About Me

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These are blogs for John Weber. One of my joys in life is helping others get ahead in life. Content here will be focused on that from this date forward. John was a Skype for Business MVP (2015-2018) - before that, a Lync Server MVP (2010-2014). I used to write a variety of articles (https://tsoorad.blogspot.com) on technical issues with a smattering of other interests. I have a variety of certifications dating back to Novell CNE and working up through the Microsoft MCP stack to MCITP multiple times. FWIW, I am on my third career - ex-USMC, retired US Army. I have a fancy MBA. The opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone.

2018/03/06

Consultant Marketing Plan

My team gets tired, I am sure, of hearing me urge them to get out in front of Sales. Sales needs to have something to sell; engineers need sales to sell them. But, there is no process to follow to tell the local sales types what is available. After all, my skill set does not map directly to some nifty SKU in a catalog.

I am reasonably certain that is true for almost all humans. If that is true, and there is no process or guidebook on how to “get in front of sales”, how can you expect the sales team to sell something they don’t know about?

The answer, of course, is found in your personal marketing plan. Let’s pause here while you do some light reading here, here, and here. What do I get out of that reading? That the definition is going to change from group to group. So, here is my take on this. Marketing is educating the consumer about why they need/want you or what you offer. In this case the consumer is the sales team. The sales team needs to know why their customer needs/wants you.

How do I do that?

Here is the rub: The answer to that question is going to change for each person. I can give you general guidance, but my personality (or lack thereof according to the SO) will make what I do work for me, but not necessarily for you. But, let’s give this a swing anyway, ok?

Preparation

Another thing my team is tired of hearing is goals, objectives, planning, focus, and accomplishing those goals and objectives. So, start there. Make yourself a backwards planning shell and pick a date in the future and set a goal of being able to approach the FSM in your market with the offer of at least one presentation to the local weekly sales huddle. You might need to make sure that this presentation also appears in PPT format so that you can contact your neighboring branch FSM’s also.

What is the content of this presentation?

A better question is: what is the delivery? The content of the presentation is your willingness to help with pre-sales. Delivery of the message/presentation will take many forms and need constant reinforcement. One FSM might not want to have a “presentation” but is totally willing to do email and other options. Your delivery in that case is more electronic and you’ll have to make a point to get face time with the branch staff. And a solid point here is: nothing replaces face time. I don’t care how good your video conference solution is, it is not face time.

You need to have an elevator pitch tailored to the sales team. Delivery of that pitch does require face time. But you need to be doing that anyway. Sales won’t sell what they don’t know. They need to know you.

Your resume needs attention at least once a quarter. Maybe all you do is read it aloud and decide it is still valid. But maybe you might want to update a significant achievement. Maybe you achieved another goal and passed a test or two. Added some more Mic, Key to your signature block. But, at least it is up to date. And have it in PDF format so that you can drop it into email on demand. Perhaps, if you are ultra-inventive, you will create a one-page marketing slick.

Send the resume and/or slick to the FSM, CEM, CSM, et cetera. Make sure the RC gets a copy also.

You will also want to get together with your SDM, CSM, CEM, FSM, and AE types and flat out ask them what they need/want. Make an appointment with the SDM, FSM, CEM, CSM, and be prepared to discuss the following question:

“What can I be doing to help sales be successful?”

Notice that I approached this not as “what do *I* get” but rather what does the sales person get. Appeal to their personal interests and structure. I market myself to the sales teams. I educate them on what I offer to their success.

Remember that you have a story to tell; but you need to keep it out of the techie weeds and relate your skills and accomplishments in business terms. Technical details should stay in the 150-175 level.

On actual pre-sales calls you may need to drive past the 300 stuff, but for this purpose, something less detailed is much better. Your friendly sales executive needs to be able to spin the story to their customers. You need to give the sales team the data needed to create the story, but the data needs to be in an understandable form for the receiver, not the sender.

Time Time Time

But all this takes time. Building a reputation and instilling confidence in both your abilities and the idea of approaching the sales team is not going to happen overnight. It will take a bit. Take the time to create the goal and then figure out how to achieve that goal within the next quarter. Be prepared to adjust your plan based on input from the previously noted acronyms. Then take that plan to your SDM. You need an IDP outline anyway, right? It might as well be something useful!

In the end…

Being a consultant is much more than successful project delivery. A consultant should be helping with the entire sales process. A consultant recognizes the need to market themselves to the sales team and takes appropriate actions to achieve that goal.

Do you want to expand your career but are struggling with getting started? I am here to help.

YMMV

2018/03/03

FastTrack Network Checking

You may not know but Microsoft is providing a fairly nice tool to check your network for SfB performance.  Free.  Free is a very good price, eh?

I am not going to extol the virtues and services offered by fastrack.microsoft.com, I just want to delve a little into the network checking tool.  And, this tool has been around for a bit.  So, I wanted to get a little updated review.

First off, I cannot even find this thing anywhere on the https://fasttrack.microsoft.com site.  Sorry.  Maybe I am blind,  but I am not seeing it anywhere.  There is probably some zippy button marked “tools” but I am just not groking.  Having said that, I know of

http://ap1-fasttrack.cloudapp.net/o365nwtest

http://em1-fasttrack.cloudapp.net/o365nwtest

http://na1-fasttrack.cloudapp.net/o365nwtest

Here I am checking my lab tenant against the ap1 site.

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Note the two addresses given by the tool…

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The 76 address is my laptop, currently operating from a hotel out in the middle of the Oregon Cascade mountain range.  So, this connection is going to be testing from my laptop to the AP1 site to see how things stack up. 

With a little imagination, you could bury a workstation in some remote spot on your network, and pretty much map out the entire path to the world – giving a glimpse into how things line up.  This could be useful, yes?

You can see that the lag from here to there is running about 170 ms, which might be so great in some circumstances. 

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Overall, the tool produces a raft of great info… here is the summary tab.  Note that something is not quite right as the tool cannot simulate VOIP traffic.  Could be something you need to look into here?

Here is the same test run against the NA1 site.  Note the differences.  We also now have a MOS score.  3.2 is not as good as we want, but doable.  Not too bad for out of a hotel where I am sharing bandwidth with 200 other rooms.

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We also got some nice jitter measurements on this run…

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And finally, if you drive into the route tab, you will get more data points.

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What do you think you could do with information such as this?

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If you have questions about any attribute/factor measured in these tests, there is also a handy glossary. 


If you or your organization is considering moving to Office 365 in any capacity, this is one of the first tools you should be working. I have been telling customers for a long time that if we do our job right, then any problems will be network, firewall, or load balancers.  This tool can help you prove that.  In a more complex internal net, you might even be able to tell the network team right where to look!


YMMV

test 02 Feb

this is a test it’s only a test this should be a picture