How to Succeed as a Consultant
unixwiz.net
unixwiz.net
Here's the most counter-intuitive part of it -- or at least it took me the longest to figure out. The "aha" moment came after two or three years of full time consulting.
So, you're missing the final deadline on the project. You're missing it bad, your customer needs it done like a week ago. No matter how hard you try, you'll need another week or two to complete the project.
Now, your options are:
1) get a metric ton of coffee, disconnect the phone, lock the door, go completely into death march crunch mode, work till you start seeing things and hearing voices from sleep deprivation, and deliver the product in 5 days, or
2) visit your customer every day in person, looking normal, spend 2 hours with them discussing what is done, what problems slow you down, what will be done next, etc, and deliver the product in 10 days, probably cutting features like there is no tomorrow.
Now, if I am the customer in this scenario, I totally prefer (1) -- especially since I need it a week ago. The thing is, some of my customers look much happier if they get (2). In fact, they are nervous, unhappy and angry when they get (1), and they look calm, satisfied and friendly when they get (2).
It's about feeling in control.
I never wrote technical articles, so no opinion on that; should work pretty well, theoretically. I do have a blog, though; it's rarely about anything work-related (mostly arm-chair microeconomics and libertarian studies these days). Even while being an off-topic, the blog still helps me to meet interesting people, and some of them become my customers later.
Personally, if I got blacked out like this there better have been a death in the family or I'll never work with this person/agency again and will heavily recommend against having anything to do with them.
The point is, they still are much more comfortable with the demonstration that you are willing to spend as much time as it takes to calm them down in person, progress on the product be damned.
>No. — It's "reaching the teller".
This is the hardest customer service lesson to learn for many, many technical people, including myself and many of the people I've hired.
the thing is, for me, that clock stops when I leave the bank. I don't see how waiting for the teller is any better than waiting in line.
But it's very clear to me that Steve's article is correct for most people. The thing is, if a task is going to take from 2-48 hours, and you email them and say "I got your order, you will be up in two to 48 hours" and you convince them it's not an autoresponder, for some reason, they will be quite a bit happier than if you write the exact text on the order page, or send them an autoresponse with the same text.
I don't know /why/ this is... I mean, it's not that way for me. But it is, and it's been hard for me and my people to learn and implement this. But we need to do it if we want to branch out into the higher margin, higher support markets.
but people are pretty unreliable too, so you might have a point that the GUI is a better metaphor for interacting with another person than the CLI.
It is, in a sense, the other side of the coin of control. We have schedules and needs, and we want to be in control of these things. In order to be in control, we need to remove the unknowns -- have the right expectations.
Visiting a customer when your project is past due is an effort to help them understand what to expect so that they may feel more in control of the outcome. The customer's money is on the line. They are happier when they have a reasonable handle on the situation.
Practical example: It is far better to tell your customer, "We expect to receive the parts in two days, and we will call you immediately" than "We will call you when we receive the parts."
Someone in the thread was talking about beach balling. I prefer the beach ball to a freeze, but if all I did was click on a mail the ball better not be there very long.
I think this should be fairly clear to the customers; I mean, nearly all of the competition has this stuff automated and nearly instant.
the only thing I can think of is that it means I'm still alive and probably not on vacation or something.
Software is usually solving a more difficult to define problem and the customer might not even realise they need a software solution or what it should look like.
Does anyone have any experiences and advice for how they find customers for work other than web dev?
I reminded me of Gerald Weinbergs three rules of consulting: 1) Its always a people problem 2) Its always a people problem 3) you get paid by the hour and not by the result
His point is that it is often hard to fix a problem quickly because the 'problem' is often a side effect of a bigger 'people problem'.
1: Provide time-billing transparency 2: Give away some free time, but make it visible
#2 was a very obvious point, but one that I hadn't really thought about until reading it. Qualifying the value you're providing can definitely improve the relationship you have with your customer.