Seven Potential Conflict Sources Between Clients and Consultants

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Over the last few years subcontractors, mistakenly calling themselves consultants, have ill-educated their clients, and this ill-education gradually resulted some retarded expectations of consultants from clients. Here are some of the main causes of arguments between consultants and potential clients, but I am pretty certain there are many more.

1. Clients Want to Pay for Performance, While Consultants Want to Pay for Providing the Opportunity for Improvement

Imagine you want to go to university, but instead of paying your tuition, you propose to the dean: "Sir, if your university is as good as you say, let me take the course free, and after graduation when I get a great job, I will pay a percentage of my salary back to the school as tuition. If you "deliver" me a great job (Result), you get your money. But if I can't get me a great job (You fail to produce my desired results), you don't deserve to be paid anyway."

Over the years many consultants have trained their clients the wrong way. Pick up ten books on consulting and nine of them talk about rubbish like "delivering results for the client", "What to do for the client", etc. Consulting is not the same as assembling cars on a conveyor belt. It is a collaborative relationship in which you provide some ideas, advice, new perspectives, etc, but it is up to your clients whether they accept or reject to take action on your advice. After dispensing your advice, your client is in full control.

You alone cannot "perform". You can only play the game, but unless and until the client plays with you, nothing happens. But regardless of how hard your client plays, if you don't play, nothing happens again. So, where the value lies is your "play" because this is what you can control.

In the above example, without good credentials you have no hope in hell to get a good job. But the school cannot guarantee a great job for you just for completing the course and getting your piece of paper. It is up to you to study and get good grades. Your teachers play the same game across the board but some students graduate with straight "A"s, while some fail. Can you blame the school for the students' failure?

So, consultants cannot create "performance". The client is the change agent and the consultant is just a change catalyst. They must work together to achieve something worthwhile.

2. Clients Want to See Instant Improvement, While Service Professionals Want to See Lasting Improvements

A few years ago I was sitting with the president of a Vancouver-based computer consulting firm. He said he would hire me to help the firm with its marketing if I could guarantee beyond the shadow of a doubt that I could put money into HIS bank account within three days.

This is sweet. He expected me to achieve what he failed to achieve in 11 years. The truth is that in order to create new results in a business, people in the business have to start practising new habits. But this behavioural change can only come after people have shifted the way they think. Stephen Covey calls this a paradigm shift. Without this change nothing can happen.

However, there is a problem here: People change very slowly. Instead of trying to put in what is missing, try to draw out what is there anyway. Even that is pretty hard, but at least doable.

To battle the expectation of instant gratification from clients, you can include a section called "Transitional Pain" in your agreement. This is the same when the dentist tells you, "This will hurt a bit". Wording it differently, in order to enjoy the baby and the joy of motherhood, women have to go through the pain of delivering that baby. A consulting project is pretty much the same.

So, make sure you communicate to your clients that your aim is to create lasting positive change, not a quick flash-in-the-pan surge of pleasantness. Clients can do that by stuffing their faces with doughnuts, and the sugar will give them that surge of joy.

You can also include this in your qualification process for prospects, so when they push you for instant results, you can tell them there is no instant results unless the prospect is a whore, which is really the only quick cash-in-hand business. And from then on it is up to you whether or not you work with "business prostitutes".

3. Clients Want to Avoid Risks, While Service Professionals want to Share Risks

Very often clients want to minimise their risks and try to abdicate all responsibilities to consultants. You may even have had situations when you realised that you were about to be engaged just to become a scapegoat and be blamed for everything ranging from the Holocaust to the Black Death of England in 1348.

Let's face it, many buyers don't hire consultants until it is too late. And then they expect their consultants to save the day. After the Titanic hit the iceberg, you could have put the best captain in the world on the bridge, the ship would have sunk anyway. That is just a bit too late for finding the best captain. (By the way, this is just an example to illustrate a consulting situation, not a judgement on the Titanic's captain. I am certain he was a highly skilled and very capable dude.)

