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SellingWhatYouDo

Those of us who don't live off the grid, raising our own food, and building our own shelter have to buy the stuff of survival. That means among other things SellingWhatYouDo, to get stuff to exchange for food, shelter, and so on. Or for books, and trips to the AYE conference.

Somewhere between sitting under a tree with your figs in a basket before you, and the kind of hype parodied here there's a sweet spot. Maybe several sweet spots.

I'm asking more about the offer itself than about how it is presented, although we're stuck with the medium and message interwingled. Jerry in essence sells his Jerry-ness. It's an offer that doesn't fit others, much. Agilists sell being part of a particular mindset, which is Good and Right(tm). So did the SEI people in their day. Some people sell being a particular kind of cog - "I'm a J2EE programmer." Some folks offer training, which is perhaps the pouring into the ears of particular facts, perhaps something more than that. Some folks sell their last few job titles, and an implicit career path where the job they're talking about next sensibly fits. Organizations like big consulting shops invest a great deal into defining an image, or perhaps a "brand" which describes the offer they make - you'll get one of those McKinsey guys, who does McKinsey things.

All of these form the offer that someone makes - "This is how I can be valuable to you." The medium is interwingled with the message. Speaking at the right conferences, publishing in the right mags makes one kind of offer simply by showing up those places. Publish in IEEE computer that's a bit different. A refereed conference is different again.

Here's my puzzle. Folks buy when they recognize the thing for sale. Watch any one ethnicity shopping at a market in another and you'll see what I mean. Even the strange stuff purchased is bought as an experiment and recognized as such.

So, I am curious. How do you sell what you do? Or does one sell what they do? Maybe we're all just along for the ride. Or what are the limitations that go along with any particular choice in presenting yourself?

- JimBullock, 2006.05.21 (A rose by any other name, would still bill at $ 125 / hour.)

I fear that my introduction of this topic contributed to PeddlingYourWaresOnTheWiki. I'll comment on that, there.

For this topic I am grateful, and curious. Grateful at the insights so far, and for the time and though provided. I am curious, however, both at what I perceive to be a bias toward advice giving vs. exploration, and what I perceive to be a bias in that professional offerers of advice have mostly contributed. That is, perhaps inevitable.

Still, I wonder what folks who might describe themselves as JustAProgrammer would have to say. It strikes me as a nobel calling, actually, yet one that from me at least, nobody is buying.

- JimBullock 2006.06.20 (Just a consultant . . . )

I recently worked with a client who claimed they wanted to move to doing real "agile." I asked what that meant to them, and after an assessment and some discussions, they decided that moving to being able to build once a week was all they were willing to do. Since they could only build once a month at the time, once a week seemed like a huge leap to them.

I was happy to work with them to move to building once a month. My theory is that in a few more months, once they realize how easy it is to build once a week, they'll move to once a day. Then they can choose again. But even if they don't my job, my Johanna-ness if you will, is to work with them to find the pragmatic ways that help them improve.

So if what I sell is my pragmatic-ness, my Johanna-ness, (is that like the Loch Ness :-), and my sense of humor-ness, then I write and speak about what I do.

I guess the congruence I see for me is that part of me is to tell the world in my writing and speaking what I do. That happens to market me also. But it's part of my Johanna-ness.

Does that make any sense to you? -- JohannaRothman 2006.05.23

Make sense - yes, it parses. Fit the question I am trying to ask, no. Lots of words there about the progress of the engagement from your perspective. How do they discover they want you? What do they recognize that makes them go "Ah-ha. I want some of that." well before you are on the clock? - jb

Because some of it might be that--a set of service offering descriptions--coupled with a description of the personal characteristics (the Jimness, I guess) that makes you uniquely able to offer these services in a way that helps people solve their problems, or turns them into stronger (learning) organizations or whatever.

