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When you are a consultant, part of your job is being a salesperson. When we talk about sales people, we often think about people who try to push us into buying something: physical objects, services, software products. As consultants we might also sell all of those, but “sales” is not in our job title, so we should be careful.
What Are We Selling?
IT consultants visit clients to fix problems and/or work on specific projects. Some of us are partners of specific vendors (software or hardware), so sometimes one of our extra goals is to try and sell products from the vendors we work with to the client.
The more obvious sale we are making is of our own services. Getting more work from existing clients who know you (and are hopefully happy with their relationship with you) is easier than finding new clients, so as consultants, we would be happy to continue providing consulting services to this client, asking them for more work, selling them courses, or any other service you may provide.
Where Is The Risk?
Sales is part of our lives, where is the problem here?
The problem is how sales people are perceived. If you ask around “how would you characterize a sales person”, you’ll often get answers like “pushy”, “smooth-talker”, or even “sleazy”. “Technical” or “expert” are pretty much the last words you’ll hear from people describing a sales person. As a consultant who would like to be seen as “technical” and “expert” by the client, we often don’t want to be associated with sales for that reason, even though we know it’s an important part of our business/job.
Trusted Advisor
This is the most prestigious way a client can view a consultant, and this is what most consultants would like to become. A trusted advisor is an objective party whose goal is the benefit of the client. This is the person or persons that the client turns to when they need to make a decision or choose a path, and whose recommendations will usually be much respected.
A trusted advisor cannot be a vendor or a party that has an incentive in the client choosing one way or another, and this is why it will usually be an independent consultant or an objective company. It doesn’t mean that this company or consultant cannot be affiliated with a vendor or technology; it means that they should be transparent about their affiliation, and not let their affiliation interfere with their decision or recommendation and their obligation to act in an objective way.
There is, however, a conflict. If, as a consultant, you have a good relationship with specific vendors, or if you work with a certain technology, what happens if the right decision for the client means they will end up choosing a different vendor or technology that you are less proficient in? Can you be a trusted advisor? Which recommendation will you provide?
Solving the Conflict
There is no easy solution here, as this is a fine line. I believe that consultants should be truthful and honest, and this is the way to become a trusted advisor. If there are few options to choose from and there are no major downsides to the option you are affiliated with (a specific vendor or technology), you can gently push towards your preferred solution. Reasonable ways to do this can be assuring the client that this technology works (because you have experience with it), or that you can continue working with them and helping them to implement it (and if they like and trust you, this will be viewed as a benefit for them).
However, if the better solution is not the one you work with, I think that it would be better to be honest about this. Doing so will increase their trust in you and strengthen your relationship with them. You can also take advantage of this situation: first, maybe you know another consultant that does work with the chosen technology – you can reach out to them and maybe refer the client to them (for the long run, building a relationship with consultants in different areas is great, as they can refer clients to you as well). Second, if you like the client and they like you, you can tell them that the other technology is a better fit for their needs, but suggest keeping their relationship with you (as they already know and trust you) and working on this project together. They trust you and appreciate your technical skills, and if they agree – you will get experience in a new technology while providing your client with the best recommendation for them.
When Projects End
Sometimes projects end, and in these situations a consultant might feel threatened as they might lose a client. A client may ask the consultant to transfer knowledge to other team members, sometime with the intention of ending the relationship with the consultant (not because they are not satisfied, but because they prefer their own team to continue the project). These cases are sometimes well known in advance (like when a project is defined as “developing something and then handing it over to the internal team”), but sometimes it’s not (when there has been a long term relationship and the client decides that they want only in-house employees for this project, for example).
We, as consultants, might want to push back and explain why they need us. A minority of people will even make it difficult to transfer the knowledge; for example, write code that is really hard to read or maintain or will simply transfer the knowledge in a partial or bad way. Such consultants try to “make” the client need them, and I think this approach is a mistake.
No matter what happens, good relationships are important to maintain. Even if you transfer the knowledge and leave this client, if they like and respect you, they will reach out with the next project or when they have a problem. If they are angry at you, you will never hear from them and it might hurt your reputation which will affect other clients as well.
Try to understand that projects end. Find a way to continue working with this client (with new projects you suggest, training, or anything else) or find new clients to work with (your old clients might even refer you or recommend you to other clients).
Remember, the world is small, things you do today will affect your tomorrow. Stay honest, respectful, and clients will appreciate you more and even make you their trusted advisor.
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