Relationship Alchemy with VMware’s Fraser Hutchison #23

After all, all art is experience.

Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. This episode, Gary is discussing the alchemy of relationships with VMware's Fraser Hutchison. What's the secret to building trust? How do you form meaningful human connections? And how extensively should you prepare before meeting a new contact for the first time? Luckily, Fraser has all the answers to these questions and more. Gary, it's over to you.

Hi, Fraser, thank you so much for joining this episode. How are you?

Good morning, Gary, I'm fantastic. How are you?

I'm great. I'm so excited on this episode because we've got— I've got lots of really difficult questions for you. The episode today is Relationship Alchemy, and I thought, who better to have on this episode than my friend Fraser Hutchinson? And you know, if you look up the dictionary definition, it's basically turning metal into gold, or in our case, water into wine, maybe. So I think maybe a good place to start is let— introduce yourself, tell people who you are and tell them about quickly about VMware. That'd be great.

Yeah. So my name is Fraser Hutchison. I work for an organization called VMware and it's probably one of the largest software companies that you've never heard of, but you touch, feel, and see on a day-to-day basis and everything you do with your life. So We're a 38,000-employee organization. We've been around for 22 years, and we do everything from protecting our streets through enabling our police officers to, to deal with scenarios in, in any, any time of day, to helping our healthcare workers work safely during the pandemic time, to, you know, helping our retailers deliver our groceries far quicker than before, or even allow us to bank to bank our money in a more effective way. So everything we do in our day-to-day life is pretty much touching the VMware technology in some shape or form.

Blimey, sounds fantastic. What a great ad. It must be in sales, I guess.

Customer relationships, I think.

Customer relationships, hence the reason you're here. So that's a great intro. Obviously good company. You've got a lot of experience. You're a senior director in, I think it's Northern EMEA global accounts. So that's why I was keen to have you on and Everyone thinks and talks about relationships being a really important thing, obviously, and it's a bit of a loaded question if I ask you why they were important, but why are they the be-all and end-all in, in the kind of jobs that you may do?

And for people listening, um, I think, you know, relationships absolutely make the world go round and everything that we do. I think what's the most important thing as part of forming that relationship is trust. And, you know, I'll talk a bit about the trust relationship and trust equation maybe later on. But, you know, forming that human connection and trust to understand the challenges that the individuals are, are facing and how we can help them overcome that to ultimately make everybody's life a better place than it currently is today. So, you know, for me, that's the most important thing as part of forming these relationships.

Yeah, I mean, it's been interesting times, hasn't it? We've been kind of forced and locked into our houses and homes. And I was reading an article that you posted. I don't think it was your article, so I won't ask you questions on it, but it was called Lead Forward Insights: Fallout from the Pandemic and Here's What CXOs Can Do. And one of them was about accelerating business and new opportunities that can't wait 18 months. So a bit of a long question. You know, during COVID times, we couldn't wait 18 months. Yeah. What did you do to maintain those relationships when you couldn't be there?

Well, I think, I think you've already touched on it and you've touched on it in previous episodes around the power of social media. And we're all now sitting in front of a desk or less so sitting in front of a desk as we're going back to hopefully the new normal of human interaction. But using social media as an engagement vehicle to put your point across, to have an opinion either targeted at certain customers or certain verticals or just generally out there providing insight and information, I think is a really powerful, you know, really powerful tool. And it's not just about liking an article, it's about engaging and providing an opinion that, that could be seen beneficial or, or create a discussion point with, uh, with people who have previously held relationships with. You'd be surprised at the number of times you do comment or add an opinion, you get a response back, either it's a direct message or, or as part of a comment flow through the, through the article. So I think that's So that's a super key important part of how we've looked to engage with our customers.

But just thinking about yourself, Fraser, did you miss— I mean, it's a silly question, of course you missed meeting people, but did you miss that human interaction and did it kind of drive you to do anything differently because you weren't at one point, weren't allowed out?

