Today’s post is going to move a little more toward bettering yourself. I’m gonna talk about self-improvement. I know it sounds like one of those weird things that new age people in California do, after doing yoga and meditation. At least, that’s what I thought at first. I got turned onto the stuff about 10 years ago, and I can honestly say it’s changed my life. It’s really easy to do. Get yourself an audio program, put it on your ipod/mp3 player and listen to that everyday in your car on the way to work, or on a morning jog. Now the great thing about the audio programs is that there are so many out there, I guarantee if you look, you’ll find something interesting. The best program I’ve found is by Brian Tracy, and it’s called the Psychology of Achievement. In short, it goes over some very simple ways to make yourself a happier, more productive and more fulfilled person. There are also programs that talk about running a business, marketing, sleeping better, learning faster, or learning a new language. The important lesson that I learned was that by listening to self help/self improvement stuff was that it made me a better person all around. I started making more money, I was having more and better ideas, I found the woman of my dreams and married her. All because I accidentally found these programs and started listening to them on the way to work. What do you have to lose? is your life getting better listening to the latest song on the radio? Mine sure wasn’t.
To get you started, here’s some of my favorite “authors”:
Brian Tracy (I”ve listened to a lot of his stuff, loved everything).
David DeAngelo – this program introduced to me Brian Tracy, along with a lot of other ideas.
John Cummuta, Zig Ziggler, and many others. If you’re interested in exact titles in my libary, just respond to this post. I’ll be happy to share.
Happy Listening,
Mike
Author: piehlm
Learning to Market – baby steps
Well, my continuing adventure of trying to sell my first product is certainly no cake-walk. I really thought the hard part was designing a good product. Turns out, it’s a lot tougher to find customers than to build something. Right now, I’m working on my “Consumer Awareness Guide”. I got this tip from an audio program called Piranha Marketing. I’ll talk more about audio programs a different day. Anyway, the Consumer Awareness guide is basically a couple page educational document to give to prospective customers. In essence, it’s a document to convince someone they need my services without actually selling. Not as easy as it sounds. You have to start by figuring out a lot of mistakes that people make and explain those mistakes. Short story, by educating your potential customers, you build rapport and credibility. I’m trying to finish mine now. If you want a copy, please let me know. I’d be happy to send you one… =)
Picking a Product to Build and Sell
A few years ago, I came up with this great idea. Build a product that I could sell, so that I wouldn’t have to do traveling consulting every week. The idea behind it was simple. Build something one time, and sell it to a lot of companies. Then all I’d have to do is sit back and collect the profits, and then start making something new. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I’ll talk about the creation process some other time, but right now, I’ll focus on current events. I completed my product about 1 year ago, and I thought the hard work was over. However, what I didn’t take into account is just how much work (and potentially cash) it takes to get a product launched. Right now, all of my free time is spent coming up with ways to drum up some interest in Paper Street Enterprises. I thought it would be a no brainer, I’ve been doing SAP for going on 14 years, I’m really good at what I do, how could people not want to work with me. Well, it’s pretty easy, they don’t know me. I’ve spent all of my time designing the product, and very little of that time showing I’m an expert. Sure I can fall back on the companies I’ve consulted for, but as it turns out, most of them are no longer interested in the product I thought everyone would want. So… my take away from this, before you spend days, weeks, months or even years designing and developing something, make sure you have someone that wants to buy it from you. I thought Rapier would be the sort of thing that everyone would want, and they still might, but the fact is, no one asked for it. I made the make of assuming they wanted it or needed it. Going forward, I’m focusing on known items that people want. I start simple. Every time I hear a client say, “I wish SAP did this”, or “I can’t believe SAP doesn’t provide that”, I quickly add it to my list of development ideas, and move it to the top of the list. Why? because I know that at least one company is interested in using it (maybe not buying it, but you need to start somewhere). So learn from my mistake… make sure you have a market before you build a product. Good luck.
Moving Past Consulting
Well, I’ve talked a lot about my history, I guess it’s time to start talking about where I want to go. While I am still consulting, my real focus has been launching SAP applications that I can sell. In this past year, I’ve got Rapier SAP certified, but I’m still struggling with the marketing aspect. Sales hasn’t been my strong point, so things are moving slower than I’d prefer. There are so many things to do in order to start sales & marketing for a product. First and foremost, is finding potential customers. For that I’ve taken multiple approaches. The first step I took was to actually purchase a list of contacts that use SAP. This isn’t as easy as it would seem. First, there aren’t a ton of companies out there selling contact information like that. Second, who knows how accurate it even is. Third, the contact names you get… well, let’s just say I’ve learned to be a lot more specific in what I request for the future.
