
Ask HN: How do I prepare for a job as an Implementation Consultant? - curiosweti
I have received an outstanding job offer from a startup based on Data privacy products for the role of Implementation consultant.<p>I have been told, I&#x27;ll need to handle the following tasks:
- Presenting the products to the client
- Helping with implementation &#x2F; integration
- Helping the clients with after-sales etc.
- Maybe to conduct workshops every now and then.<p>I&#x27;m currently working as a software dev on an R&amp;D team for building ML prototypes. I understand the job role mentioned mostly is similar to sales engineer..  but this is the first time I will be taking on such a role.<p>Is there something I need to prepare in terms of tools&#x2F;methodologies etc before starting the new job?<p>PS: The startup is not based in my country, I will be mostly working with just a single other coworker, so mostly on my own<i>
======
Benjammer
R&D ML software dev --> Implementations Consultant seems like a pretty drastic
change in roles. You're going from a very technical role to something that is
very fundamentally soft-skills based. You'll be a communication pipeline
between your company's sales and product teams, and your clients. You'll need
to learn how to deeply investigate a client and figure out their needs, in a
short amount of time, and then translate that foreign data into your internal
company "language" and goals framework. You'll be dealing with two sets of
politics at once, and be expected to move and translate seamlessly between the
two. You're fundamentally a diplomat. Your technical background will help you
establish authority for what you're talking about, and your problem-solving
skills will be invaluable when investigating new clients.

(disclaimer: This is all assuming that "implementations" works the way it has
at the several B2B software companies I've worked at as a developer. It sounds
the same from the short description given, but you never know with a new
employer.)

~~~
curiosweti
Yes, it is indeed a huge shift for me. I do prefer still working on Computer
Vision / ML / AI projects but my current job is not offering much in terms of
growth or learning. Since I dont have that much experience in the domain of
Data Science, its currently hard to land such a profile in a good company in
my country.

I see this new job as a chance to explore more opportunities while building my
AI/ML profile on the side.

What would be some tools or processes that would help me keep track of all the
client's concerns and effectively communicate with the clients and make sure
there is progress when it comes to implementations?

~~~
richem
I've been in a similar position for close to a decade now. One of the most
effective things I can tell you to do is make sure that you document and ask
for verification of any deliverables or requirements. Send summary emails
(either after each meeting/or weekly) to make sure that everyone agrees with
your understanding in writing and that nothing is missing. I've had multiple
clients say something along the lines of "We never agreed to that" but when
I've been able to show them an email it helps change the mood of the
discussion. Then it becomes a change to the project rather than something you
initially missed and now have to finagle. "If it's not documented it didn't
happen" is an effective phrase to live by when dealing with clients, even the
nice ones. You don't have to be aggressive, always be polite but firm. You can
see how the engagement progresses and change things up if the client is more
laid back. Additionally, keep track of the overall schedule, and make sure to
point out things that will take you away from delivering on the schedule. I've
had multiple clients ask for 1 or 2 side things and then complain when
schedules slip. If you ensure they understand what the implications of
additional work are (in writing) then you'll save yourself some hassles down
the road.

~~~
RangerScience
When you need to push back against a client with that kind of "we talked about
it, here's the documentation", what kind of language do you use... I guess
when being "polite but firm"?

~~~
richem
I try to take the stance that they simply forgot about the previous
conversations or agreements. That generally has worked for me and keeps people
from losing too much face which additionally helps keep everyone on the same
side. Everyone forgets sometimes, sometimes its a genuine memory lapse and
other times not so much. I've used variations of the following numerous times
to decent result:

"Hi <so and so>, we talked about this matter last in <this email chain or that
meeting>, I'm attaching the last <email/meeting summary>. If there's a need to
readdress this <situation/decision>, please feel free to let me know and we
can setup a meeting to further discuss."

That establishes what you consider to be the facts, based on whatever evidence
you are attaching, and doesn't necessarily place you at odds with the client.
You always need to figure out how to balance your client relationship with
your project needs. Sometimes you may need to give a bit on the project needs
to keep the client content but that is surprisingly less than most consultants
think.

