4 ms·

How to Succeed as a Consultant

137 points by danielrm26 16y ago

lsc 16y ago
>When I go into the bank and find a long line to reach a teller, it's of course frustrating. Mentally, I start a timer in my head, and the longer the timer goes the worse of an experience it is. What stops the timer? Leaving the bank? >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.
- techiferous 16y ago
  I find it very interesting that user interfaces work the same way. If I click on something and it doesn't do anything, it is much more frustrating than if it immediately presents me with an hourglass or beachball for a few seconds.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Not doing anything makes people feel a lot more like there is an error. At least with an hourglass the program/website has acknowledged the click enough to display an image. Many people probably don't realise though a loading spinner is usually very loosely connected to whether the thing they have clicked on is actually doing anything or not.
  - lsc 16y ago
    I think this has to do with the inherent unreliability of GUIs. "Did I click the right button?" "did I click the /active/ part of the right button?" etc... on a command line I'm perfectly happy to type the command, press enter, and to get no response until it's done. I know I typed the right command, I can see it right there. 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.
- dasil003 16y ago
  Let me go out out on a limb and say it only works for you the way it does when you trust the second party. The problem for most people is that what the consultant does is black magic and they need reassurance that it is indeed being worked on.
  - lsc 16y ago
    hm. See, in the example I gave, it is maybe 5 minutes of actual work; if it takes 2 to 48 hours, that's 'cause I wasn't working on it. 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.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  I disagree with both assessments. There are timers for every stage. If I have to wait in line too long, that's irritating. Once I get to the teller, she needs to be efficient or that is irritating. 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.
- Xurinos 16y ago
  Expectations. It is all about managing expectations. If you expect things to be finished in a certain amount of time and they do not, delays are a huge frustration. If things are finished before your expected time, you are satisfied or happy. 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."
jsn 16y ago
Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm). Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technical business. 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).
- techiferous 16y ago
  "some of my customers look much happier if they get (2)" It's about feeling in control.
  - Terry_B 16y ago
    One of the major benefits of Agile that I've found is how many problems go away when the customer gets to see progress on a very regular basis.
- csallen 16y ago
  How do you find most of your customers? What are your thoughts on the author's point that writing technical articles is one of the best methods?
  - access_denied 16y ago
jackowayed 16y ago
This was posted a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994
- leftnode 16y ago
  Yes, that's fine as a few members recently asked how to be a consultant.
- CaptainMorgan 16y ago
  I saw the headline for this submittal, saw it was unixwiz.net, recognized Freidl and thought hmm... didn't I just post that? But ironically when I arrived at the page it appeared very different to me. The article I posted a year ago seemed shorter in comparison and to me it would seem Freidl has updated it a lot... but I could be wrong, as is often the case.
Terry_B 16y ago
There's another good guide here by HN user jacquesm: http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant
Terry_B 16y ago
When people say consulting, they seem to mostly be referring to web development it seems. I'm more of a software guy. With web development I'm guessing that finding customers is a bit easier because people tend to know that they need a new website and go looking for someone to build it. 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?
- wisdomtalks 16y ago
  I agree with you that Software Development Life Cycle is much complex than Web Development. I started my career as ERP Consultant, but soon i found, its very tough to maintain, as life Cycles are usually long. So i started Web Development along with. And now i have 7 employees for the purpose. Here are some basic suggestions to get succeeded as Software Developer: 1. Try to find some small niche need, and develop a software for it. Examples can be, software for Salon or Car Rental Company, etc. 2. Start marketing the solution, and with every new client, your software will become more and more mature. 3. Soon you will start getting known as specialist for the particular industry. And you will start getting recurring income just by supporting your existing clients. 4. You will get new clients just by reference.
maerek 16y ago
Some very good points FTA: 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.
- anotherjesse 16y ago
  I recently started consulting for us govt. Such an odd world. Things like #2 are illegal.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    As they should be IMHO. Introducing free into a business relationship of any kind is a good way to disappoint people without knowing why (e.g. "That was free last time, why did it cost this time" or "I felt disappointed at result X, why wasn't it free?").
  - kragen 16y ago
    That's interesting; I had no idea. How do they manage to make that illegal?
    - bhousel 16y ago
      It's often illegal for government employees or agencies to accept certain kinds of 'gifts'. It definitely depends on how strictly they follow the rules.
Spoutingshite 16y ago
I found this article very interesting. 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'.
known 16y ago
How to succeed as a lawyer?

