Six Tips for Clients When Buying Consulting Services
Creating a Client-Consulting Service Partnership
Six Tips for Clients when Buying Consulting Services by is one of the best things I have read in the past year. It speaks directly to the things we, as a consulting service firm, deal with every day and provides insight into the consulting firm-customer relationship, especially the first paragraph of #5 where the author discusses the impact of trust.
“The best professional (and personal) relationships are based on trust. When either side needs to go back to the written contract, it usually shows a lack of trust. The written contract should be the last line of defense, not the regular play. This only happens if you are both in it for the long term. Far too many customers shy away from long term relationships – I think it is mostly because they forget (or are not aware of the fact) that trust also comes with verification. Verification is not a negative exercise – the idea is to see if both sides held up their commitments, and when that is not the case a decision needs to be made on what fixes, change requests or compromises are needed.”
The Six Tips:
- Buy on net-value, not on net-cost.
- Decide upfront – Do you want someone to milk the cow for you, or someone who can explain on phone how to milk the cow?
- Make a planned transition from contracting to delivery.
- Choose wisely between Agile and Waterfall.
- Trust and verify.
- Long term relationships between people, not just companies.
Six great tips for forging a long term partnership not just hiring a firm to provide services.
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