Getting the Best Out of Service Clients
Babatope Falade PHRi
Strategy | Management | Public Policy Consulting- Providing managers and leaders in private and public sectors access to competitive knowledge about their operating environment, in both current and future contexts.
The most sensitive part of my work is that clients don't know everything they want.
You see, the management consulting work, especially the customized and non-routine part of it is like a marriage. You need to clarify and clarify.
I ran into trouble one time because the client said the business plan and strategy was at variance with what they had in mind. I took all the blame. Customer is king.
I got a lengthy feedback and rewrote it again, this time the feedback was tougher than the previous one. It seemed they had new ideas everytime. Yes, they were about 5 great people.
Then, I remembered what I used to do when I was in advertising, we called it a contact report. A contact report is a document that captures all your discussions with the client.
You share the contact report after the meeting, and the client will add and subtract.
领英推荐
But I called my own a narrative document. It was basically a tentative flow of the work based on the clients Brief. Once they sign off on it. It reduces the chances for variance in the work.
The truth about this sort of service-business plans, strategy development and growth plans, is that you have to look for the unsaid things. It requires empathy, patience and corporate romance.
I have been to presentations where brands will send you a brief and omit certain things about the brand. Things such as, how dearly they hold the brand and the sort of values they attach to the brand in-house. If you walk in with the best strategy to defeat the Taliban, they won't move. You didn't capture key things.
And it makes sense because the highest paying jobs are those jobs that requires you to stoke or trigger an emotion and favourable action. Ultimately, the tech companies with the highest valuations solve painful problems.
Chocolate is better than munching on raw or dry Cocoa pods. Plantain chips is better and readily available. You can't eat raw plantain in traffic. Gala is great because you don't keep an oven in your car, even in traffic.
If you can figure and manage clients or consumers, you will do well.