137 points by danielrm26 16y ago

lsc 16y ago

>When I go into the bank and find a long line to reach a teller, it's of course frustrating. Mentally, I start a timer in my head, and the longer the timer goes the worse of an experience it is. What stops the timer? Leaving the bank? >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.

techiferous 16y ago
I find it very interesting that user interfaces work the same way. If I click on something and it doesn't do anything, it is much more frustrating than if it immediately presents me with an hourglass or beachball for a few seconds.
- robryan 16y ago
  Not doing anything makes people feel a lot more like there is an error. At least with an hourglass the program/website has acknowledged the click enough to display an image. Many people probably don't realise though a loading spinner is usually very loosely connected to whether the thing they have clicked on is actually doing anything or not.
- lsc 16y ago
  I think this has to do with the inherent unreliability of GUIs. "Did I click the right button?" "did I click the /active/ part of the right button?" etc... on a command line I'm perfectly happy to type the command, press enter, and to get no response until it's done. I know I typed the right command, I can see it right there. 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.
dasil003 16y ago
Let me go out out on a limb and say it only works for you the way it does when you trust the second party. The problem for most people is that what the consultant does is black magic and they need reassurance that it is indeed being worked on.
- lsc 16y ago
  hm. See, in the example I gave, it is maybe 5 minutes of actual work; if it takes 2 to 48 hours, that's 'cause I wasn't working on it. 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.
loewenskind 16y ago
I disagree with both assessments. There are timers for every stage. If I have to wait in line too long, that's irritating. Once I get to the teller, she needs to be efficient or that is irritating. 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.
Xurinos 16y ago
Expectations. It is all about managing expectations. If you expect things to be finished in a certain amount of time and they do not, delays are a huge frustration. If things are finished before your expected time, you are satisfied or happy. 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."

jsn 16y ago

Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm). Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technical business. 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).

techiferous 16y ago
"some of my customers look much happier if they get (2)" It's about feeling in control.
- Terry_B 16y ago
  One of the major benefits of Agile that I've found is how many problems go away when the customer gets to see progress on a very regular basis.
csallen 16y ago
How do you find most of your customers? What are your thoughts on the author's point that writing technical articles is one of the best methods?
- access_denied 16y ago

jackowayed 16y ago

This was posted a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994

leftnode 16y ago
Yes, that's fine as a few members recently asked how to be a consultant.
CaptainMorgan 16y ago
I saw the headline for this submittal, saw it was unixwiz.net, recognized Freidl and thought hmm... didn't I just post that? But ironically when I arrived at the page it appeared very different to me. The article I posted a year ago seemed shorter in comparison and to me it would seem Freidl has updated it a lot... but I could be wrong, as is often the case.

Terry_B 16y ago

There's another good guide here by HN user jacquesm: http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant

Terry_B 16y ago

When people say consulting, they seem to mostly be referring to web development it seems. I'm more of a software guy. With web development I'm guessing that finding customers is a bit easier because people tend to know that they need a new website and go looking for someone to build it. 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?

wisdomtalks 16y ago
I agree with you that Software Development Life Cycle is much complex than Web Development. I started my career as ERP Consultant, but soon i found, its very tough to maintain, as life Cycles are usually long. So i started Web Development along with. And now i have 7 employees for the purpose. Here are some basic suggestions to get succeeded as Software Developer: 1. Try to find some small niche need, and develop a software for it. Examples can be, software for Salon or Car Rental Company, etc. 2. Start marketing the solution, and with every new client, your software will become more and more mature. 3. Soon you will start getting known as specialist for the particular industry. And you will start getting recurring income just by supporting your existing clients. 4. You will get new clients just by reference.

maerek 16y ago

Some very good points FTA: 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.

anotherjesse 16y ago
I recently started consulting for us govt. Such an odd world. Things like #2 are illegal.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  As they should be IMHO. Introducing free into a business relationship of any kind is a good way to disappoint people without knowing why (e.g. "That was free last time, why did it cost this time" or "I felt disappointed at result X, why wasn't it free?").
- kragen 16y ago
  That's interesting; I had no idea. How do they manage to make that illegal?
  - bhousel 16y ago
    It's often illegal for government employees or agencies to accept certain kinds of 'gifts'. It definitely depends on how strictly they follow the rules.

Spoutingshite 16y ago

I found this article very interesting. 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'.

known 16y ago

How to succeed as a lawyer?