Yeah, I think when we were allowed out, actually, the one thing I did do was pick up the phone and speak to people. We got into a very Zoom/Teams fatigue of firing up a 30-minute or a 60-minute video call, which actually lost some of the human interaction of, of just a straightforward conversation. So something I did, both relationships internally and also externally, was a good old traditional mobile phone call. You get a lot more natural conversation flowing via that channel than necessarily than the Zoom call with 20 people on and half on and off camera.

Yeah. Do you find that now? I think telephone calls are a bit— I love speaking to people on the phone and it kind of got lost over the last few years, didn't it? Do you like speaking to people like a normal person?

Like we used to in the old days.

Like we used to, yeah.

In my day. Yeah, absolutely. You and I spoke last week. I was out for a walk. You get out, you're in a different environment, you're walking around and you're having a far more natural conversation. So yeah, I think—

Definitely.

Let's not forget the power of the the traditional telephone.

No, exactly. And I think, you know, it's been interesting to look back in your career. You've worked in lots of telcos, which their job is to, or communications companies in the past, which their job is to communicate, I guess. But also, I think you started your career in Capgemini or something, didn't you?

Business development. I did. I did.

I remember that far back.

I did. I actually did an internship, which was fantastic. So ended up in a system integrator/consultancy. With no experience halfway through my university career, but was fortunate enough to be offered a role going back into the business. And, you know, it's a really interesting part of my, my career where I was joining a very mature organization selling consultancy and outsourced services and had absolutely no idea about business whatsoever. But it made me very hungry to learn. But no, it was a great learning opportunity for me.

Yeah, I was interested to dig in a bit on that because looking back in your career and thinking back about your career, what, with relationships in mind, of course, what, you know, from your experience, are the must-haves and what things would you avoid in order to build better relationships?

Great question. It's my job. It is your job. I think the most important thing in reflection is building authentic relationships. I think it's very easy to assume that you're forming a relationship, but it's not really authentic. And maybe now is a good time for me just to dip into the trust equation and inform—

Tell us more about that.

So it was something my— the Emir leader in VMware talked about a few years ago, which is a simple equation. So trust equals credibility times empathy divided by self-orientational risk. And fundamentally what that means is You build trust by building credibility and empathy, so listening. But the minute you overrotate in the 'what's in it for me,' trust breaks. So I think what's really important is understanding, listening to your customer, listening to the relationships, people you're building those relationships with, and understanding what's important to them and having a point of view around how you can help. Move their personal business objectives forward. The minute you then follow up with, and where's my PO, the trust goes because they're— something more— you're only focused on yourself at that point in time. So, you know, it's something I'm very passionate about, the trust equation. Every time we get together as a team, we have it as part of our mission statement and our value, but it has to be replicated both internally in terms of internal relationships, but also with our customers as well.

Yeah, I like it. So basically what you're saying is it'll pay forward. So it's not necessarily a direct correlation because when people go on sales training, they're told that you need to go for a meeting and get something at the end of it. So you're saying it's more of a long-term investment then?

Yeah, it is. And of course, you're constantly trying to balance the pressures from the business that every, every organization have around revenue growth, profitability, and also managing the customer relationship and trust. So it's the balance of those two those two dynamics, which I think are really important in terms of moving your relationship forward, both internally and also with the customer.

And have you got any hidden tips? I've invited you on because I think you're particularly good at building relationships from my interactions with you. Have you got any hidden tips for, let's say, improving a good solid relationship where you've got a really good relationship already, but you kind of need to nudge things along because it's a good relationship, or nudging along a dusty one that isn't really going somewhere? That you haven't spoken to someone for a while, or maybe you're—

yeah, good, good question. I'm, you know, two different, two different sides of the, uh, of the coin on this one. So I think, yeah, preparation is critical, right? Any form of preparation, even if it's dusting off an old relationship, understanding what they're up to. We have the best research tools available via a couple of Clicks, Google, LinkedIn, other social media platforms, and you can find out a lot about people before you start the initial engagement or actually warming them up prior to that engagement. I need to be careful that I'm not saying you need to stalk people, but the key thing is you can then navigate your conversation accordingly to build that trust quickly with them by doing research, um, and understanding more about the individual. Linked to that is, let's not forget about the importance of our network that we have, who knows who, and how can you triangulate and get a different level of insight into, into the individual you're either trying to rebuild the relationship with or enhance. I think sometimes we think about our competitors in the, they're trying to sell stuff against you, but actually how can you use that information to help build the relationship with those individuals? So I think there's different factors you should be thinking in as part of the the engagement model and prep is critical to that.