--FionaCharles 24-May-2006

That's closer. Packaging seems like part of what I'm trying to ask about. I don't have a particular answer in mind - that's the point, actually. My spectrum of examples was deliberate. I think that people who agree to work as a BRU within an organization are offering a particular service for sale, as much as independent consultants do.

Maybe that's a way into the conversation. What's your offer (anybody / everybody?) What do you think your offer is? How do you let people who might want that know that your offer is available? - jb

I'm looking at a list of past clients of mine, sorted alphabetically. Here are some of the ways I got to the first "sales call" with each. Maybe we can spot patterns.

• someone who attended one of the (free) meetings of the french XP group at which we played the "XP Game", wanted some of that internally, had his management bring me in
• someone who attended my "Coding Dojo" at a conference and asked me to come over at an internal corporate conference to do one
• a big bank with offices in the UK and France, the UK folks had some success with "agile" and the French counterparts wanted some of that, went looking for a local expert; someone in the UK gave them my name
• I put an ad out on a website for IT trainers, billing myself as a trainer and Java expert; landed a gig within days (this was a "putting food on the table" kind of gig, but it's really nice to know I can do this when I have a hard time selling the more esoteric stuff)
• another training gig through the exact same channel
• a participant in the Paris Scrum training course, who came for tips on changing jobs because he was fed up with his current; we talked and he ended up bringing me in to help "change his organization", at which he's currently enjoying substantial success
• a co-worker from six years ago when I first started using XP, now a COO at a startup and the "Customer" of a project he wants to succeed
• a contact who used to work in another client firm, changed jobs recently and brought me in at the new job
• people at a services firm billing themselves as "agile" who wanted a known expert for a seminar
• people I met at the free "Agile seminar" I ran in Paris who were starting a new project intending it to be "agile" (several cases of that)
• a friend of mine who knew I did training, and had been asked by his management to shop around for Java trainers
• a friend who had changed jobs, had been asked to set up training internally in "effective communication in managing change", had recommended me instead on the grounds that having an outside person do it made sense logistically and otherwise
• a friend I met at a conference and knew for two years before an opportunity arose at work to lead a significant Project Retrospective
• someone from Belgium who contacted me through LinkedIn out of the blue

-- LaurentBossavit 2006.05.25

That's interesting in a way I can't quite verbalize just yet. Thank you. So, I tried a similar list for myself and most interesting off the bat are the contacts that I didn't pursue. If it parses at arms' length, I'll publish mine.

So, the questions I have, immediately:

• What did they think they were buying?
• Why did they think they could get that from you?
• What did you think you were selling?
• Why did yo think they could get that from you?

At least as interesting given the examples are the same four questions, in a world without "agile" as a label, gathering theme for or a brand name. Same sort of phemonena happened around the SEI / CMM back in the day, although they put the model front and center vs. the quality - "maturity" in their case. Different content (although not entirely different). Same brand recognition, both as an ask and an offer.

I wonder how much I want to tie myself to a brand I don't control. - jb

OK. This is just funny to me: "I'm looking at a list of past clients of mine, sorted alphabetically."

List of past clients? Sorted alphabetically? My envy is unbounded for folks who can do such stuff. I am lately whittling away at such a thing, trying this or that mechanism that might help. One day, perhaps . . . - jb

I don't want to tie myself to a brand.

But in the past I was attracted to brands because I believed I could focus on selling -- proposing solutions to a pattern of already established problems that many business had agreed they had.

Although I didn't see it at the time, the brand had a powerful influence on my thinking. Without much conscious thought, as the brand changed, so did my thoughts. It wasn't hard because deep down I felt my livelihood depended on the brand. I was like the cucumber in the pickle brine, regardless of whether I wanted to remain a cucumber, I became pickled and lost much of my control.

How can a consultant stay out of the brine? By realizing that the brand is merely one of many means to help a customer achieve their desires. Concentrate on understanding the customer desires. Offer your own unique service based on the best of all the available means for solving the problem rather than the prescribed brand offering.

