Jun 10 08
We’re Not Consultants!
By Renn Vara
That’s right. And we don’t have clients either, we have customers. My team knows this is a big pet peeve of mine. To me, consultants advise but don’t necessarily do, and the term clients infers dependency while using the term customers clearly states who’s in control. Subtle but important.
This regularly comes up in our business. Traditional corporate communicators and trainers have the habit of calling themselves consultants and refer to customers as clients. So when we hire someone from the industry, they invariably cross swords with me over the subject. It’s a fruitless debate often conceded because “the boss is just a bit nutty and what do I care.”
Well, it’s bigger than that to me. And fundamental to how we view who we are, what we do, and how we do it.
At SNP we’re big believers in being paid for what we actually do versus what we know. That means we don’t charge for advice, meetings, consultations, or anything that involves the sharing of our expertise. That’s free. Why? Because everything we know was funded by customers. We learn from them, we learn from our work with them, and we learn by serving them. We’ve even gone as far as designing a training program without being hired to deliver it. Not good for the bottom line but it fits our long-standing values.
This may be a bit Pollyanna but I truly believe that what we know and will know is owned by our customers, past, present, and future. I’ve never understood the ethics of an organization which protects their learned intellectual property built by their customers. How can that be something you “sell” to others? It’s not yours.
Do you see the problem and why traditional consultants question my sanity?
This model of charging for what you know is fundamental to all service companies. I get it. And I fully realize we leave money on the table in the short term. But our values as a team, a business, and on a personal level demand that we truly serve the interest of our customers. Any compromise on this respect for the engagement model is a compromise in our relationship. That’s not acceptable if we plan to build a company and a customer base for the long term. It’s been one of the keys to our success over the years.
For the sake of full disclosure, I am biased against consultants. There is arrogance in the title and an air of superiority that I just don’t appreciate. It’s like people who earn an advanced degree and constantly feel compelled to show it off in print, in their title, even in how they ask people to interact with them.
In the end, calling customers anything other than customer is a show of disrespect for the engagement. They are not clients dependent on our superior wisdom and skill but instead we work for them. They are the boss. That’s why we listen, we learn, adjust our expectations, and become their trusted partner.
And get this. This has proved to be a winning business model for SNP. Our long-term customers appreciate it, questioning our sanity at times, but when they need our expertise, they don’t hesitate to call on us. No purchase order required.