I agree with that. Without wanting to put you on the spot, but I'm going to anyway, can you think of a situation, and don't declare the name of anything, where you had a bit of a kind of a broken relationship, but you really wanted to mend it? And can you draw into your memory about what you might have done to fix it? I don't know if you have got one of those, but if you have, it would be great.

Unfortunately, in my career, I seem to have ended up with the accounts and relationships that have needed it.

I don't know whether that's by luck or design, When you're good at something, you get it. That's what happens.

Well, exactly. Yeah, you don't put your hand up to it, but you end up getting it anyway. You know, I think I've already said it. I think just being authentic, understanding the dynamics and the customer, understanding the politics, understanding the destination. I think too often in sales, we're very focused around our products that we're being pushed to sell today versus really understanding What is the organization trying to achieve? How can you help that individual? And sometimes the individual doesn't really want to be helped, but they want to just keep the status quo, or, you know, they want to move on or develop their own career, whatever it might be. But it's getting into a position where you build that trust to understand them and, and help them move forward. I think one important thing for me around relationships is it has to be bilateral. So it has to be it has to be beneficial on both sides. And again, sometimes I think we go in with rose-tinted glasses assuming that, yeah, this is going to save the world, when in fact actually that's just a very small cog in terms of what they're trying to achieve. So how does it mutually benefit both parties to get to the end result? And that fundamentally builds up that trust.

Yeah, that's good advice. And in those, you know, dysfunctional relationships that you've had in the past, you've had to repair, where you've kind of brought them back from the brink, have you found that your relationships either better, or is it steady? You know, have you maintained it, or did you find it was actually even better as a result of fixing something for someone?

I think it's always going to be better. I think wherever you are in the relationship cycle, responsiveness, transparency— it is critical to build that trust, and, and therefore they know that you're— you've got their best interests at heart as well. And that's something that, you know, builds their empathy back with you and their trust back with you. So yeah, I think a lot can be done in terms of how you're managing it, your responsiveness, your communication style back with them, and just really listening and understanding what their challenges are and how you can help them. You can't always help them, by the way. There's some scenarios where you just have to go, you know what, It is what it is and let's just agree to move forward.

I don't wanna dwell on the kind of the negative relationships, but just, I've got one more question around it, 'cause I'm interested to get into your head a bit more and I think it'd be useful for people listening. If you are confronted with that, so someone says, dysfunctional relationship, bring in Fraser, pants over his trousers, he's gonna fix it. What's the thought process you go through? 'Cause you probably go A, B, C. What do you do in your mind to go, this is what I'm gonna do? Get them to love me?

Uh, normally ask for a different customer or relationship first, but if that's not an offer, no. Um, I think, you know, taking a big step back, I, I think we, we rush into things very quickly, and I think take a step back, really understand why the relationship is challenged, what happened both from our own organization's perspective, not that VMware have any challenging relationships, but, you know, we have very strong partnerships with our customers, but also from the customer's perspective and the individuals involved and what happened through that engagement to then help understand how do we fix it moving forward. We're fortunate as an organization at VMware where our technology is critical, as I talked about at the beginning, to a number of organizations, and it's important we're building on that and understanding the dynamics. So I think It's important we just take a step back sometimes, take a breath in, look at it with a clean bit of paper and say, what happened? Where did it go slightly off kilter? And how do we rebuild and get back to where we need to get to?

Fraser, what's your mindset? You know, when you have one of these challenges in front of you, do you just believe that I can solve this and turn it around? Is that your mindset?

That'd be a big statement to say yes.

