Last week I visited beautiful Münster in Germany to deliver two Project Excellence workshops to the successful Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner AGOLUTION.
The AGOLUTION management sees its markets and customers changing rapidly these days. And since they believe that there is always room for improvement they created an internal ‘life-long learning’ project called Skill-up. These workshop days were the starting point for this new project that will help both employees and customers to benefit even more from today’s modern technologies.
AGOLUTION took the smart decision to not just focus on their project managers. But instead create a mixed audience of 18 of her professionals with both pre-sales roles and delivery roles. After all, in today’s competitive subscription world the joint delivery of project success is of crucial importance.
On the first day I presented the main trends in the market, in the Microsoft strategies and in modern buying behavior. Based on that introduction, we discussed the business impact on their customers and their internal organisation. And we zoomed in on the impact on the individual employees.
On day 2 we dived deeper in the chances and the challenges for the marketing, sales and pre-sales team and for the delivery team. We discussed the need to inspire the customer’s C-suite to really transform their businesses. And how to best do that. We discussed why it is crucial to avoid a ‘lift & shift’ approach when migrating to a new solution. On top of that we talked intensively about customer centricity and project success.
In that discussion, various interesting topics came along. Such as how to get the real commitment from the customers’ board, why prospect education is super important, what the total impact of project failure is and the similarities between customisation and peeing in your pants. 😊
Together we collected many new insights, learned non-traditional approaches, re-activated some well-known but lost abilities and also performed some valuable exercises. It was hard work and quite strenuous at times. But luckily we also had good laughs together.
This is what delivery manager Alexander Lesch said about these 2 days:
“We really enjoyed our 2 days of training with Guus. He gave us a lot to think about. He shared a number of innovative and valuable ideas on how to sell and deliver successful projects. It further shaped our understanding of what success looks like viewed from the customer's perspective. Including the importance of success for the whole company - not just for the IT department! Furthermore, we learned about project risks and how to manage them effectively. Finally, we now better understand the importance of inspiring the (C-level) people involved. And how to do that. As a team we feel energized and prepared to sell, deliver and support even better projects!”
I wish the AGOLUTION team every success in putting all we’ve learned into practice.
Are you interested in giving your team a boost in customer centricity, C-suite education and Project Success after your summer vacation? Just contact me and we'll work out a plan together.
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