Tough Love Boot Camp
05 Feb 2008 | Filed Under: Boot Camp + Interpipes + Marketing
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a definite upsurge in people contacting me to ask if I’m available for some consulting hours. By and large, these are companies who want help with traffic, conversions, online marketing campaigns, issues of stickiness, or general communications strategies that do not suck.
While this is great, I always worry about wading in with new clients who want to know if I can help them.
Because the answer is usually, yes, I can work with you. But you’re probably not going to like it.
When I was more active in Second Life and doing consulting for real life and virtual-only brands, my clients always used to joke that they wanted t-shirts that said “I Survived Sabrina Dent’s Business Boot Camp” to commemorate the ordeal.
My real life clients probably think the same thing but are too scared to ask.
Here is the thing. If I’m working with you, you can pretty much assume I think something about your site, your product or your service is great. But I also assume you’re not paying me a (very reasonable) hourly fee to tell you how awesome everything is and outline all the bits that that are working really well.
I’m assuming you’re asking me in to tell you what the problems are, with your site or with your products or with your online marketing, and sometimes, even if you didn’t realise it, all of these things at once.
This is an unpleasant experience.
I’m also very focused on the bottom line. If something doesn’t work, I don’t want to know the story of how you designed that ad or developed that website feature or why you adopted a particular strategy or where your development bottlenecks are. In fact, if you persist in telling me, I may hang up on you. Because those things do not matter to the end user, and the best thing I can do to help you is vigorously maintain my perspective as an outsider to bring you unfiltered feedback.
The clients I click best with, the clients who get the most value for their money are the ones who are prepared for tough love, who are hungry for real information, who don’t have their egos tied to their products, and who sit on the other end of the phone and say “Bring it, bitch.”
These are the clients who get t-shirts.
The back of that t-shirts says “And my business is better for it.”
Bryan Zmijewski says:
Sabrina sucks…don’t ever use her. Errr…ummm. Can we have a t-shirt? Good stuff Sabrina.
Tuesday, 5 February, 2008, 7:10 pmnouns says:
The truth, it burns.
You do know that the way to up that hourly rate dramatically and reduce your stress levels is often to tell them exactly what they want to hear? Just call it ’strategy’, chuck a whole load of buzzwords into a poxy powerpoint presentation and pocket the fee before anyone mentions actually, y’know, making stuff happen (*).
It’s what made the big 4 consulting companies great.
* All of this based on personal experience. Unfortunately I was always involved in the implementation of the usually half-assed strategy. Where am I going wrong?
Tuesday, 5 February, 2008, 7:34 pmDeborah says:
So um if I get some financing in March do you think I can afford you? Just what I need… T-Shirt and all! ;-)
Tuesday, 5 February, 2008, 7:57 pmSabrina Dent says:
nouns, I have worked with clients who have been so beaten into submission by that kind of “consulting” that I’m shocked anyone in their board room still has a pulse.
As part of the deprogramming for these clients, I create a cuss jar. Every time they use the words “synergy” “convergence” or “web 2.0″ they have to put €1 in the cuss jar.
This is an actual jar. Putting actual money from your actual pocket in it helps put an end to this sort of nonsense surprisingly quickly. You should try it!
Deb, if you got financing, I’d be thrilled for you. You are in a position to do great things with your site! Have your girl call my girl, we’ll do lunch. Preferably at your house, with you cooking!
Tuesday, 5 February, 2008, 8:01 pmThriftcriminal says:
What about the clients that say : “See that, make it better. Talk to me when you have it done.”
Wednesday, 6 February, 2008, 2:12 pmnouns says:
@Thriftcriminal - Where on earth do you find these clients?
@Sabrina - Where on earth do you find these clients?
Convergence rocks.
I’m looking for a permanent job right now. I have discovered that Web 2.0 is crucial. If I don’t say it, I never hear from them again. If I do, they scribble like mad …
Thursday, 7 February, 2008, 2:24 amnouns says:
Debs, I can and will work for free. I hear Sabrina’s good ;-)
Friday, 8 February, 2008, 11:33 pmOmar Fernández says:
You’re so good at this. One day in the future, when I’m not a college student anymore and can afford it, I hope you’re still around to work. ;)
Saturday, 9 February, 2008, 9:56 pm