John Carter to Speak at IEEE-CNSV on “Doing the Math” Tue-Dec-15-2009

December 13th, 2009 Sean Murphy

John Carter  CEO of TCGen is speaking on “Doing the Math: How to Estimate and Manage Results” at IEEE-CNSV on Tuesday December 15 at 7pm at KeyPoint Credit Union, 2805 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, CA 95051. The event is free and open to the public.

His talk will focus on estimating the effort required to achieve results on a technical project, a key task for entrepreneurs who need to estimate budgets and manage customer expectations. Mr. Carter will present some best practices for estimation that apply to projects that involve some degree of organizational, workflow, or IT changes, and where there is vested interest in making the change quickly and ensuring it is on track.

He gave an outstanding talk at BayChi in May of this year on “How to Fire Your Boss and Become a Consultant”

• audio: http://chi.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4179.html
• slides: http://www.baychi.org/podcast/20090512/baychi-20090512-42.pdf

His presentation style was interesting, he asked questions at the beginning and then stopped the presentation about 12-15 minutes in to take questions and engage the audience before continuing.

Key points I took away:

• This was really for consultants selling to large companies
• Happiness is the difference between reality and expectations
• Unique specialty: charge by the project
• Write a project plan (statement of work) with client together
• Give advice in advance that is specific and actionable to give them an idea of what it will be like to work with you
• Use automated time records (Time Slips)
• Spend at at least 10 hours marketing a week (15% of a 65 hour work week)
• marketing includes developing articles, preparing presentations
• Public speaking communicates your personal chemistry and offers insight into what working with you would be like
• Key account selling: always look for referrals to adjacent divisions of larger firms
• To be a successful consultant, you must have recognizable intellectual property distinguishing your services from others.
• Successful consultants listen for what the person is actually saying: people will tell you what they want, what their pain is.
• Focus on marketing not selling: future-oriented in time, one to many, create demand

Note: the talk will be preceded by the CNSV Annual Meeting and election of 2010 officers.

Entry Filed under: Events, skmurphy