Barksdale's direction repeatedly, and we've talked about the three-legged stool with our executive committee and to the top hundred leaders in the company. It is a challenge to take this concept and turn it into something that every manager understands. It is also critical that every employee touching the customer understands this idea and a picture is worth a thousand words. So, the picture of a balanced, three-legged stool helps employees keep that in mind in the heat of battle.

Communicating the company's values starts with a culture that is straightforward and honest. Help where you can help; do not help where you don't have domain expertise. You also have to be very clear in your business promise and your mission. We have worked hard, especially over the past six or seven months now, in putting together a very clear vision statement and a mission statement, on articulating our values, and defining a customer promise that can be shared with every employee in our company. Letting our customers know that we promise to deliver world-class enterprise software is imperative.

It's also important to continue to evangelize those values. I talk about our mission and our company's brand promise at every opportunity with employees. You have to evangelize inside and outside of the company all of the time and then back it up. We also talk about why it is important to raise the bar on yourself faster and higher than either the competition or your customers will. For example, think about the high jump or pole vault, two Olympic events that end in a failure. The winner keeps jumping until he or she knocks the bar down. So the winner continues to raise the bar on him or herself, higher and higher and higher. It's up to them to raise it another notch, to try again. In business, if we do a good job of listening to our customers and raising the bar on ourselves, to exceed customer expectations, we will be more successful than if we allow the customers or our competitors to raise the bar.