Yeah, but as a positive, you know, I think I can help make the difference rather than, you know, I'm not saying you're being big-headed.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Course, you know, that's a bit of the job I really love. I genuinely love the problem solving and, and building a, a sustainable business. It's, it's just how I'm wired. And as part of that, I guess we move into leadership qualities and leadership styles. And I'm very much a leader who is standing shoulder to shoulder with the team. We win together, we lose together. I'm a huge fan of cognitive diversity as part of that team structure as well. So we have different opinions and we're not all we're not all the same, uh, same approach. So I think, do I have a positive mindset to fix the problem? Yes, 100%. Do I believe the organization I work for can solve their business problems and personal challenges? Yeah, 100%. So I have a level of confidence and belief in terms of my approach. And then it's important as part of the leadership to bring the right people in and around who have the same mindset, with the same purpose, who can then move from where the customer is or the relationship is today to where it needs to be as part of that journey, you know. And for me, part of that is building that, that 2 to 3 year vision, the North Star that collectively we're all aiming for to get to that endgame.

Yeah, that makes sense. And switch gears a little bit. I think, uh, you know, one of the, the key things I'm thinking when I'm on the end of a relationship, people that I like, generally I've had a good experience. I would say good customer experience. I've just had a good experience working with that person. There's an energy. I like what they're about. They have the transparency, as you said. Can you think of an example where you were really in the zone and you managed to build a relationship, a really strong relationship. Maybe you're friends today, I don't know. But, and what was it that made that work?

Another tough question, Gary. You keep them coming.

I'm trying, trying.

I don't think there's anything that I've missed off in terms of just building the trust and relationship. The honest trust with the individual, understanding their objectives, delivering against what we've committed against, responding effectively, being always on, having an opinion. All of these attributes build to that trust and value that they see as part of that relationship. And like I mentioned earlier, it's got to be bilateral for the relationships to work. So they need to be getting value back from you. So What is something interesting that you can provide to the conversation that's going to help them in their world? And it may not be around the VMware technology, it may be something completely different.

But yeah, I mean, the reason I'm asking, because I've seen you in action before, and one of the things that stood out for me, and I'm interested to know your thoughts on it, is doing what you say. It seems to resonate very well with people because I think most people don't. Tell us more about that. I mean, you do it naturally, you probably don't think about it, but that kind of do what you say bit. Tell us how that works for you.

I think it's just how I'm wired, how I've been brought up. Is it part of my natural DNA? Yes. Am I very honest and upfront? Yes. Do I wear my heart on my sleeve? Yes. Am I passionate about what I do? Yes. So I don't believe there is anything artificial around that belief. But thank you. I take it that's a nice little compliment you give me, Gary, on that.

But no, I've been— because I've seen you in action and I was just interested to know you know, how that works. And maybe we should just talk outside of work for a minute, you know, building relationships. This is about relationships in general, mainly work-related, but yeah, do you approach building relationships, and maybe not something you thought about, outside of work in the same way?

I've never really thought about it, actually. I don't, I don't overthink how I build relationships, both professionally and personally. I, I have a general interest in business, in life, and society. And therefore I find conversations engaging. And, you know, for me, that's the most important part of the relationship, that you, you have a, an interesting dialogue. So no, I don't approach my business relationships differently to my personal relationships. I don't go on LinkedIn if I'm going to go and meet someone for a coffee that I haven't seen for 3 years to wonder what they've been up to, but I just, I enjoy communication, I enjoy engagement with people on a one-to-one basis or one-to-many basis. And again, I think that's just how I'm wired or how I operate.

Yeah, but one of the things you just said is you take an interest. How important is that in that building the trust and the relationship with someone, taking, as you said, a genuine interest in them as people rather than as a work person?

Yes, it's, it's critical, right? I can't comment on how other people do it because I'm not them. But for me, I just have a general, general interest around— so some topics are stronger than others. So from a business perspective, I'm fascinated by the technology market. I'm not a technologist, but I'm fascinated around how it impacts all of our lives. And I just have a, you know, an interest in it. From a personal perspective, I have interest around sport. You know, I have a pretty hectic family life with 3 young kids. We live in London, so we have a busy social life in and around the theater or restaurants. Don't necessarily get me onto classical music. It's not my, my top topic, but this— I typically have interest in, in areas that overlap with other people that we find common ground on, that then stimulates a conversation and I guess in reflection, and I'm thinking on my feet here, is I'm typically hungry to learn and interested around different parts of the world that make the world go round. And yeah, I kind of double down on that and take an interest and start the conversation moving from there.

