Consulting maxim: You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling (tm).Consulting maxim: You are primarily in the customer service business, not the technical business.
Here's the most counter-intuitive part of it -- or at least it took me the longest to figure out. The "aha" moment came after two or three years of full time consulting.
So, you're missing the final deadline on the project. You're missing it bad, your customer needs it done like a week ago. No matter how hard you try, you'll need another week or two to complete the project.
Now, your options are:
1) get a metric ton of coffee, disconnect the phone, lock the door, go completely into death march crunch mode, work till you start seeing things and hearing voices from sleep deprivation, and deliver the product in 5 days, or
2) visit your customer every day in person, looking normal, spend 2 hours with them discussing what is done, what problems slow you down, what will be done next, etc, and deliver the product in 10 days, probably cutting features like there is no tomorrow.
Now, if I am the customer in this scenario, I totally prefer (1) -- especially since I need it a week ago. The thing is, some of my customers look much happier if they get (2). In fact, they are nervous, unhappy and angry when they get (1), and they look calm, satisfied and friendly when they get (2).
I find my customers through the people I know personally, mostly. The relationships are mostly long term, so I don't need many.
I never wrote technical articles, so no opinion on that; should work pretty well, theoretically. I do have a blog, though; it's rarely about anything work-related (mostly arm-chair microeconomics and libertarian studies these days). Even while being an off-topic, the blog still helps me to meet interesting people, and some of them become my customers later.
I can't imagine anyone being happy with 1. That's 5 days of complete unresponsiveness. They don't know that they will blacked out for 5 days and neither do you. And even worse, what happens if at the end of 5 days you realize you took a wrong path on day 2? Now you still have to talk to them after ignoring them for a business week.
Personally, if I got blacked out like this there better have been a death in the family or I'll never work with this person/agency again and will heavily recommend against having anything to do with them.
Well, it's not a complete blackout; you can provide the 5-day estimate beforehand, you can send progress reports or two along the way.
The point is, they still are much more comfortable with the demonstration that you are willing to spend as much time as it takes to calm them down in person, progress on the product be damned.
Here's the most counter-intuitive part of it -- or at least it took me the longest to figure out. The "aha" moment came after two or three years of full time consulting.
So, you're missing the final deadline on the project. You're missing it bad, your customer needs it done like a week ago. No matter how hard you try, you'll need another week or two to complete the project.
Now, your options are:
1) get a metric ton of coffee, disconnect the phone, lock the door, go completely into death march crunch mode, work till you start seeing things and hearing voices from sleep deprivation, and deliver the product in 5 days, or
2) visit your customer every day in person, looking normal, spend 2 hours with them discussing what is done, what problems slow you down, what will be done next, etc, and deliver the product in 10 days, probably cutting features like there is no tomorrow.
Now, if I am the customer in this scenario, I totally prefer (1) -- especially since I need it a week ago. The thing is, some of my customers look much happier if they get (2). In fact, they are nervous, unhappy and angry when they get (1), and they look calm, satisfied and friendly when they get (2).