5 Reasons I’m Grateful for My Clients After 40+ Years of Consulting

Adrian Segar working with clients at a 2019 peer conferenceI got my first paid consulting job in 1983, solving IT problems for a lumber yard. I’ve been a consultant ever since. I’m so grateful to the hundreds of clients I’ve served over the last 40+ years.

Here are five reasons why I’m grateful for my clients.

1—It’s always a people problem

I was a technology nerd when I got that first gig. I was your guy if you had a problem with personal computers, flaky local area networks, or database systems. It took me about five years of having CEOs confiding to me their non-technical woes despite being hired to solve “tech” problems to learn the truth of Weinberg’s Second Law of Consulting:

“No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem.”

I became fascinated by the culture of organizations. As an outsider, I marveled at the variety of dysfunctions I observed. Over time, I got better at solving the people problems I uncovered. Eventually, I realized I was more interested in working with people than technology.

Without the copious experiences of people problems that my clients provided, I’d never be doing what I love today: facilitating connection between people.

2—My clients allow me to try new things

My clients come to me with problems they can’t (at the time) solve. As I work with them they give me opportunities to try new things. Yes, occasionally, I discover I already know how to solve their problems, but that’s rarely the case. My clients’ wants and needs challenge me to be creative.  I invariably end up recommending and doing things I’ve never tried before. Consequently, I learn about what works and what doesn’t. My knowledge base and skill set expand.

Because my clients allow me to try new things, I become a better consultant.

3—My clients are my teachers

I’m grateful for my clients because I learn from them. Here are a couple of examples.

Improving Conferences That Work

I designed and facilitated my first peer conference in 1992. I ran them in my spare time for thirteen years before writing my first book. Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love took four years to write. Having spent seventeen years developing the why and how of peer conferences, you might reasonably expect that the book provided a somewhat definitive guide for peer conference rationale and design.

Not so.

I’m still proud of how well Conferences That Work lays out the fundamental reasons for the importance and value of peer conferences. However, it turned out that the implementation sections, adequate for their day, had some important gaps and limitations. When it was published in 2009, my peer conference work exploded.

And, my goodness, I got feedback! It was great feedback. Clients critiqued the approaches I’d developed. Participants said, “Why don’t you do that this way?” It was scary but exciting because much of the feedback included great ideas.

The result was that I wrote two supplements to the book that I published in 2013 and 2015. They included everything I’d learned from my clients that improved peer conferences. I made them free to download. It seemed the least I could do.

Getting thoughtful specific feedback

This doesn’t happen very often. But last week I received a long email from a client whom I’d consulted a couple of times on the design of her organization’s online conferences. After sharing that “our second peer conference was even better than our first” she gave details of “three tweaks…that worked really well for us”.

Her process changes were extraordinarily well-described, creative, and innovative! So good, that I expect to write about them on this blog soon.

Feedback like this is a gift that helps me improve my craft.

4—My clients get me more work

During my 20+ year IT consulting career, word of mouth generated all of my work!

Today, because consulting on meeting design and facilitation is a niche practice, marketing via sharing my website posts with subscribers and on social media has also become a significant source of new clients. When potential clients visit this site, they can view my sample client list, assuring them I have credible authority as a consultant.

5—My clients pay me for work I love to do

Yes, I do pro-bono work (e.g. industry education). And I’m happy to discuss innovative ways of getting paid. (No, not by “exposure”.) But, otherwise, my clients pay me for work I love to do.

How cool is that!

Thank you

Finally, I also want to thank everyone who isn’t a client (yet) who has given me feedback over the years.

That includes the ~2,000 folks who have commented on this blog, my professional friends and colleagues, in person and on social media, and tens of thousands of participants who have supported my work and continue to help me learn and grow.

Thank you.

I’m grateful for you.

How to attract great consulting clients

Attracting great consulting clients: photograph of Adrian Segar—in striped shirt—working with participants during a peer conference
These days I am blessed with clients who are a joy to work with. But that wasn’t always true. Here’s how I learned to attract great consulting clients.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway. Everything that follows assumes that you have something of value to offer potential clients, you’re competent enough to supply it and have a realistic opinion about your worth. If you’re looking to get consulting work but don’t have all the requisite skills or expect to be paid unrealistic fees, this post won’t help you. But if you are a consultant who somehow keeps ending up with difficult clients, read on!

In the beginning…

In 1984, after careers in academia and small business, I began a consulting journey that has continued to this day.

Running a monthly local community group—the Southeastern Vermont Computer Users Group, long defunct—exposed me to businesses that needed advice and support on using these new-fangled “personal computers”. They hired me. Early on, I remember telling my wife that I had a few months of work booked but didn’t know if there would be more. After about five years of making similar statements, she pointed out that I probably didn’t need to worry too much.

Wondering about how much work I’d get, I accepted everything I was offered that I could do.

And sometimes, that didn’t work so well.

Three lessons learned

Charging enough

A local lumber mill offered me my first IT consulting job. I had no idea how much to charge, so I asked a friend. He asked me the hourly rate I thought I should ask for. When he heard my answer he laughed and said, “Double that!”

He was right. I had been doubting my value. The client didn’t even question my fee, and neither have hundreds of subsequent clients. Over the subsequent years, I discovered the truth of one of my mentor’s Secrets of Consulting:

“The more they pay you, the more they love you. The less they pay you, the less they respect you.”
Jerry Weinberg, one of his ten laws of pricing

In fact, if a potential client tries to aggressively negotiate with me over my fee, it’s a warning sign that our relationship is going to be less than ideal.

