Don't Tell Clients What They Already Know
Don't Tell Clients What They Already Know
The quickest way to lose credibility is to tell clients what they already know. Don't do this. Find the things clients couldn't possibly have known without hiring you.
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Don’t Be A Consultancy Cliche
The biggest cliche about consultancy is they will charge you a lot of money to tell you what they already know (or, to quote the joke, they will steal your watch and tell you the time).
Make it a golden rule to never tell clients what they already know.
This sounds obvious enough. And I’m sure consultants never intend to tell clients what they already know.
Yet, it happens. It happens a lot. It happens in proposals, on calls, in deliverables and meetings. Telling clients what they already know drastically lowers your perceived value.
I suspect there are several reasons why this tends to happen.
The consultant is trying to ‘beef up’ a deliverable. The consultant wants to demonstrate how much work they are doing/have done. They think 20 slides are better than 10 slides. Therefore they include plenty of information the client told them in the deliverable itself.
The consultant isn’t close enough to the client. They don’t know what the client does and doesn’t know. They haven’t asked the right questions or listened well to the answers. They don’t know the client’s ‘domain of knowledge’ and where it ends.
The consultant doesn’t have unique information to share. The consultant doesn’t have any unique insights or information to share that the client doesn’t already possess. Perhaps the consultant lacks industry experience or hasn’t been able to use their methodologies to bring new insights into the project.
The consultant isn’t clear on the unique value they add. This happens when a consultant spends a few weeks speaking to stakeholders and then shares what they learned. This is inevitably information the client already knew from frequently speaking to those same stakeholders. Instead of having a process to analyse the research, they simply regurgitated it.
Always be mindful that your client contact knows their company better than you ever will. They will probably know their industry better than you ever will. Always assume the client is smart, has plenty of experience, and that their domain of knowledge is expansive. They don’t need the information they’re giving you fed back to them.
They need you to use the information you’re given to generate valuable outcomes for them.
This raises the question, what can a client not possibly know without you?
What Couldn’t The Client Have Known?
The outcome of any project is to surface information the client couldn’t have known without you.
You should bring unique expertise, methodologies or skills to uncover these insights.
Expertise
Let’s begin with your unique expertise.
It’s best to assume your client has read the top industry books and follows the same industry resources as you do. If that’s the case, what is the unique expertise you bring to the project? Some examples might include:
What are other organisations doing? You might have undertaken unique research to uncover how other organisations have approached the problem and what does and doesn’t work. You might be able to compare how your client is doing against other organisations.
Hidden information. You might have uncovered information which is impossible to find via a search engine. You might know vendor price points, know the quality of their work, or have a directory of top talent clients might like to recruit from etc…
Unforeseen problems. You might know the issues and problems likely to arise when clients pursue a course of action. You might have information only people who have gone through the problem before possess. You might be able to build a detailed roadmap which proactively identifies issues and how to overcome them.
Methodologies
Methodologies are where you use your unique approaches to uncover and resolve issues. For example, at FeverBee, we have the unique ability to use data to help clients evaluate how successful they are today and prioritise what they should be focusing on next to deliver better results.
Methodologies might include:
Unique ways of analysing information. You might have unique abilities to analyse data, undertake stakeholder interviews, and review the situation to surface information and insights the client doesn’t have. The client couldn’t have known the outcome because they don’t have the skill set to analyse the information the way you do.
Prioritising solutions. You might have a unique methodology to prioritise solutions and the way forward for a client. The client can’t have known this information because they don’t have your unique frameworks to prioritise the solutions.
Diagnosing problems. Similar to the above, you might have a unique approach to diagnosing problems. You might be able to find the root cause of problems and the relative impact of each problem on the client.
Collaboration on a solution. You might do is collaborate on a solution. For example, you might host workshops to bring stakeholders together to collaborate. Through these collaborations, you might navigate your way to a solution which the client wouldn’t have been able to find without you.
This is far from a comprehensive list. I’m sure you can add more. What matters most is there should be no feasible way a client could have possessed the same information without hiring you.
You should never be telling the client what they already know. That doesn’t help anyone. Ask clarifying questions if you need to check you’re aligned on issues, but otherwise, always make sure you can offer unique value in every stage of the process.