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Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm). Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technica
by 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 agoOne 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 agoHow 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 agoWhy does 'writing technical articles' work? Several reasons and you can use other methods to archive the same effects, technical articles don't have a monopoly here. But some reasons they work so well: - Credibility. Your customers see computers as magic box full of secrets. There is no way (depends of course) they understand if you are 'good' or are doing 'good work'. They are scared shitless that they loose theire jobs because you are a crook or unable to do the job. The fact that some respected editor in the industry passes you as an expert builds trust. - Top-of-mind. Quick! Name one search-engine. What? You thought of Google? Crazy shit isn't it? Get this in the mind of your prospects by being the one guy who always comes up with his stuff when a certain topic arises. Think about the power behind this one! - Pre-selling. The article is your sales-letter. While the propects are reading the stuff they are following YOUR line of reasoning about the subject to YOUR awesome conclusion about it in their heads. And because it is a 'technical article' their psychological 'anti-sales fences' are down. So they believe, because they gave credit to the trade-magazine you wrote in when they choosed to invest in it by bying and reading it. Here's the kicker: when a prospect contacts you after having read your article, they are basically conviced that you are the man and the stuff you wrote about is THE thing they need. Sales talk will be far easier with such clients! - Traffic to your wehbsite, how do you build it? Articles in magazines: excellent way to get laser-targeted traffic to your landing-pages. Okay, that' should be enough. One thing though: you have to write it well. Why? Because you will not win with an article that nobody reads. Steve Friedl is a good writer, that's part of why it is working for him.
- jsn 16y agoI find my customers through the people I know personally, mostly. The relationships are mostly long term, so I don't need many. 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.
- loewenskind 16y agoI can't imagine anyone being happy with 1. That's 5 days of complete unresponsiveness. They don't know that they will blacked out for 5 days and neither do you. And even worse, what happens if at the end of 5 days you realize you took a wrong path on day 2? Now you still have to talk to them after ignoring them for a business week. 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.
- jsn 16y agoWell, it's not a complete blackout; you can provide the 5-day estimate beforehand, you can send progress reports or two along the way. 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.