Lessons Learned...a life in Engineering (part 9)

Ok, so now it's January 2001 and I've joined the Large Drives group within Siemens Automation & Drives division in Manchester, and my role is Internal Sales support for a team of External Sales Engineers who are out and about pestering customers. Not really sure how this actually happened if I'm totally honest...I remember calling one of the LD team with a price enquiry for some big medium voltage propulsion drives for a Marine project we were looking at and being invited to "come upstairs and talk about it". My Projects Division had recently moved from Congleton to Manchester so I was on the first floor of the building and LD were on the fourth at the time and the next thing I know I'm in the General Manager's office and we're shaking hands on my impending transfer to Large Drives, and I've never looked back...honest !

So, the first thing I do in my new role is to attend the "all employee" conference in Birmingham which is entitled "Strike 10" and is lead by the Divisional MD, a crazy German by the name of Uli something or other, the Excalibur-wielding, chilli schnapps-quaffing, ten-pin bowling madman who has since become a legend in his own mind. I don't have many lasting memories of this event, to be fair, as alcohol still played a big part in my life at this time and there was a free bar, however I do remember being presented with a big envelope partway through the day which contained about thirty pages of fax transmittal from Korea, where our pipe-laying ship (from episode 8) was in the final throws of commissioning and was about to undergo sea-trials, and having to deal with that as well as everything else that was going on. Oh, for a clean break, but that never seems to happen to me, does it ?

Anyhow, this new role is supporting three new External guys who are new to Siemens and don't really know our products in any detail, whereas I'm new to Sales but know our products like like the back of my hand...a match made in Heaven, and the foundations of some really good business were laid in those first eight or nine months, some would take a whole decade or more to push over the line, but others came quite quickly. This was in the days when a million-pound order was quite rare and was celebrated with a bottle of champagne and a big hooray...something that just doesn't seem to happen these days...and we seemed to get through a few of these in relatively quick succession.

Up until September things were going pretty well, we had lots of interested customers and we were doing lots of relatively straightforward converter and motor type projects, usually discrete drives rather than sectional drives or systems but business was brisk. That all changed on the 11th September...we all know what happened then, and that seemed to stop our business dead in its tracks...the enquiries dried up, and those that we got seemed more speculative than anything else. The OEMs weren't buying so our big-money sales into new-build O&G, Marine, Utility type projects weren't happening either so a re-focus from OEM customer to End-User customer was instigated in order to keep the business moving in the right direction.

We won contracts to replace thirty induction regulators with 500kW water-cooled inverters and motors on half of the PA Fans in Europe’s biggest coal-fired power station (we did the other thirty a few years later), we replaced steam turbines with 1.7MW water-cooled Medium Voltage drives and motors on high-speed (6000rpm) compressors in a chemical works and we were getting regular enquiries to look at other similar projects for end-users which required lots of up-front detailed engineering, pre-installation of equipment onto skids or into containers, site installation and commissioning.

There was a new pattern developing here...diametrically opposed to the traditional product supply to rotating machinery OEM customers...and my ten years of site-work, installing and commissioning this kind of stuff meant that I was pretty good at working out what needed to be done for the entire scope, and more importantly I was good at explaining all of this to the customer and getting their buy-in to what was necessary. It’s all about giving the potential customer the confidence to put his hand in his pocket and fork out the money for you to give him what he needs, and Lesson number forty-eight is...without that confidence it absolutely isn’t going to happen. Think about it...would you spend ANY of your own hard-earned money on the word of a salesman who you know hasn't got a clue what he's really talking about...someone who hasn't been there, done that, got the t-shirt and has the photos to prove it ? Well then, why would a business spend potentially millions of pounds on something that sounds great in principle but can't be backed-up to the hilt with experience and examples of where this has been done successfully before ? Risk mitigation is key to the financial people in any business and proving to them that you understand the potential risks of THEIR project, you have identified them all and have a "Plan B" (and sometimes a "Plan C") for the show-stoppers goes a long way to enabling a project to happen, and working and engaging with them in the right way is a really important part of the End-User sales process.