But I've seen you do— I think it's an important thing because I think, you know, people who go on the course, they go, right, you should find out about the person's family and their kind of hobbies, which is kind of important, but it's a bit of a lazy way to build a relationship. Whereas what you're saying is it's more about having a genuine interest in the other person as a person and hopefully looking for some common interests.

Yeah, and I think, I think you also need to be careful of the style of the person you're meeting. People can be very analytical, very outgoing, or all the polar opposites. And you need to be sensitive to the type of style of character you're meeting. Both professionally and, and personally. And I think something that I'm strong at doing is adapting accordingly to the scenario that I'm in, in a natural way. I, I don't know whether it was because I went to boarding school and we're in a scenario where you have to adapt to lots of different styles, but to me that's just something that I can do and change my approach naturally in an authentic way, which I genuinely believe is the right thing to do to help enhance the relationship and move forward.

Well, that's interesting. So, so basically what you're saying is if you're meeting someone who's like an introvert, you don't kind of go in with your jazz hands because you're just going to scare them off. But, and, and reverse is true. If someone's into the detail, then you're going to give them the detail.

Yeah. And, and it's something that I've had to work on because I would be less in the detail historically, but now have over-rotated to get into the detail, to have an understanding of of the details so that we can have a meaningful conversation. If I'm having a conversation with someone who is very finance-focused, I'm happy to have a top-level conversation with them around finance. I'm obviously not the expert around balance sheets and everything else, but then it's, it's for me to understand who's the right person to have that conversation with. If it's a professional relationship that we can bring in to help have that same level of conversation. So, you know, that helps build the trust and relationship, but also seeing that it's not just me trying to cover multiple different roles. We have the people in and around our organization to support and further those relationships moving forward.

That makes sense. Okay, great. I've got two more questions and then we're going to find out about your musical taste. I was interested to dig in a bit about, it's not about me, it's about them. You were talking about adding value to a relationship, which I really like. Can you think of an example where you felt you did do that, you added value? You have to say, don't say the name or anything, but it really helped you in the long term?

Yeah, I think there's— I would like to say the majority of the relationships that we have, that I've built, we've added that value in some shape or form, whether it be short-term or longer term. Having an opinion, painting a picture aligned to their strategy, and building a plan to help them get there. It is, you know, I guess it's part of what we do in, in, in a customer-facing role, and it's, it's the value-add that we should bring in terms of what are the competitors doing, what's a different perspective from, you know, a different market, whether on the same journey, and how can you, how can you demonstrate the value to help them get there.

And is there any non-working relationship value that you offer, like, you know, something that's interesting to them as a hobby or some kind of interconnection with another part of your network? Or is it ever any of that stuff, that non-work value that adds value, if that makes sense?

Only that I have, I think I have an opinion, like I said before, everything apart from classical music. So, You know, I, I, I'm pretty good at— I think I'm pretty good at joining the dots in terms of understanding what people are into, and if that means forming another relationship or introducing people to other people with similar interests, I'm, I'm pretty, pretty good at that. So yeah, I think it's— again, we've talked about it a couple of times, it's just having that genuine interest in individuals and people to help them become the best that they can be. And that sounds like a very cheesy American line there, but it is not. I think ultimately I see success when other people are successful, and I take great gratitude from seeing other people, you know, move forward in terms of their own personal, um, personal objectives. And if that's introducing someone to someone else. I, I take great satisfaction from that. There's no personal gain for me as an individual, but that's the thing.

I think you're very understated, and I think that that's something you do a lot. So I think those, those introductions to other people, not there's anything in it for you, but just that I think you just generally a good networker, and I think that that does add value to people when you do that.

