My experience on the other side of the client relationship

It’s not often I get to experience the other side of the service provider relationship — but when I do, it always teaches me a lot.

As leaders who are trying to grow and scale a business, particularly if we’re in the C-suite, we think we’re supposed to have all the answers. Especially regarding topics that we guide our clients on.

Sometimes, though, we hit a plateau, or we get to a point where we know we can’t do something on our own. There comes a time when we need outside thinking from people who have been there and done that — who bring capabilities and capacity to the table just like we do for our clients.

The process of hiring an outside expert is game-changing because not only do we solve a business need, but we also gain an opportunity to check our ego at the door and grow as leaders.

I’m going through this right now with a strategic growth consultant we hired.

My team and I at Syte have a vision for where we’re trying to go. Because this consultant has been through this growth process before with ERP consulting firms bigger than ours, they have the benefit of hindsight and can guide us from a perspective we simply don’t have in-house yet. They are helping us avoid the potholes and pitfalls that happen when you barrel forward without experience.

Before we connected with this consultant, though, we had to take an important step internally to be ready: We had to recognize that we needed help and it’s not because we’re not good enough.

That alone was a powerful exercise.

Once the Syte team and I took that step, we knew exactly the next steps we needed to take:

1.     Find a consultant who is ahead of us by five or 10 years. This person would have that critical hindsight we needed.

2.     Make sure there was trust and alignment so we could bring our vulnerability to the table. It was important to us that the consultant got us, and we got them. The consultant must speak the same language as we do and have the same background. With this alignment, we could be efficient in the way we worked together. We wanted to be able to throw an idea over the fence and know that the consultant could pick it up and take it to the moon.

Once we found a consultant who fit the bill, decision-making happened quickly because of that shared experience, knowledge and language.

Hiring this strategic growth consultant has already been transformative, and I’m excited to see the growth that’s still to come. It’s freed me up as a leader to take a step back from the day-to-day grind and get insightful new ideas that energize my own thinking and inspire my team.

What’s equally important, though, is that having the experience of being the client lets me bring fresh perspective to Syte client relationships, too. It’s growing our business and making us more effective and impactful for our clients at the same time.

I’m curious. When was the last time you hired an outside expert to guide you in your business? What was your experience like? Let us know your story!