Our products are amongst the most expensive on the market...and to be fair, they are amongst the best, too...but we need to remember that in this 21st century most products are actually capable of doing the job they were designed for and the thing that makes the difference to the end-user is the peripheral stuff, the added value, that some companies are capable and willing to provide for customers and others aren’t. OEMs are typically interested only in product price, compliance to the specification and getting the equipment through the warranty period whereas, and this is lesson number forty-nine, an End-User will be looking at overall cost of ownership, energy efficiency, Service and support, installation, commissioning, spare parts, training, life-cycle management and dozens of other things depending upon their working practices and methodologies. Realising this, and then playing to our own strengths is where we have been successful in developing our own End-User business as we can do everything, and part of scoping the project initially is determining and defining the entire scope of delivery across the life-cycle of the installation. 

Anyhow, this was now my day-job...meeting with customers and discussing upgrading their existing rotating equipment with new. Now, that could be old converters (AC or DC) to new, DC to AC conversion, fixed speed to variable speed conversion, prime-mover migration (i.e. steam turbine to electric motor) or anything to do with big drives in general that the customer wanted doing. In the early days I was doing the Sales and the Engineering, and the Project Management was done by a colleague. Installation supervision and commissioning was done by our own Service Team, so we had it all covered, other than using a friendly installation company to pull and terminate any new cables that were necessary and other third-party suppliers for things like containers, equipment skids and motor bed-plate / shaft-height adapters.

I quickly realised after we had totally revamped the wet-end sectional drive of a paper machine consisting of twelve DC drives and the associated automation, that because I had been Engineering the job I hadn't been out lining-up any more work so we ended up with a big gap between projects. Cue some growth in the Engineering section of our department and my focus on Sales from that point forward. Now...I never considered myself to be a Salesman (...and the thought still scares me...), I have always considered myself as an Electrical Engineer first and foremost (and even to this day I consider myself as an Electrical Engineer who just happens to manage a business) and maybe that's why I was relatively successful at it. I always roll my sleeves up, rarely wear a suit, and often have a pencil tucked behind my ear (although since my age-related eyesight started to require me to wear reading glasses, this doesn't work very well now...), none of those shiny suits for me, and in the depths of the steel mills, the cement plants, the paper machines and the power stations you won't find many shiny suits either. Lesson number fifty...empathise with those you need to influence. If you are working with the Maintenance Engineer or Manager to develop a project, don't intimidate him by dressing like his lawyer...wear jeans or overalls and save the suit for when you're going to the CFO to discuss the funding or the contractual T&Cs. I have many of these little rules I have made up for myself over the years, and a few years into this role I summarised them into three golden rules for the Retrofit Business (as it became known within Siemens A&D, as it was at the time) which some people got and some people didn't...

1) The second person to meet the customer should be able to answer at least 95% of the technical questions put forward by the customer during the meeting, without having to refer back to the office. One of my biggest issues with the way in which we used to do business...first Sales guy goes to see the customer and can't answer the questions (which, to be fair is acceptable as he may not necessarily know what he is going to uncover during the visit), so he goes back with an "expert" who can answer some of the questions but not all of them. A third guy shows up at the next meeting and then still refers back to the office with the phrase I most hate in the world..."I'll get back to you on that one". Take it from me, if someone says that to you...they won't. It is another way of telling you to go and whistle...and when this happens the customer has no confidence that we know what we're doing and by the time we've actually got round to answering the questions the kit will be on-order from another supplier.

2) Customers know their process better than anyone...this is not an arena for bullshitters. Speak the customer's language, understand his process and listen to him when he tells you what he needs. Don't try to sell him what he doesn't need, bullshit doesn't always baffle brains...or experience...contrary to popular belief.

