The Lunacy of Putting the Client First

As far has consulting goes back in history, the conventional wisdom has always been putting clients first. Some authors even talk about the rubrics of “becoming slaves to our clients”. Sadly, this lunacy goes as far back as consultants’ putting their own families’ needs behind their clients. How many businesspeople do you know who jump up from the dinner table to take business calls? I know far too many. Many of them are on the verge of divorce.

The other day I went out for Christmas lunch with an accountant friend. I thought we could chat a little bit about non-business stuff, but I was wrong. Besides eating, she spent most of her time checking and responding to emails and messages on her magic mind-fryingly complex (yes, that Blackberry thing) mobile phone.

She openly admits that her life revolves around her clients. But when I put it to her, “So, you are actually the prisoner of your business”, she quickly responded, “but I love my work and care about my clients”.

Then I said, “But you may also love your family and care about your kids”.

Finally she admitted that her business had been kidnapped by some over-demanding clients, and she spends all her waking hours figuring out how to please these idiots. And yes, her personal well-being and family had taken second place behind her business.

But this is just one example.

Just look at most consulting firms’ brochures, websites and mission statements. They are all about putting clients first.

Listen to rainmakers at the Big Five accounting firms. They promise the best and the brightest talent for every single prospect to win the deal. It is interesting that every single person in the firm is the “best and the brightest”. Not one second best. Not one second brightest. I wonder why there are so many lawsuits against them all over the world for negligence, misconduct and pedestrian, garden-variety incompetence. Hm.

However, here lies a big problem.

Your long-term success is the function of your skills and talents, not your client list. My accountant friend also admitted that she hadn’t attended a seriously valuable workshop or conference for years because she was so busy taking care of clients.

Then I summed it up, “So, strictly speaking, you had been busy doling out obsolete advice and self-deludingly calling it ‘taking care of my clients’. How would you like being at the receiving end of such a service? You think you are getting the best service, but your service provider knows that she is misleading you with obsolete information, but she just doesn’t give a damn?”

The knife and fork fell from her hands and her jaws dropped. At this point she understood what I was talking about. (Yes, people call me a provocateur for a good reason and I frequently piss people off, but if that makes them think and re-evaluate what they are doing, then so be it.)

Yes, we know we must be responsive to our clients, but it doesn’t mean that we are on call 24/7.

When mothers with young kids or babies board a plane, the stewardess tell them to take care of themselves first and only then take care of the kids.

Or, here is another situation to explain why this client comes first concept is idiotic.

Even in the 21st century there are childbirth situations where only either the mother or the newborn can be saved, but one of them surely dies. It is almost always the mother who is saved. I spent part of my life as an embalmer, and saw this happen a couple of times. It is always the baby who is sacrificed. It is just plain survival instinct going way back in history. The mother can bear more babies, but without the mother the baby surely dies.
The dynamic in consulting is the same. You can always find good clients, but finding good consultants is a lot harder when you start losing them to stupid management and clients.

One key element here is to make clients understand that the value of your service doesn’t lie in instant access to you 24/7, birthday cards and Christmas gifts. Not even in the poundage of deliverables.

Now you may say it is nice to think of your clients with some small gifts. Yes, no doubt. But consider how many clients you have and understand that sending them gifts can add up to a serious time and money. And every minute and every dollar you spend on buying, wrapping and sending gifts is taken away from time and money you can invest in learning new skills and passing them on to clients in the form of new value which in turn can improve their lives.

My accountant friend is a great schmoozer with her clients, but her skills are seriously out of date.The fact is that you need lots of time and money to take care of yourself mentally, emotional and physically to be in the best possible condition for your clients. You also have to learn new skills within your industry and stretch your thinking by learning from outside your industry.

The other day I read a great article in Pig International, and in a few days I turned the idea into new value (a process) for a client. When I told the client where the idea had come from, and why I read that magazine (learning best practices from seemingly irrelevant sources), she was pretty surprised but agreed with the concept of running with an idea and adapting it to various industries. This is a way of avoiding myopic affects of conventional wisdom. How do you use information from outside your own industry? Do you use it at all? If not why not? And when do you want to start?

It is important that you build your new skills from a broad range of sources. Look, North American colleges and universities churn out 1.93 business graduates every single minute. Yes, you are reading it right. You may not want to become one of this nothing-unique-nothing-distinct crowd.

So, what to do if you have a firm with several consultants? Simple. Put your people first, so they can put their clients first. The sad fact is that when there is a dispute between consultants and clients, most firms fire their consultants and then do some hard-core arse-kissing and boot-licking for disgruntled clients (who are ready to desert your firm anyway). Have you noticed that the best clients always have pretty high tolerance for mistakes?

But there is a problem here. When you lay off one consultant, some other s will follow soon. Morale will suffer, after all it is not easy to convince proud professionals to do some arse-kissing for - most often jerk - clients. And in my experience if clients have problems with a consultant, they are likely to have problems with other consultants too.

So, make sure when push come to shove, you protect your own people like a junkyard dog, not a problematic client.

The problem is that most firms tolerate too much from clients just because clients pay. So, it is only fair to say that far too many consultants work like whores: “I do anything for anyone for money”.

So, putting clients first. No. Be selfish (not self-centred) enough to put yourself first. Without taking care of yourself, and your people, your firm can’t take care of clients.

The age-old adage says, “You can’t give what you don’t have”. So, before you start running around giving clients more value, maybe you had better sit down and take inventory of what is the “more value” you can give.
Do you have that value at all or are you just rubbing off your own frustration, busy-ness, exhaustion, low patience and low energy on them?

Birthday cards and 24/7 access to you don’t represent value worth paying for. They only add to most consultants’ already hectic-beyond-belief schedule. But from the clients’ standpoint they are just eye-candy.

And the other thing is that you have to get clear on priority between clients and your own family and your own life. Just one hint: How many of your clients do you expect to show up at your funeral? As a former gravedigger, I participated in many burial ceremonies, and I can tell you the majority of the crowd is friends and family, not clients. So, with that in mind it may be a good idea to put your own and your family’s life first while you are alive. After all, your business is just a vehicle to giving you and your family a better life. Make sure you just own your business but you do not become your business.