I think it helps to believe that the idea of "the one true way" is bogus. And it also helps to be willing to struggle with different marketing -- making yourself visible to the world so customers connect you as someone who can help them realize their desires -- because you won't be a steer with a recongnizable brand that enables someone to lasso and take you to the right pasture. A possiblility is being recognized as someone who can solve problems that a team or organization can't solve themselves. That doesn't sound like a brand to me.

I'm not associating my new consulting business with a brand. It does give me more control and it does change how I market and sell. If I didn't have enough savings to sustain my marketing efforts, I may have decided to sell a brand. And I think anytime I sell a brand, I am putting myself in the pickle brine.

Enjoy the mixed metaphor, SteveSmith 2006.05.28

This has me thinking: . . . I believed I could focus on selling -- proposing solutions to a pattern of already established problems that many business had agreed they had.

That seems to fit for consulting types, for wage hands, and for outside services. A business, or individual may have a pattern that they have already agreed to. Sometimes this includes the way it will be resolved - consulting, staffing, outside service. That resonates with challenges internal folks sometimes have when they suggest changes - shifting from offering staffing to offering consulting, really.

Also resonates with the attraction of methodologies, and methodology consulting, attractive before the fact at least these ways:

• Ohhhh, shiny.
• Software is hard, and high value. I want more of that for less.
• Making software is screwed up, so needs fixing.
• I'd like work that feels better to me while I'm doing it.
• It's the new, new thing, and I need to dress in the latest fashion. What is it this week, Oakleys. (Pop culture note - that one is at least a decade behind the curve.)
• Do this and be like me, be clever, attractive, intelligent . . .
• Other

Interesting, interesting . . .

- JimBullock, 2006.06.06 ("Love for sale . . . ")

I'm now a Scrum Master, and as much as I lean towards more agile approaches, they're no silver bullet either.

I don't have an answer for you. For me, I'm trying to build my own brand. I don't yet know how successful I am. -- JohannaRothman 2006.05.30

Johanna, have you considered getting a PMP so you can "speak with authority" as you describe real world situations where PMI's approach would not be the best choice? Sort of a wolf in sheep's clothing. :-) CharlesAdams

Charles, I have. But every time I think about signing up for a prep class, I get nauseous. That's enough (so far) to say No :-) But you're right. I may have to get over my nausea. -- JohannaRothman 2006.06.07

Johanna, you don't really have to prep for the exam, or even take it, as long as you pay the fee. Then you can speak with authority about what really counts. - JerryWeinberg 2006.06.08

Huh? I'm missing something here. (Side note: when Jerry says something, and I say "huh?" I'm in for some learning :-) Do you mean as long as I pay for the prep class, even if I don't get a PMP, that's ok? -- JohannaRothman 2006.05.09

Well, I don't know, Johanna. I thought that you could pass without studying, but if you don't know that June is the 6th month, I'm not sure. Or maybe this is some project management trick to make schedules. Be that as it may, (or june), I figured you would pass, or if you didn't pass, you would make enough of a fuss with the entrepreneurs who run the test that they would pass you just to get you off their backs. It's the money they want, after all. I doubt that they care much about the profession. Or, you could say to clients, "Of course I took the test, but it was so easy I didn't bother to ask for my score, since I knew more about PM than the people who wrote it, so they obviously couldn't fail me. That should be excellent marketing. - JerryWeinberg 2006.06.10

I think sales work is discovering the "problems that many business(es) had agreed they had". This is the hard part!

• How did you come to talk to the person in front of you? This might be where you think you need to sell. Most of this is network, relationships and awareness of opportunity. I imagine that Johanna could say something about this, as she is good as these.
• Did they state a problem? Is it the real problem? As technical people we think people want a "solution" and we talk about that way too soon. Learning about individual situations and dynamics that lead to the "problem" help you understand how you fit, if you do.
• Did they request your services? How do they perceive you can help? You can learn a lot about your perceived reputation by asking this and it might tell you something new.

