The myths and truths of what makes a good client and consultant relationship
Written By: Malek Tayara & Andy Longstreth
One of the values we talk about constantly at Slalom is what are we are doing every day to enhance our relationship with our clients — knowing more about clients, deepening our knowledge of their industries, finding ways to connect them. And, besides the business side of things, many times this commitment to being more for our customers results in a long-term friendship.
Nonetheless, stay for any amount of time in the professional services world and you’re sure to hear certain commonplace beliefs about the best practices for client / consultant relationships. Today, we’d like to spend some time investigating these beliefs and discuss what is myth, what is fact, and what is a little bit of both.
Belief #1: If you share your budget with a consultant, you will not get the best price for the work.
A few years ago, one of us was in the market to buy a home. He had clear requirements for layout, the area, and the size and type of house he wanted. Even though his requirements were clear, he still communicated his budget to his realtor, so the realtor was focused on finding a home that fit his needs within his budget.
The same principle applies here: sharing your budget enables us to find the right solution for your business needs. It lets us have valuable conversations focused on your end goals, instead of just how much you can or should pay for a project. If what you want doesn’t fit within your budget, we can be honest about that and solution for what’s going to support your best interest long-term, within the limitations of your budget.
Our end goal is to grow a relationship with you, our client. The best way to grow this relationship is to provide buyers with the best results for their investment. So, it’s in the our best interest to not nickel-and-dime you.
Let’s illustrate this with an example. Recently, we kicked off a commerce project with a Fortune 500 client. The client needed to create a commerce experience that enables their distributors to order online, frees up their sales team to focus on more strategic conversations versus taking in orders from customers, and starts to leverage digital to drive more sales. This solution involves many capabilities including customer experience, a technical implementation, change management for the sales team and distributors, and data analytics/personalization/data science to change encourage more sales.
Let’s consider two potential scenarios to address this ask. In scenario #1, the client does not share their budget and, in scenario #2, the client shares their budget.
Scenario #1 — Budget not shared: We create an end-to-end proposal for the client that involves solutions that end up costing twice the budget the client has to spend. Seeing this, they ask us to create an “ala carte menu” so they can select what they can afford. Ultimately, the buyer decides that at a minimum they should buy the technical solution as that is needed to enable the experience and focus on the other areas at a later phase. The partner implements a very technically sound commerce solution; however, the behavior of the sales team remains the same and a good number of the project goals are not accomplished. The “ala carte” approach may feel immediately satisfactory, but it puts in jeopardy the ability to accomplish larger goals and secure return on your investment.
Scenario #2 — Budget shared: With the budget shared, we now know that the budget available for the project is not going to support an end-to-end solution for the client’s needs. Knowing this, we change our approach entirely. We get together in a meeting with our client and develop a solution together that will maximize the existing budget. During the discussion, we decide to focus the effort on a specific region as well as create an integrated team to lower cost. By taking on some of the development costs, we can leverage the remaining funding to focus on change and data science. Upon completion of the project, the client’s resources are trained with the new software as well as the change and data capabilities and can roll out these capabilities globally. By sharing their budget, the dynamic between us changes towards working together to coming up with the best solution to accomplish the goals for the project within the available funds.
Verdict? It’s a myth.
A good consultant considers him- or herself to be steward of your funds. Transparency creates a more effective relationship around how to best accomplish your goals within the budget available and leaves you with a better long-term solution for your organization.
Belief #2: Consultants want to sell you stuff. They are incentivized to sell, regardless of your needs.
We’ve all been there: You have a specific problem that you need help with. The person sitting across the desk from you says that he can help with that problem — annnnd a dozen other problems that you didn’t even know you had. You find yourself thinking, “No, I don’t want the undercoating on my car.”
While there are certainly individuals that will try to upsell, side sell, and every other kind of sell, a good consultant won’t do this. In the professional services industry, especially consulting, building a long-term relationship trumps a quick sell of a one-time project. Additionally, Slalom’s focus on living and working in the local market means that we’re not going to fly in, sell a project, and then disappear. And that also means that if we overpromised and under-delivered, we can’t simply move on to the next city. It’s a true, two-way street.
This doesn’t mean that we will simply provide what is asked. Instead, it means that we would rather have a discussion with you to ask challenging questions (when appropriate) and help confirm the best solution. In some cases, it actually means providing a smaller (e.g. less expensive) solution by leveraging a mixture of years of experience and roles, rather than always bringing the best possible person with the most experience (which is usually more expensive!).
Verdict? It’s a myth.
Your consultants should be highly motivated to help identify the specific needs of your situation, the team best positioned to deliver, at a price that is within your budget. But we may challenge you, too, because it’s important to be honest and transparent, as well as provide the facts you need to make the decision. Our biggest goal is not a sales revenue figure, but rather repeated ability to provide successful outcomes that help the overall organization and you.
Belief #3: You’ll get better value for your money if you try and squeeze more out of consultants.
