How to Succeed as a Consultant

http://unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html

by danielrm26 • 16 years ago

137 27 16 years ago

lsc3• 16 years 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.

techiferous2• 16 years 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• 16 years 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.

lsc3• 16 years 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• 16 years 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.

lsc3• 16 years 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.

loewenskind3• 16 years 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• 16 years 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."

jsn3• 16 years 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).

techiferous2• 16 years ago

"some of my customers look much happier if they get (2)"

It's about feeling in control.

Terry_B3• 16 years 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• 16 years 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?

jsn3• 16 years ago

I 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.

loewenskind3• 16 years ago

I 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.

jsn3• 16 years ago

Well, 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.

jackowayed• 16 years ago

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

leftnode• 16 years ago

Yes, that's fine as a few members recently asked how to be a consultant.

CaptainMorgan• 16 years 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_B3• 16 years ago

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

Terry_B3• 16 years 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?

maerek• 16 years 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• 16 years ago

I recently started consulting for us govt. Such an odd world. Things like #2 are illegal.

loewenskind3• 16 years 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• 16 years ago

That's interesting; I had no idea. How do they manage to make that illegal?

Spoutingshite• 16 years 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• 16 years ago

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