My experience has been that people might do some research based on a "rational" approach to getting help, but they choose based on how they feel about you as a person. Are you trustworthy? Do you listen? Is your service "safe" - regardless of how big the change are you going to be there for them.

- BeckyWinant 6.12.06

More often, my clients think someone else has a problem and they want me to fix those other people or that other system.

So I don't focus on problems when I first start MakingContact. I focus on what they want as a result. It's a little different, but I try to give people an out from having to admit they're wrong or they have a problem.

Does this make sense? -- JohannaRothman 2006.06.14 (back in the right month :-)

Sure it makes sense. So, what makes the initial folks inclined to contact you to have you go fix someone else? What leads them to this conclusion that they can get that from you, well before you are on the scene. I'm wondering whether there might be a way to skip a step. What does it take to start with what you are really going to do. Or maybe there's no percentage in that as an offer?

-JimBullock 2006.06.17 (Sorry, we're out of today's special today . . . )

This marketing pitch just occurred to me. You could build a whole campaign or even brand around it:

"Not getting what you want from those other boneheads in your organization? Call us at 1 - 800 - FIX - THEM, and we'll swoop in and tell you, and more importantly them, what's what. You'll be a hero for having gotten the problem people the best outside help available - us. (And a key part of our offer is that we make sure everyone knows we're the best - the keepers of the One True Solution(tm).) So call us. They'll be fixed, and you'll be off the hook."

Come to think of it, how many people have built their business on just this? Better, if there's a pretty well defined offer, you as the customer can know ahead of time whether the fixing being proposed is going to disturb your little world - which isn't the problem, of course.

How much more challenging to ask for help for yourself. That takes some courage and committment that the whole telling thing doesn't touch.

-- JimBullock, 2006.06.18 (Something is wrong. I must need fixing.)

What leads them to this conclusion that they can get that from you...

In my case, the answer is often a flavor of "they heard it from someone else". In my case, making a sale results from a conjunction of conditions:

• a) they hear that there is such a thing as what I do, i.e. having someone else come in to look at how they do software development;
• b) they think of that as something worth paying for;
• c) they identify me as someone they could get that from;
• d) they make contact with me somehow.

I've never made a sale where one of the previous was not satisfied; and I suspect the least satisfying gigs I've had were those where the "they" in the criteria had somewhat drifted apart from each other.

There are things for which it's obvious they're worth paying for - like cutting code. So there is a "commoditized" market for these things - a standard way of lining up a,b,c,d. The less obvious your offer is - the less obvious that a) and b) apply to your stuff - the harder it is to find clients; or rather, the harder it is for them to find you. Once they find you, though, it's much easier to line up c) and d).

So this, to me, seems to be the tradeoff. Pick something to do that's obviously worthwhile and compete with everyone who's had the same idea. Or pick something much less obvious and rely on word-of-mouth from satisfied clients (which takes lots of hard work) to make contact. Perhaps this is part of what bugs Johanna about getting a PMP - it's a "commoditized" version of what she does.

How does that fit in with your thinking, Jim ?

LaurentBossavit 06.18.06

That's brilliant. That fits with such business as I get, and what I don't get, and a fair amount of my agita around this topic. Also fits with my reluctance to hitch my particular little red wagon to the shooting star of the moment - I think "a", "b" and a bit of "c" seem to me less accurate as they become more general and well-known. What is someone buying when they buy "BPR Services" these days? A fair amount of pretty consistently understood sizzle, and I have no idea about the steak. I suspect that may be a rule. The more general and commonly understood the pitch, the less it's accurate content.

In the software development domain, I really don't see that there's much good in a coaching practice that involves "Explaining the obvious to the stupid.", for example, and don't particularly want to my perspective shared inside that particular big tent, no matter how powerful the brand. (EstherDerby quotes that on her site - as a negative example, of course.) I get concerned that as a brand gets traction, penetration, it takes on the bad characteristics of any other kind of asset in a market - it becomes a spoil to fight over, and something to monetize with more attention to how much than to how.

