1. Establish and share credibility
Accurate for their own positioning, and actively establish their own credibility. From such two angles to consider the problem, one is from the perspective of senior management to think about the industry competition and corporate operations, one is from a professional, meticulous consideration of documents, reports, interface and other data processing problems. When you fully demonstrate your professionalism and play your part in these issues, the credibility naturally sets in.
At the same time pay attention to share credibility with customers. The goal of building credibility is to accomplish tasks better and faster, not to compete with customers for control of the project, to compare who contributes more to the project, and who is more sophisticated. Therefore, do not credit to yourself, to share the honor with the customer's colleagues but more to build credibility.
2. Build Customer Confidence
Even if there has been cooperation or contact, even if the customer is signed for you, ERP project initially, the customer will re-check your confidence and ability to ensure that they choose you are correct. Therefore, each meeting with the customer should be well prepared and demonstrate sufficient agility and enthusiasm. It helps to build confidence by proactively communicating with customers, while setting some simple goals in the early stages of the project and completing them in a timely and efficient manner, so that customers can trust you faster. A very effective way to build confidence in the early stages of a project is to "be quick and successful" – to achieve something, or to provide value.
3. Add value to Customers
Exceed customer expectations and add value to customers. I do not advocate providing free services to clients, but rather advise you to provide additional benefits through reasonable work or by helping a customer who may exceed the promise. It is best to be very valuable to the customer and not to increase your workload content. For example, when working with a customer's project manager to complete a project plan, help him understand the project more deeply, or provide some industry reference information during the training.
4. Effective management time
Time is the property of the company's goods, ERP implementation consultants, Time is the world's most scarce resources, must be effective management time. This requires two of the most important skills: (1) prioritizing the work, then working according to established priorities, and (2) allocating sufficient time to the currently established work;
5. Inspire customers to think
See more and ask and inspire customers to think for themselves. After talking about such a long period of time and writing such a long document, the customer is deaf and not seen, why? "Spoon" is difficult when the customer doesn't notice the problem and thinks. You can do better if you first ask the customer for advice and understand their views on the issue. Don't rush to tell him the "right answer," and when customers really start thinking, they will chase you to ask for answers.
6. Encourage you to speak your mind
When people begin to meditate, you have to think about the question of feedback. How do you know what you think of the problem? You know, not everyone is willing to risk "stupid", "unrealistic" risks to share their views. Still have to ask questions. Expand the customer's thinking through open-minded questions about what, how, and then use directional questions to lock in the answer to whether or not to test their understanding of the information guided by open questions.
Attention, ask questions must be sincere, as long as the answer should be thanked, once in a casual expression of the answer to the contempt, is tantamount to blocking the customer's mouth. Another technique worth emphasizing is that your silence can prompt the customer to continue to talk about the subject regardless of the answer.
7, grasp the proposed way
When making recommendations to customers, make sure that you have a decent approach and don't let your customers feel arrogant or meddling. The appropriateness of the approach will determine the effectiveness of the ERP project at this stage (at least efficiency). Here are some tips that might help you:
"It is very valuable to have a reaction to the proposal before presenting it." In this case, you can not express the proposal in a committed way: for example, "We have identified a proposal is ... "Or," in another customer's project, we made such a recommendation ... ". Discussing your ideas with others will also provide useful information to help you clarify or revise your proposal. ”
Note that "in an organization, many people have the right to say" no ". Although some of these people do not have real power, they are able to halt the progress of the situation. So keep in mind that you not only have to convince those who can make things happen, but also convince those who can refuse them. ”
8. Speak with experience
In the ERP project implementation process, the implementation consultant and the customer may have a considerable number of problems can not be "hit it off". Customers may have doubts about your proposed schedule, staffing, training methods, coding system, and so on, the best way to dispel doubts is to speak with experience, to let customers know what is the best way to adapt to this industry and scale enterprise. Pay attention to your comparison with your customers: Your advice has been (many) proven, and the customer's idea--it's just an idea!
"You have to be clear that ERP is a whole new field for customers and that customers want some kind of assurance when it comes to the execution of such a costly and risky plan." Let the customer know that your proposal is well executed in other customers ' plans to increase the recommended component. ”
9, the initiative to promote good news
Have you heard that "good things don't go out, bad things get thousands of miles"? Method Nine and method Ten are to solve this problem.
Every successful message is not just about "telling" and "celebrating," you have to use it to strengthen your confidence and make every good news a power and a clarion call for the next phase of the task. How to make a good thing go thousands of miles? Of course, it can be communicated through formal meetings, stage progress checks, project briefings, etc., but it can also be said "casually" when chatting with members of the ERP project team or other influential employees in the enterprise.
The implementation consultant should carefully plan the delivery of the information, and ensure that a satisfactory answer is conveyed through various channels on such questions as "how Progress" and "effect". In this regard, the interests of the consultant and the client project team are exactly the same, and the client also hopes that colleagues will know, understand and believe that the project is progressing smoothly and that the project team is doing something meaningful and fruitful.
10. Actively deal with bad news
When bad things inevitably happen, the first thing a consultant needs to do is analyze the importance of the problem. If through their own efforts can make up, it is best not to trouble customers, the so-called "quietly into the village, shooting to do not", so as not to combat the confidence of the ERP project supporters. If the problem is not so simple, it is "best to tell the customer before the problem has become a crisis." Ideally, meet the customer in person and make a clear statement of the relevant issues and propose your solution. " In general, regardless of how the customer's members of the ERP project team complain, they will try to work with you to minimize the impact and gain the trust of their peers.
Therefore, the advice on bad news is based on the importance of judgment, the small problem of blocking the message, do not make it into bad news, should not be blocked the message within the project team to fully communicate and minimize the impact.
11. Solve the problem quickly
Whether it is the implementation of consultants or customers, in the understanding of the ERP, project schedule and resource scheduling, personal personality and work habits, mutual trust and work together, there are inevitably some deviations, after all, nobody is perfect, things are not static. It is one of the key standards of the inspection experts and one of the key ways to deal with the customer relationship when deviations occur in the project and in the project team. Some experts (mostly inexperienced advisers) are reluctant to admit that there are problems they cannot solve, but it is best to acknowledge the problem before it worsens into a crisis and seek the help of a client or someone else in the company.
What should be done in ERP implementation consultant work?