Consulting Journal: Style - Golden rules with clients

Style: Golden rules with clients

by David Blakey

Here are my golden rules of behaviour when you are with a client.

[Wednesday 20 June 2001]

In general

Don't talk about yourself any more than you need to.

It is easy to get ‘carried away’ in conversation and to respond at the same length and with the same detail as your client. You should always let the client tell you more about them than you tell them about you. Talking about oneself is a way of making oneself more comfortable. It is something that you should encourage your clients to do without having a need to do it yourself.

Don't say anything that you don't sincerely mean.

Never say anything to a client because you think that it is what they want to hear. This obviously applies to business discussions, but also to general conversation. If a client tells you that they do something stupid or dangerous in their spare time, do not tell them that you have always wanted to do it too. Remember that you have life insurance policies and that doing these things can invalidate them.

Be enthusiastic.

You should be consistently enthusiastic about your work, about your client and about your assignment. This enthusiasm must be genuine. Following the previous point, about sincerity, you must be sincerely enthusiastic. If you are not, you should not be doing the assignment.

Listening to your clients

Don't be too diplomatic.

Some consultants seem to adopt an obsequious position when with clients. If a client is clearly doing something wrong or is talking nonsense, then you should point this out. You should not nod and making noises of agreement, while planning how you can correct the errors later, as this will reinforce them in the client's mind. Question them, confirm that they are wrong, and then correct them.

Don't become acquiescent.

In other situations, you may not understand what the client is saying. You don't know that the client is wrong, but you're not sure if they are right. Again, if you nod and make noises of agreement, you are confirming to the client that they are right. You should question what the client is saying, so it is clear in your own mind that what they are saying is correct.

Don't be negative.

If it is logical and needful for you to present an alternative, then you should certainly do so. What you should not do is to express doubts about other people's ideas without having a sound basis for your doubts and without a real need to express those doubts at the time. In many cases, your criticisms can be saved for an appropriate setting.

Always listen to the answers to your questions.

There is little point in making sure that you always ask open questions, rather than questions that require just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, if you are going to treat the answers as if they were just ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Making recommendations

Explain the benefits of any suggestion or request.

As well as explaining the benefits, you should always check that your explanation has convinced the client to do what you suggest.

Be positive without being dogmatic.

Continue to explain the benefits without saying things like ‘This is the accepted way of doing it’. In most cases, clients want what is good for them, and it is irrelevant to them whether that is what most consultants recognize as ‘doctrine’.

Be consistent.

If your views change, then explain the process of that change to your client. You should not have any problem with being consistent if you have a sound knowledge of business. Most inconsistencies in consulting advice have occurred because of fads which consultants embraced unthinkingly at one time and have since rejected.

Be objective.

There are occasions when subjectivity is used for decisions. You should avoid being involved in these decisions.

Getting action

Don't overreact when you are faced with apathy or indifference.

First, find out why your recommendations are receiving this reaction. Then, if you can, try presenting them differently to convince people that they have value. If you cannot, and if you are convinced that the people involved will always be apathetic or indifferent, then have them removed from an active role on your team. Don't antagonize them; you do not need apathy to become resistance.

(You should also be aware that, in many organizations, these people rise through the hierarchy. They do this by being seen never to back bad ideas and never to oppose good ones.)

Don't try to manipulate people.

This is good advice in any situation, but it is especially relevant to consulting. You make find yourself dealing with awkward people who resist your recommendations or even your direct orders. The best ways to deal with these people are, first, persuading them through logical discussion, and then, if that fails, having them removed from your team.

Getting results

Don't confuse activity with results.

You have seen the problem with poor project managers: they concentrate on the tasks rather than the objectives. Their projects lose direction. It does not matter how hard someone is working and how may hours they are putting in. If they are not producing results, their effort is wasted. Apply this rule to yourself as well as to others.

Criticism

Discuss performance rather than personality.

You should always focus on actions that failed to meet expectations rather than people who failed. At the same time, avoid using a passive voice. If X did not work hard enough at completing a task, say ‘X's effort on the task was insufficient’ rather than ‘X is lazy’ or ‘The task was given insufficient effort’. It will be unarguable that X's effort was insufficient, whatever the cause.

Don't criticize your competitors.

Few actions by consultants look worse than criticism of competitors. In many instances, clients genuinely find little to differentiate you from your competitors. In fact, there may be less differentiation than your own consulting company or firm likes to acknowledge.

Don't criticize your superiors or subordinates.

It is important that you present a united front to your clients, even when you believe that someone else in your company has given a client inappropriate advice. (This would be the only situation in which you might find yourself criticizing someone else to a client. Any other area of criticism is certainly bad manners and possibly against the law.) There may be a good reason for that advice, or there may have been a good reason for it at the time that it was given. You should wait and raise the issue with the person involved.

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