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"Doctor Is In" Sessions -- Best Practices

Jordan_Hiller

Hello my JMP SE comrades,

I'm trying to start doing some semi-regular "Doctor Is In" sessions with important customers. Do any of you have tips for making these sessions effective? I'm interested particularly in:

-Format -- group meeting vs. one-on-one meetings

-Scheduling -- Sign up for slots vs. drop in

-Frequency -- how often is optimal?

Thanks for any tips or experiences you can share.

Jordan

Accepted answers

All comments

Peter_Bartell

Jordan:

Here's a few thoughts, observations, tips, tricks, etc. I've stumbled into in the few times I've led a Dr. Is In.

1. Bring a thumb drive for moving data from a customer's computer to your's if, say they are running JMP and you'd like to demo something or work in JMP Pro or some other reason to bring the data onto your thinking box.

2. Clear up any confidentiality or non disclosure agreement policies, procedures, and processes before you arrive.

3. Schedule a session as a front end or back end to another customer visit in a similar geographic location so as to maximize benefit for travel expense.

4. Use the session to 'soft sell' JMP Pro for JMP only users. It works for helping build some ground level demand when, say an economic or technical buyer is a barrier. Like, "Now if you had JMP Pro...we could fit a Bootstrap Forest decision tree and get a 'better' solution for the following reasons..."

5. Be flexible wrt to your movements. Sometimes users have JMP on desktop systems so bringing their data to you is problematic. So you'll need an escort to go from cube to cube or office to office for desktop bound users.

6. Surround a JMP Day event or Lunch - n - Learn session with the Dr. Is In. Usually there is free time in the normal business day around JMP Days or Lunch/Learns. Offer up Dr. is In as a supplement. Makes a long day for you...but maximizes time spent on site with users.

7. Use a sign in sheet to get names and email addresses. If for no other reason, you've got a list of patients that you can either follow up with or just say, "Thanks for your business and stopping by."

8. My last one of these, I was going to rely on using my SAS cell phone hot spot to connect to the web. Sometimes this works fine...others, not so well. Lesson learned...for whatever reason, my phone couldn't connect. So I was stuck not being able to connect to the web. So from now on in, I'm going to ask the key contact if there is a means by which a visitor such as myself can connect to the web without having them jump through IT security hoola hoops.

Byron_JMP

Some simple rhetoric

This may sound simple rhetoric, but people don't like to schedule special meetings, it means that they have to plan and organize internal resources. In contrast, a "Brown Bag (BYOL)" or a "Lunch and Learn" seems to be no big deal to schedule or plan. People can just show up. However uncommitted people are to meetings, we all seem to be pretty committed to stopping for a lunch break, and an entertaining lunch speaker is a pretty good excuse to stop and get together with people even if they are coworkers. I've just done tips and tricks for the first one, and then collected topics for the next.

I think the collection of topics or better yet, getting a data set to work with gets past a seond retorical hurdle. Some people see "Dr's Hours" and it implies that they need help and you know it. After you have the list, you can advertise the topic for the next Brown Bag, and the little ego speedbump is a moot point.

I've heard that Laura travels with pizzas? and does the lunch and learn circuit pretty well.

martindemel

I've done both in the past - one-on-one and group meetings. The format was dependend on the customer basically. We had one with a six sigma group where we asked the BB to collect the main knowledge gaps and issues from the GB and then we had a group meeting to capture those as well a one-on-one with the BB to be more specific on how to avoid many gaps in the future, that is giving advice on how to encourage GB to say where they stumple and how to deliver tips and tricks.

With some customers especially with those we know they are using the tool in no frequent manner we try to understand first why they do not use it that often and then having a lunch and learn to cover those made more sense. Sometimes in combination with a sales Event for other interested parties.

A one-on-one approach can be very important in case you want to pamper or develop a Coach (or an additional one) in an important account.

If you want to do something regular I believe a "lunch and learn" is better than a "Doctor is in" as it provides you the opportunity to also raise Topics they do not know about. You may want to have a subtitle being more specific on the main topics for this meeting.

Laura_Higgins

I do keep pizza in the trunk of my car at all times, just for customers !

