A few recent calls with clients and prospects inspired this post. After discussing our programs with some companies, their true hesitation to move forward was revealed: They had been badly burned before with other conversion optimization companies, and weren’t ready to give it another try. This is disappointing for several reasons, but mostly because the complaints were straightforward, ABC business relationship complaints!

For all you consultants some advice, for all you unhappy clients of consultants, finally, retribution:

1. Consultancy is all about human interaction: When a client feels that “consultants just don’t care,” or “we’re too small to matter,” there’s clearly a problem. Very often consulting companies grow so much that they lose perspective. The reason for your growth are your clients, don’t give them the cold shoulder. Client’s want to always feel important, they want to feel like they are your top priority – why should a client feel like they don’t matter unless if you shown them that in some way?

2. True, time is money, but clients are money too: One of my pet peeves with lawyers are their astronomical fees. For a ½ an hour call, no minute more, they charge outrageous amounts of money. Consultancy sometimes morphs into the same thing. Our prospects were complaining that their consultants from hell would block an hour of time, and whether it takes 15 – 20 minutes to set up the call, they don’t care, that time is deducted from the hour the client gets.

What a way to turn off your customers! We have the opposite problem at Invesp.We are less judicious with our time with clients – but the philosophy is: if client’s need more time, our consultants are there to give them the time they need. If that means more than one call a week, we’re open to that, no extra charge. That makes a big difference with clients. A recent engagement with a client was off to a slow start, but the amount of time and effort our team poured into the project was very well received from our client. They realized that we cared and they were a top priority to get their conversion rates up. Time well spent on a client will no never go unnoticed.

3. Conversion optimization is part science, part art. With the economy in such a downturn, the part science part is ever so crucial. It’s difficult to tell a client, “our gut tells us that you should change this element.” Once upon a time “your gut” could cut it, but now-a-days, there has to be more scientific analysis to back your decision.

Conversion optimization gets more difficult because people are naturally buying less, comparing prices more, and waiting for sales and discounts before moving forward with a purchasing decision. But it doesn’t have to make consultancy any different, except maybe a few things:

1. consultants need to hear their customers more,

2. they need to give them the time they deserve (even if it exceeds the set hour),

3. and finally they need to put more time when selecting the right recommendation that will have the highest impact with the lowest levels of effort from the client’s perspective.

Do you have any consultant horror stories you would like to share?