3) Build relationships with the customer at the right levels within their business. Regular, direct contact with the customer is very important. People buy from people, and a good relationship between the customer and the supplier is paramount. Meet with people at all levels within the customer’s business. Regular visits and telephone calls both during the sales phase and the project phase should be encouraged. E-mails can be seen as impersonal and can be interpreted in different ways (correctly, incorrectly...and anywhere in-between) by different people, there is no substitute for TALKING WITH THE CUSTOMER.

Let's call those rules Lesson number fifty-one...feel free to take them, use them, adapt them...or ignore them if you want, it's up to you, but they've helped me out over the years. In my next role I took the Retrofit business model we had created in the UK and, backed by Headquarters in Nuremberg, attempted to roll it out across different regions in the world and the biggest issues we came across could be put down to failing to fulfill one or more of these rules. More of that in the next episode...

I'm sure I have mentioned in previous ramblings that I gave up drinking alcohol, and that was during this phase of my working life (summer 2002 to be more precise). The reasons for this were many-fold but much of it was down to traveling and living in hotels for half of my life...in from work, a couple in the bar before dinner, a couple or three with dinner and a bucketful afterwards. This was always meant to be "limited" when I was in Service and Commissioning because our management had a no alcohol policy and anything you drank effectively came out of your own pocket, but there were ways around this...apparently ?? ...however things were a bit different in a Sales type role. There was always entertaining to be done and hotel bars often stayed open all night... Anyhow, July 2002 was when I had my last drink (at a neighbour's barbeque...and spookily we've never been invited back again...) and I gave myself a target to stop for twelve months. The first couple of months were really difficult but I managed it, and I knew I had cracked it when I took a trip to India in September to look at a system on a chemical mixer in a place called Patalganga. I managed to get through the flight to Mumbai without even thinking about a drink and when I checked into the hotel the receptionist told me all about the "bladder-buster" offer they had on in the bar all that week...they were charging a fixed amount to gain entry to the bar (I can't remember how many Rupees it was but it equated to about ￡5) and for that, all drinks were free. The down-side was that the toilet was located in the hotel foyer, outside of the bar, which meant that you would have to pay again to get back in to have more 'free' drink. Now, I've seen the day when I would have gladly sacrificed a pair of pants to drink all night for ￡5, however I never went anywhere near the bar. All downhill from there in terms of being sober, and I'm still off it to this day, nearly sixteen years later, with no intentions of ever starting again. This hotel also had a policy to encourage diners to eat the traditional Indian way...with fingers, and therefore you didn't get any cutlery. You did, however, get a fingerbowl of scented water to wash your fingers after eating...no use for me, I was covered in the stuff, up to my elbows...I needed a car-wash.

Anyhow, day one of the trip and I'm meeting a local colleague in our Mumbai office before heading off to site the following day, so I book a taxi to take me there. The hotel receptionist asks if I want a cab with or without air-conditioning...apparently a/c is much more expensive, but seeing as the sun is cracking the flags I go for it. Up turns a rickety old car and a driver who asks if I want the a/c switching on..."yes" I reply and he plugs a little personal hand-held fan thingy into the cigarette lighter socket in the dashboard. There is no benefit to be had from this thing and the windows are open anyway...have you ever felt done-over and stitched-up ??? Classic...Lesson number fifty-two, don't bother with air-conditioning in Indian taxis.

So, the trip to the chemical factory goes ahead the next day...beautiful factory with big walls and fences around it. Outside and it's shanty-town city, shelters made from corrugated steel sheets and tarpaulin, open sewers and everything, inside the walls and it's beautiful (for a chemical plant)...flowers and plants everywhere, well tended gardens, a little guest house for the visitors and the best cup of tea I have ever had in my life. I'm not one for sweet stuff but this tea had cardamon, honey and (I think...) evaporated milk in it and it was just unbelievable. Anyway, job surveyed, scope agreed and quotation sent as soon as I got off the plane back in Manchester. The order was placed on the back of this visit and has been running happily ever since. I'm sure it's time it was revamped...

Until the next time...