Working for free

I was once asked for a detailed proposal to fix problems with a client’s complicated database management system. The client told me they’d fired their previous consultant. I spent a significant amount of time determining possible solutions and submitted a comprehensive proposal. Imagine my disappointment when the potential client gave the proposal to the supposedly “ex-” consultant and told him to implement my solution.

This taught me an expensive lesson.

Since then, I simply won’t do creative work for clients without payment. I’m happy to have an initial call (typically 30 – 60 minutes) without charge and send a general proposal. But I won’t work after that point without a signed contract.

My advice: avoid any potential client who insists on detailed creative ideas before a contracted relationship exists.

Depending on trust—but getting it in writing

I used handshake agreements for years. They worked almost perfectly for me, but that’s because I eventually discovered I have a good (though not infallible) intuitive sense of whom to trust. But eventually, I began requiring written contracts for one important reason.

A written contract is a great tool to minimize misunderstandings.

Despite my best attempts to clearly communicate and agree on task scope, execution logistics, and the many other components of a professional relationship, I still find that what ends up in my head can be different from my client’s understanding. The creation of a signed written contract, which sometimes goes through a few drafts, is a great process to maximize the likelihood that our expectations match. And it acts as a great de-escalation tool if one of us forgets what we’ve agreed to.

The most effective way to attract great clients

But the best way I’ve discovered to attract great clients is to know who I am and share myself publicly.

What does that mean?

It means continuing to learn as much about my core self as possible, figuring out my mission, and sharing who I am with anyone who’s interested.

For example, this blog includes hundreds of articles posted over the last 16 years. Those who care can learn about my views on a wide range of topics, such as meeting design, facilitation, consulting, life lessons, facilitating change, the meeting industry, personal effectiveness, technology, and much more.

I’ve been happy to participate in many video interviews and podcasts, allowing people to learn more about my ideas, approaches, and personality.

On Twitter, I post on an even wider range of subjects, sharing content and ideas I like as well as, these days, a lot of political commentary.

Though I’m well aware that I, like everyone, still maintain personas, I continue to try to minimize the difference between the me I present to the world and who I truly am.

Allowing potential clients to see who I am helps them decide whether I might be a good fit to work with. Sharing who I am attracts those who like what they see. And, I’ve found, I’m likely to like them too! Which, as Seth Godin points out, can be a win-win:

“Like your customers and they’re more likely to like you back.”
—Seth Godin, The likable brand (or person)

How to attract great consulting clients

To summarize, let’s assume you can be of value to potential clients. Then to attract great consulting clients, you need to do three things:

  • Learn how to identify and say no to potential clients who are not looking for a win-win relationship with you.
  • Work to understand who you really are and your mission in life, and then be that person (no games). This is probably the hardest step. But it pays rich dividends in so many ways, not just in your professional life.
  • Market yourself—your core beliefs, skills, and personality—to potential clients. Those who have a need for your services and like what they learn about you will be drawn to get in touch.

That’s my recipe for attracting great consulting clients. It’s been working for me for years. If you’re a consultant who ends up with difficult clients more than you would like, I hope it helps you too!

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

 

 

Idea: Develop products and services with clients at conferences

Develop products and services with clients at conferences: a black-and-white photograph of a smiling British police officer wearing a helmet and multiple items of equipment around his bodyDid you know that at Axon’s annual user conference, Accelerate, participants help design new company products that address their needs? This is clearly a potential win-win for both Axon and its clients. It surprises me that more organizations don’t use their events to develop products and services.

Axon is better known under its old name of Taser International, initially a supplier of “weapons that are less lethal than firearms”, now the largest manufacturer of body cameras.

I’m not going to delve into any controversy around Axon’s products here, though this New Yorker article‘s nuanced perspective makes it well worth reading. Here’s an excerpt that focuses on the Axon-participants product development process:

Smith cruised through the hotel basement, on his way to an “ideation session” led by an expert from Google. The room was full of police officers, trying to design a product to address a need they had decided on as a group: how to reassert the rule of law. (Other problems that made it to the whiteboard: “getting older,” “too much equipment,” “scentless mary jane.”) The Google expert handed out materials—rainbow-colored glitter pipe cleaners, Play-Doh, pompoms, construction paper—and the officers broke into teams to try to figure out how to get back some respect…

…Smith stopped by a table where a team had come up with a hands-on way of reëstablishing authority: a modified wheelchair for transporting combative prisoners. A muscle-bound man with a shaved head explained that the chair could be loaded, backward, into a police car, using a system similar to that on a public bus. The suspect’s arms, legs, and feet would be bound to the chair, making it safer for the officer and more comfortable for the prisoner.

“Now, would this be every police car, or just one you call for when you have a bad dude?” Smith asked. It would depend on the size of the department, the officer said, adding that combative prisoners were becoming more and more common.

“Have you seen anything like this?” Smith asked. The officer had not. “Awesome,” Smith said. “That dog could run!”
—Dana Goodyear, A Shock To The System: Can the Manufacturer of Tasers Provide the Answer to Police Abuse?

This approach could benefit any for-profit or nonprofit organization that wants to improve a product or service. For-profit client conferences often include opportunities for clients to provide feedback on existing products or services. But they rarely run joint sessions to develop new ones. I’ve attended hundreds of association conferences, but don’t remember anywhere the association used a structured format for members to suggest and explore new potential services.

Though I’ve frequently seen new organizational directions discovered at crowdsourced sessions and group spectives, it seems to me that allocating specific conference time for a well-designed ideation process would be a great way for company representatives and participants to work on possible future directions and outcomes for the organization, industry, or profession.

Have you ever held an ideation session at a conference to develop new products and services? Would doing so be of value to you and/or your organization? Share your thoughts in the comment below.

Image attribution: Flickr user neilmoralee