I've been thinking a lot about what makes good consulting relationships. It's something I've wanted to talk about for a while, but I quickly realised I could never summarise it in a post, or ten.
That said, there's a small number of things that have made a BIG difference to me
I stumbled into a lot of them through luck, and very kind people giving me a hand. So I'm hoping that sharing them will give someone else a bit of a leg up.
I've put them in a blog post but here are some highlights I believe particularly strongly.
First: if you're in an agency, your clients are your colleagues.
Any agency thinking about "culture" and ways to help their team progress HAS to include the sales process in those considerations. I was very pleased when I joined Aira and saw this was already par for the course
Next - it's not your job to know all the answers. It's your job to help your clients FIND answers.
This is a really important distinction. At the very least it'll massively reduce your stress levels on client calls.
Relatedly - it's FINE to guess and say you're guessing, or show your working. In fact - I've found that the more I've spoken my thoughts out loud, the smoother things have gone.
Sometimes people just want an educated guess, or they just want to know you CARE about the work.
Finally - there are a few tips in the post which I think have helped me make agencies some money (I think one tip has made at least £600K in passive upsells) but it's NEVER your job to twist your recommendations to make more money.
There's much more in the post but that should give you an idea of the kind of thing to expect. I'd love to hear what you think of it!
hubs.ly/Q011GQc80
Big thanks to @the_timallen , @SamuelMng, and @areej_abuali for contributing perspectives as people who have worked on both sides of the fence.
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