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You are here: Home / Archives for client management

April 5, 2017 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

3 Reasons Virtual Meetings Will Always Be a Secondary Option

Virtual Relationships

Relationships might be built online but they are solidified in person, whether that be business (think client buyers) or personal (think online dating). That’s on my mind because I just got back from a meeting in Salt Lake City and it made a world of difference. I think I was in town for roughly 16 hours and was asleep in the hotel room for a decent chunk of that. It was kind of funny, because my flight out got delayed to the point that I was checking in for my flight home before I even left the San Jose airport.

A big part of why some folks like virtual meetings isn’t what you think. The official reasoning might be that it saves on travel cost or time wasted migrating between meetings but I know some people who won’t walk next door if there is a webex link in a meeting invite. Some of it might be laziness but I think the more likely culprit is work overload. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Career Advice Tagged With: career management, client management, relationship management, relationships

October 2, 2016 by Eric Butts 2 Comments

Life as a Consultant: The 10 Best Pieces of Advice I Ever Received

10 best pieces of consulting advice

One of the many things you learn in the management consulting business is there is no one path to success, so it’s interesting to hear what people remember as the most useful information or advice they’ve picked up so far. What better way to highlight this than to ask consultants from different firms what’s the best advice they’ve gotten. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: career advice, career management, client management

September 17, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

ESPN Violated One of the Major Rules of Consulting


ESPN fantasy delay

In case you don’t like sports or somehow manage to interact with zero people who like sports (or maybe you live in a place where American football isn’t so popular), something pretty interesting happened this past Sunday. The worldwide leader had a “not top 10” moment of its own that I bet they won’t be replaying for the entertainment of its millions of viewers. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, espn, management consulting

April 21, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

3 Ways to Know If You’re Wasting Your Client’s Time (and Money)

3 Ways to Know You're Wasting Client Time

Odds are your clients have a day job in addition to supporting the consulting project where you spend full-time hours. That means wasting client time needs to be a top concern for you.

You know you need to build a relationship, which takes some time but if you take up too much time you might start to come off as overly sales-y. Once that happens, it’s a matter of time before you’re looking for your next gig.

Make sure you keep an eye on these three things so you don’t overstay your welcome and cost yourself long-term opportunities. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, clients, Meeting

April 13, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

Consulting Basics: 10 Details You Need to Start Double Checking Today

Consulting requires a different kind of attention to detail

With great prestige (and high bill rates) comes great scrutiny.

For management consultants, that great scrutiny comes with an absolute need for attention to detail on things you probably dismissed as not being worth a second thought in your previous life. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Excel, Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, client proposals, deliverables, excel, powerpoint

March 10, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

The Fastest Way For Your Client Retention To Go Straight Down the Toilet

Ex-Client

Client retention is tricky.

If you don’t watch yourself, you current client can quickly turn into an ex. I’m not talking about major missteps like you making out in the office. Most could agree it wouldn’t be surprising if your client decided to make a change if you did that on their campus.

As it turns out, there are some lesser degrees of weird that can still send your client retention rate plummeting to its death.

You know what’s weird? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, client retention

March 2, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

Professional Boundaries: 4 Undisputable Reasons Why You Need to Set Them With Your Clients

Why you need to set professional boundaries with clients

On time and under budget has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

In order to do that, some clear professional boundaries and expectations have to be set before agreeing to a consulting engagement. Those boundaries will act as the guiding principles if any significant changes in information come up during the course of your work.

You might be thinking your business can’t afford to turn away money because of some stupid policy.

You’d be thinking wrong. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: Boundaries, client management, client proposals, consulting, Professional Boundaries, Risk, Scope Creep

February 11, 2016 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

How to Take Notes Like The Rich and Powerful

 

How to take notes

In the management consulting world, you go to a lot of meetings.

Because of all of those meetings, one of the most important things you can do coming into consulting (or any other career) is make sure you know how to take notes.

Working on consulting engagements, it’s not uncommon to have multiple meetings to prepare for the “real” meeting with the client. If you play your cards right, the meetings, at least, yield useful information.

There’s a huge problem with all of these meetings though – people have short-term memories. By the time the participants leave the meeting and get back to their desks, that discussion will have long faded from their memory.

And even worse, when you ask people about their commitments made in the meeting later, they act like you’re speaking in a language they’ve never heard before. (I suppose accountability could be considered a language, and I know there are some people out there who aren’t familiar with it.)

That is exactly why you’ll find the rich and powerful to be avid note takers.

When taking notes for yourself, you should consider adding structure for searchability using a tool like Evernote.  When it comes to meeting notes, you’ll want to email those out and be sure to focus on capturing the six following pieces of information. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, consulting, management consulting

July 6, 2015 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

Client Proposals: How to Know When To Skip 2nd and 3rd Revisions

how to know when speeds is more important than perfection

Go right or go left. Just make a decision. There will be consequences either way. The important thing is that you make a call and we’ll adjust from there.

That was the advice one of the partners at the firm shared with me that I wanted to pass on to you today and remind you that people who take action are those who get rewarded.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Management Consulting Tagged With: client management, client proposals

March 2, 2015 by Eric Butts Leave a Comment

How To Convince Your Boss He’s Wrong Without Being A Jerk

Pawn vs King

I had a great question from a reader this week, one that highlights the age-old dilemma – how to convince your boss when you know he’s wrong but he has no idea. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Career Advice Tagged With: client management, client service, value based pricing

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