In fact, in every engagement clients take a risk of investing their money in an initiative to improve the current situation. Re-read please. Clients don't pay for your services per se. They invest in their own futures. And the catalyst to that bigger and brighter future is the consultant's expertise, education, intuition, challenge, etc., which has cost the consultant tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire.

All you can do it help your clients to increase the certainty and velocity of completing certain projects which lead to an improvement in the client's condition and your piggy bank. It is a fair value exchange.

In return for clients' financial investments, consultants take a risk by investing their time, expertise, education, intuition and reputation in their clients.

So, when you look at the investments, you may find that consultants invest hundreds of thousands of dollars of their education, past client work, reading, learning, attending seminars and conferences, etc. even in a short project like reviewing a proposal for a client. This is easier to understand if you realise that your expertise is about 20% explicit knowledge (memorised data and information learnt from books) and 80% of tacit information (intuition and gut feeling, trench work, basically cellular level knowledge).

Anyone can read the same books you have read or attend the same seminars, but each person will chunk all that into different level of expertise.

I could even say, "Having s library card doesn't give your clients the wisdom of Yoda."

4. Clients Want Guaranteed Results, While Service professionals Want Guaranteed Commitment from Clients

Clients know they take a risk every time they reveal their businesses to someone. So, upon engaging external help, they want to get an ironclad guarantee from their consultants for the achievement of specific goals. There is a problem here. Unless you are a god of some kind, you can't manage outcomes, only activities. And while we define the projects in terms of outcomes and results, we have to take certain actions to achieve those results. We must also understand that we can't manage results, only activities leading to those results. If you don't believe this then try to manage the weather. Good luck. For me, all I can do is take my brolly with me.

Again, who is the ultimate decision-maker? The client. Clients decide what action they take or refuse to take. Consultants can only offer their advice. That is all.

Based on what they say, most people in this world want to be successful. But are their words and actions congruent? No. Why do you think there are so many homeless people all over the civilised world? I don't think they live on the streets because they prefer to.

Clients say they want to be successful. Yes. But how can a consultant guarantee specific improvements for them regardless of whether or not clients get out of bed in the morning at all?

A few years ago I worked with a woman who wanted to start out in consulting. She simply didn't show up for 63% of our meeting, and never returned a phone call or email. After one month she bowed out accusing me that I hadn't delivered any value to her, and she could learn more about business from her husband (A union rep in the truck driver's union).

How can consultants guarantee client's actions, behaviours and attitudes to the successful completion of the project? That is why I believe guaranteeing results is just plain unethical. It is a nice lure to close deals, but it is just as much of an oxymoron as a virgin prostitute.

Consider consulting is like giving birth. The improved condition (resulted in completing the project) is the baby, the client is the mother in labour and the consultant is the midwife. The midwife (consultant) can reduce the mother's pain, and improve the chance of survival of the baby, but it is the client's baby, thus the client's labour. And if the clients is not willing to go through the pain of creating the new condition, there is only one way to avoid the pain: to abort the baby and it is all over.

5. Clients Want to Pay Lower Fees, While Consultants Want to Receive Fair fees

Prospective clients often ask how they can get certain services for as cheap as humanly possible. The basic questions is this: "I want to go on a world-wide trip, but I only have budget for a local bus ticket."

Consultants know they have been hired for improving a situation clients have failed to improve. So, the senior partner – making $500,000 per year – of a law firm with 65% annual talent attrition (Some $2 million annual loss) wants to hire a consultant to reduce attrition and save some of that annual $2 million and is willing to pay the consultant let's say $10,000. Can you see the problem?

The $500,000 a year partner failed to solve a $2 million a year problem, but he carries on receiving his hefty compensation, while wanting to hire consultant for $10,000 to solve the same problem. If the consultant is expected to solve a problem the $500,000 a year partner couldn't, maybe the consultant is entitled to a nicer than $10,000 compensation package.

