Honest consulting
April 28th, 2006 by Peter Scott
On a follow-up to my last post Beth wrote: It's been my experience that clients appreciate honest (yet tactful) discussions with the techies when making their decisions. She is absolutely right. I can remember at least two occasions where customers specifically asked to have me on a project because of my honesty.
The first time was when I was doing some work for a government agency that needed to interconnect several databases spread across a wide area. We quickly worked out a secure and inexpensive way to do what they required. After that initial engagement I was invited to a high level meeting where I was introduced ‘this is Peter, he’s not like our IT people, if he says something can’t be done it’s because it’s not safe to do it’
A more recent time was when I was requested to work on an ERP implementation project for some people that I had worked for in the past. Now, you would know from you may have read here, I am not an OLTP person so was perhaps not the natural technical choice. However the customer wanted someone who would think and tell it like it is.
In both case I was working as a trusted advisor. You can’t do that without respect from the customer, both for your technical skills and your honesty.
Oh, and take a look at Beths’ blog. I’m not saying that because she has put up a link to my blog, nor because she used to work for the same company as me; they are both facts though, but because she writes well and has something interesting to say.
April 30th, 2006 at 5:35 am
Thanks Pete!
Here’s another “Customers Appreciate Honesty” example from my own experience:
On a presales visit I once had to explain that the terminals they were about to buy (over 1,000 of ‘em) were not sized to work with the software we wished to sell them. Worse, even if we figured out a way to make the terminals work initially, we were quite certain they’d be unhappy within two years — based on our extensive experience within their industry.
Two other vendors were vying for the same business, and knew the same hardware constraints and industry trends we did. But, they hadn’t been willing to risk a sale by being explaining the situation to the customer. We won the customer’s trust that day, and eventually won the sale.