One of Doug Meyer’s cognitive learning teams is watching from behind two-way mirrors as customers attempt to complete the tasks
they’re presented. But the crinkled noses, sighs and rolling of the eyes tell them there are problems in the software created by Sage
Software. As president of the Industry and Specialized Solutions Division of Sage Software, Meyer and his 750 employees use their
observations to make changes to their products to meet customers’ needs. Smart Business spoke with Meyer about how thinking about
your product from the customer’s viewpoint instead of your own can be a humbling experience.
Listen sincerely. It frankly takes time, and
sometimes experience can be your worst
enemy there. ‘We know this industry; we
know this problem. No, you don’t have it right.’
You have to be willing to put your preconceived notions down. We hire people who are
specialists at doing that and people who can,
in fact, listen and check their ego at the door.
Often, a customer is going to give us an idea
on how to solve the problem that is different
than what we thought was the right way.
It can be humbling because the best and
brightest minds came up with a particular
way to solve something, and then you put
customers in front of it, and they can’t do it.
What percentage of Americans, before TiVo
came along, could actually program a VCR?
That’s a tiny percentage and yet, it was amazing with how long VCRs were around that
nobody took the time to solve that problem.
Bring customers in. Put them in the environment in which they use the solution, and
make sure they can successfully complete
the task that it was designed to accomplish.
Get deeper answers. What was historically
done, if a company went out and talked to
customers, they might say, ‘I have this payroll
application. What features does it need that it
doesn’t have that will meet your needs?’
That’s going to focus the customer on a very
specific and tactical problem and solution.
Take a different approach — ‘What problems do you have in your work force? …
What are the problems you have in managing and paying your work force?’
We’re not talking about software. ‘Take me
through everything from on-boarding
employees and getting them signed up on
payroll and ensuring you have all the forms
filled out and you’re going to collect taxes
properly, to tracking their hours and getting
them paid. Let’s watch you do all that.’
You can uncover solutions and ideas that
you wouldn’t if you had just said, ‘Well, how
can we make this hourly feature in payroll
work better for you?’ It’s really just imbed-ding yourself into the customer’s business
and focusing on the job they have to do and
how they might run their business.
Find customers’ needs. The deeper you go into that industry, you’re going to find more
specialized unique needs to that particular
business segment. Understand a business’s
workflow, processes, how they get work
done, how they’re successful and the obstacles they run into. The only way you can do
that is having folks that have a deep understanding of that business and of that industry
and are willing to get out there and put themselves in the place of the customer.
We have a health care business. We sell solutions to doctor’s offices, but we actually have
doctors on staff who help us build solutions
for those doctor’s offices versus just assuming
that we have that knowledge ourselves.
Hire customer-centric people. Not everybody really believes in the philosophy that
we bring in going to the market being customer connected. It’s more than words.
It’s truly putting customer needs, customer
problems, and thinking about identifying
and solving those problems differently than
any and most technology companies have
historically. We want to probe and find that a
person is committed to that concept versus
just saying the right words.
The language is very different. Take for a
minute the construction marketplace. We
want to discuss what problems we might
solve for a residential homebuilder. If that
person is going to think about features we
can add to products, they’re not thinking
about the customer’s point of view. If they say, ‘First, we have to understand what are
the problems that this person is going to have
in building a house, permitting, land acquisition, estimating, etc. — it’s a different way of
thinking about how you solve problems and
your approach to solving problems, and we
want to see people oriented to them.
Share the vision. You have to touch people.
I don’t want to imply that it’s creating a personal relationship with each one. That’s not
really practical.
It’s easy in large companies for employees
not to have any real relationship with management, and by creating a personal view of
who you are as a human being, it helps
employees become more engaged and committed and even emotional about wanting to
help the company succeed — being a human
is not a bad thing.
Management can get sometimes get caught
in, ‘This is our vision.’ But what are the
steps? You’ve got to help employees with the
steps. It’s important in creating a vision and
strategy to help employees connect the dots
along the journey. Often the time frame that
the employee is thinking about is different
than you might be thinking about in a three-to five-year strategy, so helping employees
get there, see the momentum of the business, and want to be a part of that and do
things that create greater momentum.
Then along the way, it’s important to celebrate successes, and equally, you gain
tremendous amounts of commitment from
employees by being open and honest about
the places where you’ve had challenges or
where you haven’t succeeded and what
you’re going to do to overcome and how
they can help be part of that solution.
That’s another thing — just being willing to
be accessible. In these sessions, we’ll take
Q and A, and who knows what we get. You
may get some real tough questions. The
harder the questions you get, the more success you have in having established a relationship of trust with that particular population of employees because they say, ‘You
know what, we’ll ask the hard ones because
we’ll get a real answer.’
HOW TO REACH: Sage Software, (866) 996-SAGE or
www.sagesoftware.com