
How to Succeed as a Consultant - danielrm26
http://unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html
======
jsn
_Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm)._
_Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the
technical business._

Here's the most counter-intuitive part of it -- or at least it took me the
longest to figure out. The "aha" moment came after two or three years of full
time consulting.

So, you're missing the final deadline on the project. You're missing it bad,
your customer needs it done like a week ago. No matter how hard you try,
you'll need another week or two to complete the project.

Now, your options are:

1) get a metric ton of coffee, disconnect the phone, lock the door, go
completely into death march crunch mode, work till you start seeing things and
hearing voices from sleep deprivation, and deliver the product in 5 days, or

2) visit your customer every day in person, looking normal, spend 2 hours with
them discussing what is done, what problems slow you down, what will be done
next, etc, and deliver the product in 10 days, probably cutting features like
there is no tomorrow.

Now, if I am the customer in this scenario, I totally prefer (1) -- especially
since I need it a week ago. The thing is, some of my customers look _much_
happier if they get (2). In fact, they are nervous, unhappy and angry when
they get (1), and they look calm, satisfied and friendly when they get (2).

~~~
csallen
How do you find most of your customers? What are your thoughts on the author's
point that writing technical articles is one of the best methods?

~~~
jsn
I find my customers through the people I know personally, mostly. The
relationships are mostly long term, so I don't need many.

I never wrote technical articles, so no opinion on that; should work pretty
well, theoretically. I do have a blog, though; it's rarely about anything
work-related (mostly arm-chair microeconomics and libertarian studies these
days). Even while being an off-topic, the blog still helps me to meet
interesting people, and some of them become my customers later.

------
lsc
>When I go into the bank and find a long line to reach a teller, it's of
course frustrating. Mentally, I start a timer in my head, and the longer the
timer goes the worse of an experience it is. What stops the timer? Leaving the
bank?

>No. — It's "reaching the teller".

This is the hardest customer service lesson to learn for many, many technical
people, including myself and many of the people I've hired.

the thing is, for me, that clock stops when I leave the bank. I don't see how
waiting for the teller is any better than waiting in line.

But it's very clear to me that Steve's article is correct for most people. The
thing is, if a task is going to take from 2-48 hours, and you email them and
say "I got your order, you will be up in two to 48 hours" and you convince
them it's not an autoresponder, for some reason, they will be quite a bit
happier than if you write the exact text on the order page, or send them an
autoresponse with the same text.

I don't know /why/ this is... I mean, it's not that way for me. But it is, and
it's been hard for me and my people to learn and implement this. But we need
to do it if we want to branch out into the higher margin, higher support
markets.

~~~
techiferous
I find it very interesting that user interfaces work the same way. If I click
on something and it doesn't do _anything_ , it is much more frustrating than
if it immediately presents me with an hourglass or beachball for a few
seconds.

~~~
robryan
Not doing anything makes people feel a lot more like there is an error. At
least with an hourglass the program/website has acknowledged the click enough
to display an image. Many people probably don't realise though a loading
spinner is usually very loosely connected to whether the thing they have
clicked on is actually doing anything or not.

------
Terry_B
When people say consulting, they seem to mostly be referring to web
development it seems. I'm more of a software guy. With web development I'm
guessing that finding customers is a bit easier because people tend to know
that they need a new website and go looking for someone to build it.

Software is usually solving a more difficult to define problem and the
customer might not even realise they need a software solution or what it
should look like.

Does anyone have any experiences and advice for how they find customers for
work other than web dev?

------
Terry_B
There's another good guide here by HN user jacquesm:
<http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant>

------
jackowayed
This was posted a year ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411994>

~~~
leftnode
Yes, that's fine as a few members recently asked how to be a consultant.

------
Spoutingshite
I found this article very interesting.

I reminded me of Gerald Weinbergs three rules of consulting: 1) Its always a
people problem 2) Its always a people problem 3) you get paid by the hour and
not by the result

His point is that it is often hard to fix a problem quickly because the
'problem' is often a side effect of a bigger 'people problem'.

------
maerek
Some very good points FTA:

1: _Provide time-billing transparency_ 2: _Give away some free time, but make
it visible_

#2 was a very obvious point, but one that I hadn't really thought about until
reading it. Qualifying the value you're providing can definitely improve the
relationship you have with your customer.

~~~
anotherjesse
I recently started consulting for us govt. Such an odd world. Things like #2
are illegal.

~~~
kragen
That's interesting; I had no idea. How do they manage to make that illegal?

~~~
bhousel
It's often illegal for government employees or agencies to accept certain
kinds of 'gifts'. It definitely depends on how strictly they follow the rules.

------
known
How to succeed as a _lawyer_?

