Speaking the same language as your colleagues is a concept that Richard Martin and Brad Russell took to heart recently.

The two respective TSG Account Managers (Richard, Texas, and Brad, Arkansas) are what is commonly referred to as “farmers” in the client relationship. The hunters find the new business, and this duo maintains and grows the business while fostering the relationship along the way. What they noticed over time was that these two farmers were yielding “crops” through different processes.

Over the past several months, they’ve gotten their hands deep into the soil of TSG methodologies, picking from the best at respective locations, and synchronized processes so that TSG speaks the same language from top to bottom.

Richard says he believes the biggest benefit is making sure we are delivering services the exact same regardless of geographic location. 

"As it relates to technology, every client is going to be a little bit different; however, making sure that our core infrastructure is the same regardless of geographic location lets our geographically-dispersed Support Desk efficiently support our partners in a timely manner. These efficiencies allow our entire team to make raving fans of our partners. I use client and partners interchangeably because it is our desire to build a lasting partnership with our technology clients," Richard said.

They looked at the Partnership Review.

“As we have those reviews, we want to make sure we are doing them the same way,” Brad said. “We’re not just cherry-picking information here and there. They need to be delivered the same way. So, Richard and I cross-trained on that, took the information, compiled it, and are working it out… The beauty is… if one of us goes on vacation, or is unavailable for whatever case, with a few days of preparedness the other can potentially take that role virtually and have that Partnership Review with the client.”

They standardized their stack.

Essentially, what Richard and Brad set out to do was establish a generalized baseline for everything from PCs to servers to their hardware stack as a whole.

“This standardization breeds greater familiarity with our technologies,” Brad said. “When we're talking about technology internally, we’ve already talked about it among our team, unless we are presenting something brand new. And at that point, it’s training and not an everyday conversation,” Brad said.

They realized the benefits: Here's Three.

1. Faster turnaround: “When we are speaking the same language, we’re reducing the time it takes to provide resolution to a problem,” Brad said.
2. Better communication: “Being able to more readily and easily discuss pricing for technologies and solutions for a client is key,” Brad said.
3. Simplicity: “When our consultancy staff is working with clients, regardless of where they are, because we are speaking the same language in technology, we’re all trained on the same thing,” Brad said. “We test and certify on the same thing. We grow and we excel with the same technologies. It allows us to reduce the complexity of the work environment as we work with clients.”