Here’s one straight truth: We want to provide our clients as much value for their money as we can within the budget allocated to us. The more value we provide, the more likely a client will buy more work from us in the future.
Things get complicated when clients ask us for more work that is out-of-scope. We try to accommodate what’s possible and reasonable. We try to go the extra mile and do what is right, always (and, yes, that’s a Slalom core value).
However, sometimes it’s just not possible to do more and be fair to both sides. Consultants are people and, frankly, when things go from mutually beneficial to feeling truly unfair, it negatively impacts the long-term health of the relationship. Once a relationship stops being mutually beneficial, human nature tends to avoid putting in the extra effort.
Here’s a real-life example to illustrate this point: Recently, one of us went through a home rehab where he had a fixed price contract with his contractor. As the project progressed, the contractor realized that the project is going to be 20% over budget. He had the legal right to refuse to pay the contractor extra money but, ultimately he knew that doing so would encourage his contractor to hire the cheapest sub-contractors and result in a poor-quality construction that would take twice the time to develop. Instead, he decided to share the burden with his contractor on the overage. In turn, the contractor became motivated to do the right thing because he appreciated how vested I was in his business.
The relationship changed from a contractual one to a personal one; the contractor made sure he has his best people on the job to get the project done on time with the right quality.
As consultants, we naturally want to help our customers — that is why we chose this career. As a human being, we are more likely to go the extra mile to help customers that want to partner with us and care about creating a mutually beneficial relationship.
Verdict? This is mostly myth.
You should have high expectations of your consultants. Just as we discussed our approach to challenge you, when appropriate, you should challenge us as well. When these expectations become unrealistic and results in significant changes in scope of work, partnership is required to identify a mutually beneficial solution, rather than trying to “squeeze” tons of extra work out of consultants.
Belief #4: Consultants are only focused on selling the “next thing,” rather than delivering the current project.
Admittedly, there is some truth to this one. As a consultant, we are constantly keeping eyes and ears open for other opportunities to provide support and successful outcomes for our clients.
That said, if the current project doesn’t achieve the outcomes needed, why would you buy from us again? The model we believe in (and currently work within) is one where we partner to align on what’s needed, push each other to create the best outcomes, identify the best way to achieve them, and align the right combination of capabilities needed to be successful. This is achieved by building a combined, badge-agnostic team to execute the project. The goal is a relentless focus on the outcomes, not how many consultants can we “sell” into the project.
Yes, this is a business and there is money involved. But let’s take a look at the bigger picture and how big it can be when built upon a sustained, successful relationship. Part of the value to you as our client is that we are watching for and identifying additional opportunities to help you out; it’s part of our DNA. Consultants want what is in your best interest — and that is at the core of what is in our best interest, too, as your partner.
Verdict? Some truth here
Selling the “next job” may be the right thing, or it may not be, but never at the sacrifice of ongoing delivery. A good partner will help identify additional outcomes and help you prioritize and create a backlog for continuous improvement or the next great innovation.
Belief #5: We shouldn’t be friends because that breaks the “separation of church and state.”
We are human beings. We know that this is an odd thing to point out, but sometimes when dealing with work we forget the human factor. It’s fact that people are more likely to help each other and invest in each other if they have a connection and relationship that is based on understanding each other’s wishes, desires, and true self.
Do we need to be friends in order for us to complete a job? No, of course not! We can still work together and with your interest in mind even if we’re not socializing outside of work. It’s part of our mutual respect of each other’s space and preferences, if you as the client would rather not mix.
However, we’d like to encourage clients not to strike it from the realm of possibility, especially if you’re thinking that we can’t be friends and also have a professional relationship. In our experience, having a relationship with clients allows us to approach problem-solving from a perspective of trust and makes it possible to work through resolving issues easier and faster.
Having a friendly relationship does not mean that you are not considering your obligations for your job and organization. You can have a friendly relationship and still pushback on your friend, as long as you know that they are vested in your long-term success.
Some of our best friends are the ones that challenge us, right? Ultimately that can make you a better person, as well as a more successful business partner.
Verdict? Plain old myth.
Having a friendly relationship will make your day-to-day work more enjoyable! And you might meet new people that will enrich your life beyond delivering on a contract.
As you probably guessed at the start of this, the short answer is that there is a bit fact and a bit of myth to all of these. The two of us have worked at multiple consulting firms throughout our career and can attest that the best and worst qualities of each of these topics exist at all of them. It really depends on the person that you are partnering with.
Ultimately, then, what matters most is that you are confident in and comfortable with your consultant. The words “trusted advisor” get tossed around a lot — sometimes to the point of being overused — but the reality is that if your consultant isn’t partnering with you in that way, it’s time to rethink that relationship.
And, at the risk of being a Slalom commercial, we will say that we are both here now because we believe that our approach outlined above is the norm. And that is what makes us love our work and the clients that are our partners.