I've had several clients come back to me after an engagement has completed and
mention that they were being intentionally difficult to see what else they
could get but documentation helped prevent too much excess on my part. I've
even been in the situation where I have acted as the client when dealing with
vendor implementation teams and told specifically to be difficult to see what
else we could get.

~~~
RangerScience
Interesting. Thanks for the insight and advice!

To reflect back what I'm seeing in your language use - to see if I've gotten
the gist of it - your subtext / authoring attitude is "ah, you just forgot,
let me simply re-inform" but you also don't bother mentioning any particular
reason.

------
gresrun
My recommendation is to hone your "soft skills": make sure you're on top of
communication (be quick to respond to clients and don't let emails sit for
more than 24 hours), be patient (working with clients means a wide variety of
team dynamics and work paces), be humble yet confident (clients like help but
they also want to "be right"), and prepare for the politics inevitably dumped
onto outside consultants (consultants often are called in to make hard calls
that internal teams don't want to make for political reasons).

------
dougmwne
Go round up every elderly family member you have and teach them and all of
their friends. Tell them you have a work project they can help you with.
Interview them to see if there's some new capability they would want their
phone to have. Then teach them how to use the new app or solve their issue.
Try to do this all over the phone (don't give your elderly family the COVID)
and guide them through it without being able to look at their phone screen. I
give this advice because you are already highly technical and communicating
with the engineers should be pretty easy for you.

This might sound a bit silly, but there's a significant overlap with your new
role. You'll be needing to work with a lot of people with a vastly different
level of technical knowledge. You'll need to do this without a guarantee that
you'll get much face to face time with them at all. There will be limits to
your client's attention span and willingness to participate. Your patience
will be tested. You will be doing your best to communicate with each other,
but it will be like ships passing in the night.

It's also a hugely rewarding role, in my opinion, since you will be helping to
shape a client's future success with the product in a big way.
Congratulations!

------
xhedley
Realise that you will be a translator who is paid to understand the technical
enough and the business enough that the project can have a conversation.

As far as tools and methodologies - you have to use what your customers use to
communicate. It may just be emails as some of the other commenters have said -
have a meeting, write up the notes, email the notes.

Once you are past design stage and into user acceptance test and go live you
will need an issue tracking tool. Maybe your customer’s IT department has a
help desk system that you can integrate with. Be very cautious of using
unsecured SAAS products - only document security issues about your
implementation on Google sheets if you are 100% confident of who can see it. I
am never that confident and want to work somewhere the customer’s IT security
is happy with.

I would recommend the book Flawless Consulting by Peter Block. It’s about
management consulting at a more senior level than implementation consulting
but the points about agreeing with the customer what they need to provide to
you for you to do your job are very valuable.

You need to explain to your customer the consequences of choices. Sales are
often happy to say “yes we can build that”. But really the standard
configuration takes 1 month to implement, 30 custom features take much longer.

Disclaimer I moved from functional into implementation (accountant into
implementing finance systems) which is different from technical into
implementation.

~~~
curiosweti
Yes, thank you for giving a heads up over the security issue especially for a
startup working on data privacy

------
jg_hn
So this is a pretty wide-ranging role, although that's not unusual for small
companies/startups.

Typically the skillsets for a sales engineer/consultant and a post-sales
engineer/implementation consult are overlapping but different.

In many organizations the pre-sales engineers are there to answer technical
questions during the sales process - "will this integrate with X?" "can I
solve Y problem?" "how many concurrent users does this support?"

The post-sales consulting team is there to actually wire up the integration
with X, solve Y problem, and tune the performance to support Z concurrent
users.

The challenge with a hybrid role is balancing zooming out to being aware of
the strategic "making the sale" parts of being a sales engineer to the super
low-level nuts and bolts connecting things together of post-sale consulting.

In either case clear communication and listening are the key skills I would
work on. The ability to actually hear what a customer wants, and clearly
communicate that you understand what they want and can deliver it is a
difference maker on either side of a sale.

I've worked in both roles, both are rewarding and frustrating for their own
reasons - good luck!

~~~
curiosweti
Thank you, since i'll be one of two consultants in my country for the said
startup, I will need to take up a wide-ranging role.

I have a huge learning curve ahead of me and want to prepare beforehand, so I
don't get too overwhelmed.

------
phibz
One thing I've learned about startups is that things are always in flux. I
would expect your responsibilities to move and shift with time and with
different clients.

The position sounds like it will lean heavily on communication and social
skills. You will likely want to build a strong relationship with your sales
staff and your client.

If in the course of work changes arise make sure you coordinate with your
company and do not over promise or move too far from the core solution.

The best thing that will prepare you is to go in with an open mind and do your
best. Try not to stick to preconceived ideas of what the job is.

And most of all, be prepared to work hard.

------
ghostool
I'm considering a similar opportunity. The implementation role I've been
offered will be crucial in securing longer-term contracts for my employer. I'm
curious what variable-compensation structures others have seen for this sort
of position. Is it reasonable to expect a percentage of successfully secured
longterm contracts, or something based on retention? Aside from an equity
package, how can someone in this position be incentivized in a way
commensurate with their value?

~~~
josephmosby
It depends on whether you are expected to participate in those sales cycle
discussions or not.

If your role is to hang out at your desk until someone sells your
implementation services, then no, you will probably not get commission on
sales. You should demand a fixed salary comparable to if you were a SWE
working on the product directly.

If you are expected to participate in the sales cycle in some way (like
stitching together a demo), you will probably receive some sort of commission.

This is a pretty fair thing to ask about in an interview or in comp
discussions. "Am I expected to be involved in sales efforts, or am I simply
deployed after the sale?" Adjust salary/commission demands accordingly.