Yeah, I wouldn't say I think about every week, how do I network better and how do I pair person A with person B up. I don't think about that at all. But I think because I just genuinely have interest in people and what they're doing, I can then look to informally join the dots and make that level of connection.

Brilliant. Okay, I've got one last question for you, Fraser. You're doing a great job. The last question is, again, looking back on your career, like all of us, you've probably had good times and bad times. You've been good at building relationships, or sometimes you thought, geez, I could have done that a lot better. Knowing what you know now over your career, if you had the chance to do it again, would you have done anything differently? Would you do anything differently? What's your learning? What would you do knowing what you know now?

That's a great question. I think we can slip into informal behaviors when it comes to business relationships, developing those relationships. And what I mean by that is, when we start our sales career, we're very formulated around make sure we prep for 2 to 3 times the duration of the meeting in pre, so we're going in a well-planned way, we have a set agenda and we follow up effectively. I think if we all have to hold a mirror up to ourselves right now, how much do we do that in day-to-day? I think we get into a very much tea and coffee, hey, catch-up meeting, which is still very important, I think if we, I think if I look back and reflected, I probably could have done more of the formal meetings in a more formal way where it's better planned, the agenda is a joint agenda from the customer or the person we've got the relationship with, we're understanding what good looks like at the end of the meeting, and then we're following up effectively on that. We still then have time for the more informal meetings, which are still very important as part of the relationships. And Something I just want to mention is I had dinner on Saturday night with, um, with a friend who I haven't seen for a couple of years, and we just— he works in the finance market or finance industry, and we were talking about what they do and how they bill time to their clients. And actually, their billing time is based on customers' perception of value of that time. So if you book a 60-minute meeting, the first 10 minutes of that are, hey, how are things? How's the family? Et cetera, et cetera, you only get to bill for 50 minutes. So you don't get to bill for the 60 minutes. And I think if we think about that principle moving forward in terms of relationships and customer meetings and engagements, we should be really focused around utilizing the time we have because we don't have a huge amount of time in today's society to go and maximize that time that's mutually beneficial for both parties. And I think having that mindset moving forward will drive a far more successful outcome and actually probably get more time with customers because you can be more direct in terms of the, the time spent getting to the points and then moving forward. So, love that. Yeah, a snippet from something completely outside of my wealth.

I love that. I think it really helps frame the value that you get out of a meeting. I think it's great. That's fantastic, Fraser. That's brilliant. We've reached the end, uh, because of time, but I do want to ask you your musical choice for our playlist because we're, as you know, compiling a playlist from our guests on things that have inspired you or give you good memories. One or two tracks that sort of stand out for you.

So I have two. Interesting, I was trying to think of some really quirky ones, but actually ended up looking at my Spotify list.

You can say ABBA, we'll understand.

So the first one is a collaboration between between two very, very talented artists who unfortunately are no longer on the, on the planet. And I, um, I probably discovered them later on in my career than, than others. And actually, this song started as a, a jamming session between the, the band and the individuals. So my first song, and it's got no link to relationships unfortunately, is Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie.

Love it, love it.

It's one of the tracks that unfortunately those two never performed live together. But yeah, it's a fantastic song when you, you hear the, the backstory behind it and how it formulated. There was just a really strong connection between those two. The second song is a very well-known song by Sinead O'Connor. However, it's not the Sinead O'Connor version, it's actually the person who wrote the song. So Prince wrote Nothing Compares to You. It's an amazing track, and I'm sure everybody knows the Sinéad O'Connor version, but I'd recommend listening to the Prince version as well. Absolutely outstanding.

Great. Well, two very thoughtful tracks. When you explained the first track, I thought you were going to do the Matthew Kelly, and tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be David Bowie. Thank you, Fraser. Thank you so much for spending time with us. That was really insightful and really enjoyed speaking to you, and we'll look forward to seeing you again soon.

Thanks so much. Thanks, Gary. Thank you. All the best.

Thank you for listening, and thanks again to Fraser Hutchison for joining us on today's show. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to head to thecompanydoctor.com to peruse previous episodes and have a gander at The Company Doctor show notes and blog posts. See you next time!