I have had "open hours" without scheduling individual appointments - it's a big chaotic but works. Most questions last 5 - 20 minutes at the longest. The longer ones I suggest we do a follow-up later to go more in depth, etc. if there is a line forming. After doing this for a couple of hours my brain is tired; personally, 3 hours max would be it for me by myself, and this is a fun event to bring along someone else (another SE, Lou's team, etc.) to help with questions if there will be a lot of customers. If you offer too much time, no one will come until the end. I might offer 2 hours, and plan on sticking around if needed for a bit longer. It's better to offer to come back and follow up!

Frequently when I offer Dr.-is-in visits, my host will turn it into a "lunch and learn". I will present a topic, bring pizza if possible, and answer lots and lots of questions. Style-wise, I like answer questions while I present. If I don't feel like I can be interactive because of the content or demo, I'd keep my presentation to only about 20 minutes before to open up Q&A (of 60-90 minutes of presentation time). A topic that is great for getting customers to open up with questions is "Tips and Tricks" or "JMP Top Ten". It's a vague title and you can talk about what you think is the most valuable to that customer. Sometime there will be a requested topic like DOE and I'll prepare a regular demo, and do it with lots of Q&A (of which some of it is not DOE but basic using JMP questions). If you can get a customer to present their analysis that's great too!

Laura_Higgins

Peter-

Great point about scheduling Dr-is-in time before or after another scheduled session! I do this all the time and build it into the agenda as well. Sometime it's over lunch for JMP days, or at the end. Frequently we just call it Q&A. In the agenda I will write that customers are encouraged to bring their laptop and analysis to work with me on their questions, to make sure they understand it's interactive with me pointing at their screen. One important note is to schedule this time with the host so you don't get kicked out of your conference room. This could me ending the "talk" part early to answer Q&A if there is a hard stop on time.

Peter_Bartell

Since Laura has re-bumped this thread I'll add some others that I haven't seen mentioned...

1. If there is set appointments, sometimes I work with the key contact to see if patients can provide at least the topic or central concern they'll be bringing to the Doctor. I provide the key contact with a short email template soliciting this information, then the contact just forwards the stock email to the patients and it's up to the patient to reply directly to me. This way if it's a topic or part of JMP where I don't have things well memorized, I can do a little bit of JMP or statistical methods refresher for myself before the patient shows up to the "Great and Powerful Oz"!

2. I always tell the key contact if we're going the pre-set appointment scheduling route, to NOT cap the number of people asking for appointments. Still apportion the same amount of time, 15 - 20 minutes usually...but if we oversubscribe, let me work with Chuck Boiler to see if another SE or failing that going to Technical Enablement, is willing to be a second Doctor. This works really well when piggybacking a Dr. Is In with other things like a JMP Day, training, etc. My experience is other SEs (Bill Worley, Mike Anderson, Olivia Lippincott, Ghazal Falahi, and Erich Gundlach, and on one event Chuck Boiler helped too...thank you and I still owe you!) are quick to help out in this regard. Which means if YOU would like my help with something like this the offer is hereby extended.

3. If you've got a new AE or insider sales person on your team, encourage them to be an attending 'nurse' in the room. Helps them create relationships with patients, learn the products, become more familiar with the technical and business challenges our users face.

MikeD_Anderson

Just a note on the thumb drive point... a lot of larger corporations are cracking down on the use of thumb drives due to some virus issues and IP control. In my last company before joining the team we actually needed management approval before someone could have their USB ports enabled for storage media. The same went for optical drives. This also brings up the point that the viruses can go both ways and we could infect our own machines with a USB transmitted virus from a customer machine.

Peter_Bartell

Good points Mike...I suspect Tom Donnelly has some very restrictive issues around this topic too!

MikeD_Anderson

Thinking along these lines... what have people used to get around this issue? I've found that, generally, when they restrict storage media on individual machines IT will also block access to Dropbox and other file hosting systems for the same reasons... Might it be a good practice to start posting materials to the community site and having them download it from here? Is there a way to control access to the content if we went that route? Are there other options besides a blanket email?

Laura_Higgins

We have access to Box - the secure version of dropbox. I'm not sure about generally leaving files up there, but I have used it as a NDA-lawyer-aproved place to interact with customer data (driven by my customer). This worked easily.