Spiking The Punch Bowl, Part 2: What Consultants Think Of Clients
Yesterday, on behalf of all the client-side readers who have groused to The Agitator, Roger had a go at fundraising consultants.
Today I’ll attempt to balance the scales by extracting the kernels of ‘abuse’ we typically hear from consultants about clients. Off the record, of course … one generally doesn’t bite the hand that feeds you. Please give us your views by taking our brief (and fun) Punch Bowl Survey.
First, a little help from Dilbert.
So here goes, clients as seen by consultants …
Trolling, not buying. “If we were to bag our current consultant, what three changes would you make first to our program?”
The untouchable assumptions. “Call our donors … are you kidding?!”
Indecision. “We’ll have to wait till Heather gets back from safari. But you can use the next eight weeks to develop a few more options.”
Unreasonable timelines. “You can revise the entire strategy by Friday, can’t you?”
Data denial. “We know the lifetime value of these donors sucks, but we’ve always sent the calendar.”
The island. “Our donors are completely and totally unique, they’ll never go for …”
New Ideas. “It’s always good to test a new idea on people who won’t like it … just to make sure they don’t like it.”
Wacky priorities. “We spent most of the meeting on the dollar string, about five minutes on the fundraising message.”
More Wacky Priorities. “I just don’t have time for these boring strategic and analytic tasks. I’m too busy updating my LinkedIn.”
Peanut brains. “Then, when I said ‘we really need to do something about your falling renewal rates’, he said, ‘maybe we should go with a closed-face carrier’.”
Responsibility & Accountability. “Make sure there are no consultants on that list of invitees for the campaign debriefing. We need to be able to blame them with a free hand.”
Urgency. “I realize that this is a great opportunity and some urgency is required to seize it. However, I believe a more measured approach, taking the long view, is probably best.”
Change. “We didn’t realize we’d need to change anything as a result of these specific recommendations, which we all agreed with.”
Silver bullet. “This thing you are proposing can solve all our most intractable problems at once, right? Otherwise, we can’t hire you.”
Compensation. “They’re not paying us enough for this ******** (censored)
Rejection. “You’ve been doing a terrific job for us, but …”
Heard anything like this before? Let us know. And please take our Punch Bowl Survey right now. We want to deliver the results on Friday.
Tom
One response to “Spiking The Punch Bowl, Part 2: What Consultants Think Of Clients”
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Hey Tom – being a client is really, really hard work. being a consultant is really, really hard work. there are bad people out there who give a bad name to both. but you know, there is an alternative. working with an agency or consultant doesn’t have to be the worse experience of your life, nor does working with a charity, board or fundraiser. but what it does take is hard work. it takes work to find a suitable partner for what you do and for what you need. it takes honesty, conversation, trust, respect and a whole lot more. we love our clients – not because they pay us – i couldn’t care less what they pay us, we love our clients cause they love us. they love us, they love their donors and they work their ASS off to do better, every day. if your client is crap – fire them. if your consultant is crap – fire them. demand more… funny enough – we wrote about the 10 pillars of a successful client/consultant relationship which is very appropriate here : http://agentsofgood.org/2011/10/10-pillars/
thanks! john