Honest consulting

On a follow-up to my last post Beth wrote: It's been my experience that clients appreciate honest (yet tactful) discussions with the techies when making their decisions. She is absolutely right. I can remember at least two occasions where customers specifically asked to have me on a project because of my honesty.

The first time was when I was doing some work for a government agency that needed to interconnect several databases spread across a wide area. We quickly worked out a secure and inexpensive way to do what they required. After that initial engagement I was invited to a high level meeting where I was introduced ‘this is Peter, he’s not like our IT people, if he says something can’t be done it’s because it’s not safe to do it’

A more recent time was when I was requested to work on an ERP implementation project for some people that I had worked for in the past. Now, you would know from you may have read here, I am not an OLTP person so was perhaps not the natural technical choice. However the customer wanted someone who would think and tell it like it is.

In both case I was working as a trusted advisor. You can’t do that without respect from the customer, both for your technical skills and your honesty.

Oh, and take a look at Beths’ blog. I’m not saying that because she has put up a link to my blog, nor because she used to work for the same company as me; they are both facts though, but because she writes well and has something interesting to say.