Sports are an easy analogy for business: we have to play as a team, you want a great captain, or you want to be successful. I grew up playing competitive sports in high school and college and in recent years, I coached both my kids in competitive club sports up through high school. Over the last 13 years, I’ve found that these experiences really have helped me develop an approach to technology consulting and vendor management. I call this the Coach Approach, and it’s one of the things that makes ProfitComm’s offerings unique. Here are the four main parts of the Coach Approach, and how it works to make ProfitComm your technology vendor expert.
Train hard so execution is second nature.
Much like an athlete spends thousands of hours on simple fundamentals of the chosen sport to be game ready, I spend lots of time taking education and training courses; getting certifications; going over white papers, industry articles, and case studies; going to vendor meetings and consultant summits, and more. When you have over 200 vendors across 15 different service lines, the extensive broad base of knowledge needed to best represent your clients is extremely important. We are vendor management experts, there is no such thing as winging it or going through the motions with these projects.
Know the team and what they need.
Just like being able to read what each players’ needs are and what drives them, I understand and cater to each client’s unique needs and business drivers. Part of every project is knowing the stakeholders and what is important to them. This allows me and my team to craft technology solutions that are uniquely tailored to your overall needs.
I also see the company as a team that has to play together, but has different roles and responsibilities. Offensive and defensive players play different positions on a successful team just like CFOs and IT leadership do for successful organizations. On a football team, the offense needs good passers, catchers, and runners, while the defense needs blockers and people who can tackle. While the most important thing for the IT team might be functionality and security, I understand that CFOs and CEOs might be more concerned with overall integration with the workplace and the bottom line. I work with these different concerns to create a strategy that works for everyone.
Surround yourself with the right resources.
The best outcomes in sports are a result of the winning combination of the right players, good coaching, a positive team philosophy, and a supportive organization. ProfitComm is unapologetically fanatical about serving our customers and everyone from the initial consultation and evaluation phase through to deployment, account management, client support, and sales engineering work towards that same goal. In addition to our own internal resources, we have aligned ourselves with the best people, platforms, and processes to help support the desired outcome of exceptional customer experiences.
At the end of the day, it is all about you.
Coaches do their part to prepare athletes for success, but ultimately it is the athlete’s journey. As technology vendor experts, ProfitComm understands that successful technology transformations are part of an organization’s journey towards improved performance, efficiency, and security. Those journeys can be scary and overwhelming because it is not your core competency nor is it something you and your team does every day. There is so much noise with commercials, sales reps calling, flyers, pop up ads, and e-mail that it is hard to know what’s best for your business. My team and I use our people, platforms, and processes to help filter the noise so you can get the best outcomes for your technology transformation journey. You still make the decisions, but we coach you on how to get there faster, for less, and with solutions you can trust.
To learn more about our services and how we can help you find the best technology vendors for your budget, contact me today.