The company I used was called SAP User List. I ended up buying almost 1600 contacts, and it was roughly $.55/name. What I didn’t know is that I was getting a lot of names from the same company, and many of the companies weren’t in industries that would use my product. The biggest take away from buying the list was to be very specific. I originally said I wanted everyone in the NC/SC, and all companies less than $100 million. What I needed to focus on was the position/job title. I really needed to find all of the service managers and IT managers out there. On the plus side, I was able to determine a lot of companies that use SAP. The next step, is to test the list that I received and see what kind of response I receive. Next time, I’ll talk about how I organized the list I received, as well as how I’m growing it to mine for other opportunities
Independence: Step 1
After spending a couple of years working for consulting companies and working with other independents, I realized that the only way to freedom was becoming an independent consultant. Several of my friends were independent, and they managed to show me just how easy it really is (see some of my previous posts for more explanation). So I went online, started my own company, and found my first contract. it was my first step to getting me to where I am now.
Moving into Consulting
My time spent doing implementations and then production support taught me a very important lesson. I have ADD when it comes to my career. I need constant change and constant challenge. So I decided to try consulting. I went to work for Deloitte for a year, and then SAP for a year as a consultant. During my time I quickly learned that flexibility was the key to be a good consultant. Being willing to jump in and debug an error, or help troubleshoot something in another area made me a better consultant every day. I found my passion in consulting, at least at that time.
Reinventing Myself – SM
I have a cool Japanese painting that I keep in my office. It translates to “Reinvent yourself, time and time again”. Best advice ever. Here’s one of my first reinventions. After spending nearly 7 years with the same company doing SAP variant configuration, I inevitably moved on. I started with a small company that was late in the stages of implementing SAP. I was quickly thrown into the mix and become responsible for SD, SM, and development. Well, needless to say, SM was something brand new for me, and development up to this time was more of a hobby. I quickly learned how to deal with Smartforms, SAPScript, ALV reports, and of course user exits. More importantly, I learned how SAP handles the service world. Trial by fire quickly showed me that I liked service more than SD just because of the large amount of interaction in the system. It’s was also proof to myself that being flexible is invaluable in any career, and you never know what you’re going to enjoy doing. To this day, I spend the majority of my time consulting SM and VC, and my new SAP applications revolve around those 2 modules. Word of advise, stay flexible, you never know where it will take you.
Origins…
Inevitably, everyone always asks, how did you end up in SAP? Well, the short answer is that no one grows up wanting to be an SAP consultant. My introduction came at my first real job. I was an intern working for a telecommunications manufacturing company. They had several configure to order products and their own homegrown system to handle it. I was an engineering student that just happened to like programming. So I got a job there. Shortly after, the company decided to implement SAP (Y2K issues). I was quickly drafted onto the project and become in charge of learning SAP Variant configuration. Next thing you know several years had gone by, and become the go to guy for this stuff. Turned out that SAP problem solving was a lot more interesting than writing engineering change requests to alter a dimension on a drawing (what I would’ve been doing as an engineer). This become my reinvention of myself, and my beginning of my SAP career.
A Change of Pace – Talking SAP – becoming a SAP partner
Becoming an SAP partner. This was by far the toughest thing I needed to do in the process of getting my software business under way. The overall process wasn’t too bad, but dishing out the cash was the tough part. Initially, I talked to the first round of people at SAP and started to learn the process. The first step you had to do fill out a rather long application and then to classify exactly what is that my software did. After a lot of reading, I determined that my project was an ABAP Add on. This is a fancy way of saying that my entire project was written in ABAP, and didn’t use any other 3rd party integration. Now, the number one requirement that I had to fulfill was to get an SAP developer’s license. With a developer’s license, that gives me the right to code my own software and legally sell it. What I discovered was that there were 2 ways of getting that license. I could buy (3) licenses outright. These were selling for roughly 3400 Euros each. The other way is to buy a certification package, which comes with one license. The price tag for this was around 15000 Euros. Next came the pros and cons. If I bought the certification it meant I’d get the fancy SAP marketing, I could say that SAP has certified my product, and I get (1) license. A great deal, but a lot of cash. However, if I went the cheaper route, I could start selling, and even give myself room for growth. I ultimately chose the certification package. This required lots of forms, paperwork, and of course a big check (that had to be in Euro’s) sent to Germany. Now, all the fun pieces. I’ll save those for another post.
Building your Website
I apologize, this is way overdue. The next thing I recommend is getting yourself a website. Now depending on your skill sets, and your time available to work on the site, you have a lot of options. Personally, I’m no web developer. So I went down the path of a fully hosted site. I wanted a site that already had email accounts ready for me to set up, and a drag and drop website creator to get started. I went with FatCow. They were reasonable and had what I needed. Now that I’m looking to expand my business from straight consulting, I’m realizing that I probably need a better website, and the drag and drop style is limited. it was a great place to start, but eventually you’ll outgrow it. Now, if you either do website design, or have a friend that is willing to do it for you and help you figure out the hosting aspect, I highly recommend it. You’ll get exactly what you want, have more control and pay less.