------
shsachdev
Hey OP,

I'm a technical account manager / CSM and your role honestly sounds a lot like
mine. Did a writeup of my role here:
[https://www.careerfair.io/reviews/customersuccessmanager](https://www.careerfair.io/reviews/customersuccessmanager)

Hope you find it useful. Lmk if any questions :)

------
swati_ucl
You are switching from a technical to a non-technical job. your job role and
responsibility will be fully changed. communication skills(Kindness,
Politeness, Empathy) will play a key role here. But as you are from a
technical background this is a plus point with you.

------
tobib
The best person to answer that question is your future manager.

------
nogabebop23
how did you get the job without really knowing how you were going to fulfill
the requirements?

~~~
curiosweti
I know the job requirements. I was asked to interview with them, thanks to my
technical background and presentation skills, I was offered the role.

I'm just asking to make sure I'm prepared. There's always something to learn
from other people with significantly more experience.

------
greeniron
so you're essentially going to become a Technical Project Manager. that's
interesting - i'm searching for TPM jobs, maybe i should include
implementation consultant postings as well.

~~~
curiosweti
They have told me that my title will be "Implementation Consultant" but im
expected to do sales, integration, support etc.

Thats also mostly because they dont have a team in my country as such. I have
only one other co-worker who does everything but doesn't belong from a
technical background.

I will be doing everything he does and also handle the technical issues.

------
psmithsfhn
qualifier: i don't know anything about anything.

that said, here is my _expert_ advice:

* no, you do not need to prepare. if you have a heartbeat and a tiny bit of common sense, you can do this role extremely well. and most other roles. it's glorified customer service, with some extra nerdiness thrown in. not hating - some roles do require special skill sets outside of the obvious - this role is not one of them. i mean, there are non-proactive folks littering every position in the enterprise -- which cracks me up -- but i'm assuming that you are not stupid and/or lazy.

* there are some sales and even sales engineering books/course/etc. out there. most are terrible, or worse, especially the ones that people 'highly recommend', but i do feel like learning to sell/sales is double-plus-good. one core aspect is learning to ask good/probing questions, and then learning to shut up and listen. ask follow-ups. rinse/repeat. asking about 'business goals' to the higher-ups is generally a good-ish thing. and you can't avoid nerding out with the nerd team from the other side - but that's easy/fun, and they will dig that you are technically sound. but the business folks won't necessarily care about bits/bytes -- learning their actual uses cases, business model, etc. will go a long way towards earning their respec/trust.

* like hostage negotiations, 'no' is generally a word you want to avoid. better: "I don't know if we can do that out of the box, but I will check into that and get back to you." basically, don't throw your salesperson under the bus. you might see some stuff about the importance of qualifying leads to make sure you don't sell to the wrong customer, etc. -- ignore it -- it's just puritanical, nonsensical grandstanding.

* don't slack/teams/email/text to folks (like a teammate) during a demo -- because.

* being responsive is really cool, but like any position, be careful of burnout.

* i think having realistic expectations about what you can get Engineering to do in terms of easing onboarding is important. e.g. 15 min of ENGR time can cut your customer onboarding time from 2 weeks to 2 hours? yeah, don't count on it happening. else, you'll pretty quickly mentally check out. lobby and document, make your case, but stay measured. find a way to tie the shorter onboarding time to increased revenue, etc., and now you got something.

* if you can get access to and own the documentation/training process, you will actually save yourself tons of time. at least the API/dev/integration docs. you want to be able to go to the source doc and fix something immediately without overhead process. kind of obvious, but....same thing, temper your expectations. if you have to do some things manually with each install, you're not going to die. even small improvements will keep you motivated/hopeful.

* assuming you do get a new customer up and running -- it would be nice to survey them and get their feedback on what could have been better. yeah, asking for work, and i've never done it, but...i feel like most people are lazy idiots. and/or scared. so it prob won't happen unless you do it, or unless you have a competent customer success department already (do they exist?).

* with your documentation, spell it out. you're _right there_. your 'customer' is 'in market'. just tell them how to use your stuff. in detail. if you want to link out to supporting docs, fine. but why deliver them only 73% of the way to the promised land? take them all the way there.

* i like the idea of filing feature/change requests, especially for usability things. Product Managers have 8 trillion things to worry about, and even if they're geniuses, they are going to lose the ability to see the product with fresh eyes. they will _not_ be able to comprehend how _anyone_ could possibly not understand exactly how to fill out fields x, y, and z on some page - that's ok - you can fill the gap. this doesn't really matter except that it will annoy your PM and make your product a lot better. kind of up to you if you want to go that route. helpful to have these conversations offline before you document, in the (virtual) coffee room, if you can, b/c once you file a Jira - it's like an affront to the PM. not sure why - it just is. in fairness to the PM, they've usually considered a feature request from 20 diff angles, so even if they have an obvious blind spot, their expertise/experience can help you clarify your own thinking.

best of luck! please give yourself a calendar reminder for 1 year from now and
tell us how it's going! :-D

~~~
curiosweti
Thank you so much for the comment (I chuckled quite a bit).

The biggest worry I have right now is after a while I might just start getting
bored or frustrated. I love learning new things and building too.

Lets see, how it all turns out.. HN wont let me update you after a year
though, the post will get archived :(