For my part, I'm real reluctant to buy into the expectations that go with the silver bullet du jour - often hyped by the practitioners simply to get in the door. If I willingly show up under that flag I think I own whatever silly expectations the potential customer has formed before I got there - at least I do as soon as I accept the first check offered on those terms. Applies to technologies, markets, and industry segments as well as methodologies & techniques. At least these are going to remake the world, at least this week: C#, SOA, Web 2.0 / social networking, mobile data, telematics, "agile", TDD, blah, blah, blah.

So, here's an offer I might be able to live with:

"I ship things better than most, and can help other folks do so better themselves. What I do generally works, first because there isn't any one answer (other than to ship things, if that is what you are about), and second because I start with the hard thing you're not doing already - the one you don't know you need. I don't know what it is either, at first.

If I'm good at anything, I'm good at being ignorant enough to figure out what to do differently, to get more of what you are trying to get. What I really do is science about your particular organization in place, to understand how it is working. In doing this, preconceptions about the answer get in the way. The first step to learning what to do differently is to let go of how you think things are working - if it worked as you thought, you'd be fine, right? The real world is telling your you're ignorant, by not behaving the way you supposed it would. That happens to me a lot.

So, hire me. I have had lots of practice being ignorant - most every day, most of my life, actually. I'm good at it - expert, perhaps at being ignorant about developing software. Let me be ignorant for you. Then we can pool our ideas, and work together on changing how the work gets done so you can get more of what you want.

For my part, I have collected a lot of bits of what has worked in doing software then and there, that might be useful here and now (or not) plus a few ideas that seem to hold in general. I'm also good at changing things because when I realized that I'd be changing what I do a lot, I started paying attention to how change happens. Changing things isn't easy. Getting better at doing software takes some idea what you want, refining how you do it, and some skill at doing change.

That's what I do all the time. Comes from being ignorant, and learning. Maybe we can do some of that together."

I wonder who would respond to an offer like this in the face of so many who are so sure that they have the one hammer that will work for all things? If there really were a formula, we'd be done already, would we not? Seems odd to me that so few folks want to hear that. Still, I'm just dumb about software development, at least compared to a great many folk. Then again, I ship - always. So maybe dumb isn't such a bad thing.

-- JimBullock, 2006.06.18 (The bolden rule: "If you can't fix it, feature it.") 2006.06.20 (Edits.) 2006.06.21 (More edits. I'm learning.)

Well, I do tend to wise-off a bit. I want to muse on this because, first, I'm not surprised that you have a reaction, second, I'm pretty sure I mean what I said, and finally I think that the stuff we actually know for sure about making software is pretty limited.

The solutions we try to force-fit onto the making of software are remarkable for their craft origins. Wave the dead chicken at how we do development and things get better. Don't know why. Being involved in "dead chicken process development" we probably ought to be very willing to abandon the scheme of the moment when it doesn't work so well. I first said "theory of the moment" but that's too strong. We generally have a scheme of something to go do, a somewhat appealing idea behind it, and if we're lucky a few anecdotal data points to back up the worldview.

Personally, I can list all kinds of methods and techniques as well as demonstrate fluency in a broad range of them - broader than most folks, I suspect. I can point to anecdotal third party evidence or my own anecdotal experience to suggest that this technique or that is worth trying. I can point to attractive thin arguments for any given prescription, yet never with the inevitability that it *must* work this way that is found in harder disciplines. Even my most strongly cherished Camelot memory of perfection is only one data point seen through rose colored glasses, possibly dependent on conditions I couldn't see.

This is probably my engineering vs. software engineering background coming out. In terms of knowing by the standards of those disciplines we don't know a thing in doing software. In my experience " . . . it is what we know that just ain't so." that gets us in trouble, vs. the knowing. Being less sure is a powerful tool.

