Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Starting a business is a disease that can only be cured by being willing to be mediocre.

As a professional management consulting organization perpendicular to the IT industry, ITplus has created a business scene and brand positioning to help IT manufacturers "ecological empowerment". Relying on the large consulting platform and giving full room for trial and error, one year after letting go, the editor-in-chief of ITplus and its founder Xu Yuan had an in-depth dialogue, unreservedly and calmly facing problems, emotions and competition in the form of questions and answers.

This is Xu Yuan's "peeling onion" self-reflection, the hidden personality of the "Nice girl" when facing customers, the "sunflower" energy output, a strong sense of self-achievement index, and the entrepreneurial spirit and all kinds of self-growth behind it.

I hope this dialogue will give you some thinking and strength who have been working hard on the road.

First, "growth is required."

Q: as an entrepreneur, when was the last time you were anxious?

A: usually I'm not very anxious, but I have a strong sense of powerlessness.

Q: is it possible that you are not aware of your anxiety, but are actually anxious?

A: I will feel powerless, but this sense of powerlessness won't make me anxious.

For example, in product development, process running, sometimes did not go forward as expected, I will have a sense of powerlessness.

What drives me crazy now is the IT industry solution that runs through the consulting field from zero to one, which requires a very high level of my complex ability.

At first, when I received such a strategy from the group, I did not evaluate it rationally and underestimated the difficulty, especially in the early stage of the start-up.

I have many entrepreneurial and cross-industry entrepreneurial background, not just to start a business, but continue to be firm on the entrepreneurial road, have their own resources, to do it, but this venture is different.

Now is to start a business in a large management consulting platform, his mechanism is perfect, all aspects of experience and precipitation in the industry are very mature, there are a large professional consulting team to support. It is precisely because of the "high configuration", the demand for my comprehensive quality is higher.

I need to consider more about the group position, brand position, and do IT industry deep vertical feedback to the big platform, major shareholders, what contribution value can be made, where my value is, these all need to be weighed.

Moreover, relying on large groups, there will also be dabbling in other different sections, which need to be compatible with a lot of things, and at the same time, we have to stick to the trunk line, how to manage time and energy, and how to plan the output ratio of the trunk line. always requires a trader to be double-span and multi-span.

Q: in the face of such high ability requirements, how do you improve?

A: I didn't say that the ability grew out all of a sudden, and I continued to break through myself in stages.

There are actually many opportunities for us to learn. The group is a learning platform, depending on whether you want to learn or not. If you don't have an attitude of absorption, learning and humility, you may feel that nothing is worth learning.

So I think it is the platform that helps me grow rapidly, forcing me to grow these abilities, and the harvest is very great. Of course, not every entrepreneur may have such an opportunity.

Including the decentralization of the leadership, complete non-interference, control of the general direction, allowing us to innovate, toss, trial and error, and silently give more support. I think we also enjoy a lot of unexpected sense of achievement.

Q: in the face of customers, you seem to converge your personality as much as possible. Do you think starting a business needs personality?

A: starting a business requires personality.

Q: but you don't seem to do that.

A: actually, I also have a personality, but do you think there is anything particularly obvious about my personality? And there is no such thing.

Sometimes not prominent personality, but also a kind of personality, I think so.

In fact, it also depends on when personality is reflected.

When I communicate with customers, I often cut into the customer's scene to give him a solution, so I may not feel the side of my personality, but I am more professional and give priority to how to solve the problem rather than highlight my personality.

Q: what I see is that you are very Nice, that is, you can always shape into the shape that the other person needs, or how to adapt. How do you do this?

A: I have a very strong empathy.

In different business negotiations, I must jump to the other side's point of view and feel what the other person needs, or what I should do if I am in his position.

This empathy will make others feel that they are in a relatively comfortable state to achieve some goals.

I really need this feeling.

So customers do not regard me as a simple Party B, more will create together.

This may be my relatively prominent point.

Second, "motivation determines how far you can go."

Q: why does the industry need a deep vertical consulting body like ours?

A: in the process of communicating with customers, we found that there are too few consulting teams that understand the industry, understand business scenarios, and can really solve industry problems. It is that we spent a lot of time on "getting to know each other", and finally we didn't find a special match.

At first, most of the integration boss started because of personal resources, until the various needs of the market and customers pushed him to grow to a scale of more than 100 and 200 people today, which has completely exceeded his management radius.

On the other hand, the boss is busy with the business all day, and does not take care of it seriously, or does not seriously learn how to manage, so that he can not get good performance or continuous winning orders.

Some management courses or management methods are good, because they are not embedded in the industry scene, and the whole business relevance is not strong, which can not get twice the result with half the effort.

So the core is not what tools to use, but whether the tools can adapt to the industry scene.