It is only fair to say that consultants require clients to make fair investments that are proportional to the problem consultants help to solve. Everything else being equal, working on reducing a 50% talent attrition rate in a large firm of five-hundred associates (250 associates multiplied by $75,000 annual salary = $18 million) justifies higher fees than doing the same in a small firm of five associates (5 associates multiplied by $75,000 annual salary = $375,000). Do you think it is fair of you to charge some $500,000 in the first case and some $20,000 in the second case to start improving the situation? Clients will save an annual $18 million and $375,000 respectively every single year, but pay you only once. Is it a good deal or a great deal for clients? Man, it is a brilliant deal!

6. Clients Want Predictability, While Consultants Want Flexibility

Clients often want to do the impossible: Controlling the outcomes. That is why they ask for strong guarantees. However, the only sure-fire way of reaching our goals if we put one foot in front of the other again and again in the right direction.

Clients have been putting one foot in front of the other for years, but if they still have problems, they are moving in the wrong direction. Or they are like a rocking chair. Lots of motion but no progress. A sort of managing by busy-ness: "We are making progress because we are terribly busy".

So, more walking won't do the job. Putting one foot in front of the other is predictability, and accountability of doing what it takes to achieve the selected outcomes. Changing direction is flexibility. However, no one can change direction without an external force of some kind. Just imagine. You roll a ball in one direction. That ball cannot change direction until and unless an external force acts on it. This is plain garden-variety Newtonian physics. And the ball stops because there is an external force, called friction.

The sad fact is that so many clients fall in love with the initial plan they make with their consultants which they refuse to modify once the execution of the plan is in progress. They get so wrapped up in tactics that the strategy goes down the drain.

They expect their consultants to get it right the first time. But the reality is that nothing worthwhile is done right the first time around. It takes quite a bit of polishing and fine-tuning. Just think about it: After almost 15 years, Microsoft Windows is still full of bugs.

But this is when clients tend to say, "You are the expert. I am paying you and expect you to get it right the first time". Again, you could include this in your qualification process, so you can eliminate idiots before it is too late.

7. Clients Want to Make Money, While Often Expecting Consultants to Do All the Work to Create It

I had a client a few years ago who, shortly after engaging my services, went on vacation leaving me with a note, "I expect you to do this and that for me while I am away, and report progress to me upon my arrival". This guy truly believed he was my boss, master and commander. I gave him a bit of reality on how we can work together, and I can tell you he didn't like it. He was desperate to become my "boss", and regarded my as his "employee". Then I walked away from the gig, sat down and toughened up my qualification process.

Often clients want to use consultants as brawn workers, while consultants want to be regarded as brainworkers. In the cartoon strip Family Circus by Bill Kaine, a little boy is holding his homework out to his mother. She looks at him a bit annoyed, and says, "You misunderstand. I'm a homework consultant, not a homework subcontractor." That is, she can work WITH him to help him to get the homework done, but she won't do it FOR him.

This is a typical problem with micro business owners. They tend to say they are so breathtakingly busy that they don't have time and energy to work with their consultants in a collaborative manner, so they often say, "I pay you pretty well, so make money for me, hotshot. I'm too busy repeating my daily mistakes again and again."

They have this misconceived notion that consultants are outsourced labourers working FOR clients who have neither time nor inclination to deal with certain aspects of their businesses. In a way the situation is similar to going to a personal trainer and telling him, "I pay you for exercising and going on a diet, and then I want you to pass the weightloss on to me. But I don't have time to do the work. So, perform FOR me".

Consulting is collaborative process. It is not done for, to or at clients. It is done WITH clients. It is the same as lovemaking. You can only make love WITH a person not FOR, AT or TO a person. It requires that clients are fully engaged I the whole process. As Jim Rohn, America's Foremost Business Philosopher says, "No one else can do your own push-ups". Consultants can provide advice and direction, but at the end of the day clients must make a decision to start moving their arses in the direction of their choice.

Summary

As you see, clients need some serious education about what consulting is all about, and how to work with consultants. So, before you commit to doing anything with prospects in person, make sure they can read about how you work, so they come to you with the right expectation. They must understand that while you have high level of expertise in your area, you are not Merlin the magician who can make clients ride on the dragon's breath.

Business owners know more about their own businesses than you could ever learn. So, the key is the synergy between your process skills and their content skills. So, the whole engagement is a joint effort.