/new

We're even bad at not doing science. I saw a blog post today that supported the quote: "Software is not science" with the example of pre-enlightenment bricklayers making bricks without knowing how that works. That's not the science part. Admitting you don't know is the science part. So software isn't science for exactly the opposite of the reason cited - we don't know too little, we're too of too much. You can be totally ignorant about how how a brick gets un-clayed. As long as you are approaching that process with recognized ignorance, you are doing science.

/end new

So, am I enlightened about a big quiver of stuff that might work, ignorant about what will work, right here, right now or utterly clueless about what *must* work because that's the way the world works. Maybe all three. Maybe that's my point, and my offer - I'll help people be ignorant enough to learn. I can tell the difference between something that worked once, something we're sure will work, and sweeping principles to which all schemes must conform. Most folks doing software aren't able to do that.

How many teams are trapped in death spiral because they can't let go of that one true thing that they just know beyond question? Under pressure, latching on to ideas at the expense of observation and evidence happens all the time. Even what gets past the ears thins out. It has a name - "perceptual narrowing." As weak as definitions and evidence are in studying cognition, the disciplined observation backing up "perceptual narrowing" as a distinction that holds makes our evidence in pronouncing about software look like random chicken entrails. Third-hand reports, from biased witnesses, of random chicken entrails they heard someone else describe. (Not that I have an opinion on this one.<g>)

This is the technique vs. fundamental insight vs. dogma conundrum I have such a persistent struggle with. But that's just me. A great many very definite people make way more money than I do, and selling answers is clearly easier than selling questions. I just think it is wrong, as in incorrect.

- JimBullock, 2006.06.21 (Or am I ignorant about this, too? It happens.)

Here's what I have gleaned, interpolated, or suspect so far:

• I'm asking about something other than "selling." Didn't know that before.
• The more unique your offer is to you, the less it might fit a general meme. Or turned around, if you adopt a generally understood lable, Laurent's A, B, C and D get some traction independent from you.
• MakingContact is part of a congruent sales cycle, since what "they" imagine they want, could get, and need isn't what you agree on until you are involved. (This is very PeterBlock, in flavor from FlawlessConsulting.)
• What's your offer? That's an interesting question. I recommend taking a shot at writing your offer in terms of A, B & C, which I just did. Illuminating exercise.
• There are several things I interwingled in this ill-formed thought. How interesting that in the abstract I know the difference, yet about me, at least initially they are all entangled.
  • Marketing - as in creating awareness & making contact.
  • Sales - getting to yes.
  • The contracting cycle - particularly the entry part.
  • Strategy - so, what should you be offering? What do you want to offer?
• ?What else?

I learned once again that when you come with a genuine puzzle of your own, you aren't the best facilitator for a conversatinos. And finally, while I'm still pretty clueless I feel better about being so. I don't know why.

Thank you for that.

- JimBullock 2006.06.20

From KeithRay's blog:

"My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions" - Peter Drucker

I seem to be in pretty good company.

- JimBullock, 2006.08.09

Underneath that, however, I think I'm hearing the question "What is it that I do?" (or, perhaps, "How do I do what I do?") Can you say, in one sentence, what you do?

- GeorgeDinwiddie 2006.08.10

Thanks, George for wading in.

I'm feeling a tad un-heard throughout this discussion. For example, I think I know what I do, and how, and I have named it (above). The unheard part is not just you. It's actually mostly not you, since you've just now waded in.

I'm trying to ask neither of the questions you offered as alternatives. Nor was I asking for a mar-comm plan, which we covered off pretty quickly, early on. I suspect I'm asking exactly because there's something missing from the standard terminology. I suspect I'm asking vaguely, because if I had a crisp idea what I was talking about, I wouldn't be asking.

- JimBullock

P.S. What I do is help people hear one another. JW