And in fact, we do not have enough patience to solve the problem slowly, but also hope that the immediate "you understand me", you give me the product is suitable for me, and can adapt.

So why is the rise of deep vertical industry consulting, similar to the "private" of custom clothing, customers want people who know him to know where he is inadequate, but also "tailored" to give the most suitable solution.

This is the kind of solution ITplus provides.

At present, there are not many consulting organizations on the market that have IT attributes and can really be embedded in business scenarios, and ITplus is one of the few that can do it.

In fact, it is not easy for the client to find a consulting company that understands the industry and understands him, and the end result is a match. Really understand each other, is a very competitive point.

Accurately find the pain points of the industry, accurately deliver to the enterprises in need, let customers spend a little money to do big things, but also more efficient, so I think the future development trend of deep vertical industry consulting is very good.

Q: what changes have we brought to the industry in the past three years?

A: we have accompanied a number of large IT companies and made some breakthroughs in the section of ecological empowerment.

What I mean by ecology is the channel ecological network, which may be inconsistent with the ecological concept of software vendors.

At first, what the manufacturer provided for his downstream channel was mostly product empowerment and policy support, that's all.

We can see that when the environment continues to impact the whole industry, manufacturers are also trying to do some enabling actions in addition to product empowerment.

At this time, many manufacturers actually do not know what the channel really wants.

In addition to products, what are the difficulties in channel growth and performance breakthroughs, and how can they really help them?

We are the translators of manufacturers and channels, so that manufacturers and channels, especially the core channels, become a community with a shared future. This is a very big change we have made for the industry.

From the point of view of translators, being able to become a channel for a community with a shared future with manufacturers actually bears a lot of performance pressure on manufacturers.

In addition to familiarity with products and understanding of industry solutions, there are many soft enablers that have been ignored by manufacturers. And we have sounded the alarm for manufacturers, but also raised the management maturity of the entire channel. I think this is an indispensable effort to make more people begin to attach importance to ecology, attach importance to channels, and are willing to keep a low profile and really help them. Become a community with a shared future, not just a community of interests.

When the manufacturer is willing to give his life to the other side, the other person will also give his life to you, and the result will not be very bad.

Of course, this also takes a process, and we have worked hard for a long time to make manufacturers realize the importance of this matter. The only way to empower is that whoever goes deeper will be able to stand out from the competition in the future.

At the same time, we also combine SaaS software to do data management for these channels to promote the previous human management. Overall, we are pushing the IT industry into a 2. 0 stage of management maturity, moving from resource-driven to organization-driven.

Q: how will we deeply participate in the ecological chain of IT industry in the future?

A: this is what we look forward to.

We have also calculated an account for the manufacturers. if the manufacturers set up their own teams and find their own people to empower them, they will first build their own small ecology, then empower the big ecology, and then understand the business end, which is a very high cost.

From the perspective of performance-to-price ratio, manufacturers can choose to outsource this piece of business in the future.

After that, it is found that many people of the manufacturer can understand the business scenario of the business and the channel, including the channel better. Including some of the real difficulties of the channel boss, there is no way to empathize.

In the future, if we have a deep understanding of manufacturers, we can do ecological bundling to support their ecological capacity, and this in-depth cooperation will also facilitate us to make customized and specialized solutions for large manufacturers.

This will not only save a lot of time, but also be more efficient, and the cost will be greatly reduced.

Even including the refinement and construction of the methodology of the entire sales team within the large factory, as well as internal talent training programs, we can provide think tank services. The core is that we find that the refinement and replication of some sales methodologies that really have the characteristics of large factories have not been done in place.

So we can give part of the solution around the efforts of the ecological layer, the organizational layer and the business layer, and we have this ability.

First of all, we know what kind of people are more suitable for this industry, we can provide strong support for the construction of the entire talent echelon and talent reserve, as well as how to effectively improve human efficiency.

And channel performance is difficult to break through, only the boss to do great performance, it is difficult for sales staff to copy, how to unify the language, unified methods, unified management, to achieve a continuous win, we can also give a better solution.

Of course, many big companies also feel unequal and will probably give priority to cooperation with the four major companies.

However, if we look at who made the performance, it depends on the accumulation of most of the small and medium-sized enterprises in the market. Therefore, if you want to make efforts at the core, you must understand these small and medium-sized enterprises in order to activate his strength.

If we are more approachable, know them better and understand them better, our effect will be better than others.

This is why many manufacturers have also contacted large consulting firms, which they disdain to do. I think the reason behind the disdain is that they don't know them, and they don't want to invest time, not because they are incompetent. And we want to be people who understand them.

And the price of our products is not high, the core is that we really want to accompany the channel growth, and channel growth together, rather than do a single run. This nature is completely different.

