In both sessions I conducted this week, speaking on the power of the discovery process and how to leverage it to expand deal size, I polled the audience on a very important question; “How many of you believe  the decision makers are reading your assessment reports?”  Almost every attendee responded yes to the question – “Are you conducting assessments?”  Only 1 or 2 out of nearly 100 believed decision makers where reading them.

Sadly, a handful of attendees didn’t see this as a problem!  I asked them to relate this deliverable to a prospectus that might be used for investments.  The purpose of conducting an assessment, in most cases, is to find the issues and persuade the company you are working with to take action.  If they don’t take action – you’ve failed.  In other words, if there are indeed, urgent issues discovered, and there almost always are, then when the company fails to take action, they are missing something big.  You, being the one who really understands the issue, must see it as your responsibility to show them why it is so important, and how it should be addressed.  If IT people see it, but those responsible for budget don’t, what good is it?

So why do so many of these documents go unread?  Simply because they are assembled without decision maker involvement, and written without decision makers in mind.  Take a look at the documents you are writing (or which are written by your team) and ask yourself, “Would my business level clients be interested in this, or would they even understand it?”  If the answer is, “No,” some re-engineering is needed.  For those who still don’t see this as important, perhaps a wake up call is needed.

© 2011, David Stelzl