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Chapter Four

Managing Client Relationships

Consultants are hired to solve problems, develop strategies, overcome hurdles, and meet goals. Accordingly, most consulting projects will be judged by the success or failure of their strategic or financial objectives. Solve the problem!

But on another level, success as a consultant hinges on how much mutual integrity, trust, communication and understanding are brought to the business relationship. In other words, what kind of bond or connection has been established between a consultant and a client?

In this chapter our contributors share stories, anecdotes, and viewpoints on the topic of how they build relationships with clients. By definition consulting is a client-centric business. That means a relationship-oriented business. The best consultants and firms never forget this. They have an outward focus on the market and on clients. They go to bed thinking about their clients and they get up in the morning thinking about their clients. What more can we do? How can we serve them better? How do we get them to like us better? Where did we go wrong? How can we make it up? Have we anticipated all their needs? The plots and counterplots. If we follow this course, will the client love us more? It’s all about clients, period.

Here our senior consultants explore the challenges involved in telling clients what they need to hear, when it is not necessarily what they want to hear; or how to bring expertise to the table without appearing arrogant or bruising egos. They reveal how most clients want answers, not process, and have little interest in watching a room full of background research unfurled before them. We learn how the best consultants take the long view on their work, understanding when to get out of a project or association, sacrificing short-term income for long-term credibility.

There’s some consultant folk wisdom here, too. Like, never give your client a nickname, because it just might slip out. And here as well are just some colorful recollections of a few among the many interesting characters and personalities met along the way.

In a sense, consulting is about creating a story, as one of our contributor’s concludes, not finding the Holy Grail. Creating that story requires a toolbox of skills, technical expertise, and business experience. But effectively engaging clients in the strategic scenario you’ve created also requires a certain proficiency in the story telling arts. The best consultants learn to speak in a language that people understand. That is, they translate their broad expertise into the local vernacular of their clients’ corporate culture. This is the language not only of project goals but also of the psychology of organizational cultures and human relationships. Or, as one consultant describes, the “people factor in its totality.”

And that, you might say, is the heart of the matter.

“Consulting Was Always About Clients”

Some consulting firms emphasize their products, while others focus on their staff. Obviously both are important. But to me, the business of consulting was always about clients and the building of relationships with those clients. Our end products often are nebulous, and the client must have a strong feeling of trust in the consultant to allow him into his business, to create major changes, and to pay him the big dollars.

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