Q: where is the key sticking point of ecological empowerment now?

A: as far as I can see, there is a lack of thinking about "driving business through management".

Many integration bosses are sometimes very anxious and have made a profit of 30,000 to 50,000. In fact, the extensive operation and management of the company has already squeezed out the profit of 30,000 to 50,000, and making some money is not enough for them to waste.

When the demand of the whole market is not so strong, and when there is a special volume, we should settle down to think more and make phased strategic adjustments: whether we can leave more time to pay attention to the growth of the team, including the practice of our own internal skills, and reduce costs and increase efficiency.

When the market environment warms up again, the inward-outward competitiveness of enterprises can become stronger and make money.

I sum up why up to now, I can still stand up straight, my motivation is good, is the overall situation, not personal interests. When a thing only thinks of self-interest, it has already lost.

Especially in the deep vertical industry, if there is no such motivation, I do not think we can do a good job.

Including my cooperation with partners, no matter how big the factory is, I will think of myself as doing ecological empowerment in the big factory, what I should do, where the channel is really difficult, and I will provide the kind of product where the money can be spent to help them.

Therefore, I also hope that more manufacturers can join us to jointly create and promote the management maturity of channel ecology, so that these channels that follow manufacturers can make money, are needed by customers, and the service ability can be improved. let the whole industry go better and better.

Q: does customizing a solution for each vendor naturally mean abandoning a certain scale and efficiency?

A: the ecological empowerment around a manufacturer is not a minority behavior.

We calculated that a large factory has about 7,000 or 8,000 channels on average, and our customized solution is serving this ecology. I think this scale will not be small, depending on what you think.

What is the good point of customization? It is a manufacturer's chain customization. The strategy, mechanism and culture of each big factory are different, and it needs personalized customization. After the process runs through, I think it is also micro-customization, so it will not affect the scale too much.

Third, "activate the team, I am good at it in my bones."

Q: you said before, "it's a very happy thing to be my client", but most of the time you're not very happy when you start a business. How do you generate happiness and pass it on?

A: first of all, I feel like I was born to start a business. I don't think it's painful for me to start a business.

How do you define happiness? To put it simply, teams participate in the project together, brainstorm a lot, think of some good ways to move forward, stick to each other's ideas, and finally achieve their goals.

I think this process is a very happy thing. Mutual achievement is the source of happiness.

I am not the same outside, home is different, my life is the same, or will still give the family a sense of happiness. You can't start a business without the support of your family, otherwise you can't start a business until now.

I can hardly pass the pressure on to others. I digest it all by myself. For example, if you go home late for overtime, play music in the car, shout and adjust it; or wash up in the morning and play a favorite music, the family may feel noisy, even if the voice is lower, I also want to listen to it; then it is to find a very good friend to communicate and give each other some strength.

So I seldom make people think that I am very negative. When people see me, I feel like a sunflower or a little sun, constantly shining.

But don't feel like I can do anything. I don't need anything.

The more you are on the platform, the more you feel that it is necessary to pull the strength of the team to support the result, bear and grow together with the team.

Q: I find that you are very good at activating the team.

A: activating the team, maybe I'm good at it in my bones.

But I'm not a very rough way to activate, not the "you can do it, you can do it" kind of thing. My activation is mostly a kind of affirmation and encouragement.

I will point to that point, where he can be optimized, and then be recognized.

I said I have seen your strengths and weaknesses. Do you understand you more and more? He said yes, and I told him, is it possible to do better at this point?

After reminding him, let him look at himself again, so as to drive himself to make changes.

If he doesn't agree, I will listen to different voices. I hope that the communication of the team will be co-creative and interactive, rather than closed and imperative.

After seeing others grow up, I don't think I can't grow up without me. "you see, I brought you to grow up." that's not the case. Seeing the growth of my friends around me, I will have a strong sense of achievement. This sense of achievement is also activating me, which is mutual.

Q: what is an enlightening point of view for you to be a major shareholder of a well-known management consulting firm in China?

A: what enlightens me most is that I see the boundaries of responsibility, power and interests, which can be very clear.

In the past, when starting a business, we relied more on emotion and trust. Now on this platform, I know that responsibilities, rights and interests can be completely divided into a very rational and professional one.

What competencies are required for a position and what benefits they can bring are clear enough to make people feel that their goals are clearer and easier to achieve.

I think this kind of management is more direct and relatively fair. This is actually a management premise that wants to be a big company and a big platform, and it is very important.

After the demarcation line is clear, in fact, virtually, it also brings a lot of room for entrepreneurship.

This platform can support you to lead a big team. As long as you have a strong sense of purpose and strong execution, and you can speak with your performance, you will have the opportunity, and the result will not be too bad.

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