This is my 6th year as a freelancer (2x with Domo clients and partners, and 4x with Jet Reports) and my 10th year as a technical consultant. It's been one heck of a journey as I've seen projects and clients blow up (both successfully ... and unsuccessfully). Here are some hard knocks and a-hah moments I picked up along tthe way.
Tips for The Business
1. Use YouTube to practice presenting and create free marketing.
My YouTube channel is me consulting and explaining. Each video is usually the result of 10 or 20 practice attempts because that's how long it took to get the quality of presentation I desired.
When you're live on Zoom, you only get one shot to nail the presentation so you'd better practice. An added benefit, YouTube is doing advertising for you while you're sleeping, reaching people you never could have reached.
New Hires and Jr. resources should be making the bulk of your YouTube channel. They can practice delivering training sessions. If it's not good enough for YouTube, it's not good enough to put in front of a customer.
**2. Be picky about choosing your clients / build the right team.**The best part of being freelance is I can choose who I work with. If you can't choose your clients, you CAN structure your team to play to your players' strengths.
Not everyone is a pipeline engineer not everyone loves designing dashboards. Some people flourish in big-bang delivery environments and others prefer agile. Assess your teammates' skills and build out delivery teams appropriately.
3. Ask "Why" before jumping to the "What" and "How"
Domo projects MUST revolve around delivering high-value activities. 4D statements are a bit of a joke in most consultant's eyes, but if you are going to upsell the project, you must understand the strategic decision behind WHY this project matters, understand how it aligns within politics and overall business strategy.
- What are the OKRs driving this project?
- What are the BHAGs set by the CEO that's driving this digital project?
- What other projects are in flight?
- How much is this solution actually worth?
Set up project kickoff so that a Sr. BC (see 2b) has the latitude to dive into "why" are we running this project.
- You may be able to earn goodwill with a quickstart that opens up a new use case.
- By knowing the whole plan, you can build a roadmap that outlives this initial project and sets your consultancy up for the next job.
4. Delivery is secondary to Consulting"People won't remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel."
Clients want you to deliver, but most clients, especially in Domo care MORE about that peace of night knowing they're doing it right. They just dropped a hefty chunk of budget on an unproven platform that no one has ever heard of. Especially at the early stages of a project, it's important for consulting teams to establish themselves as best friends and advocates. That communication will garner a lot of goodwill and latitude if projects start to slide sideways.
3b. Have a "Safe Pair of Hands" if you're playing Good Cop / Bad CopIf you have a client where you have to reset expectations, or are encountering friction, it's fine to have a credible consultant play "bad cop", but then you also need a "good cop" who is clearing roadblocks to allow the bad cop to operate, but also reassuring the client that ultimately bad cop is acting in the client's best interests.
Note: I usually need this because I speak "nerd" and I lean on BCs to translate and assure the client that we understand their business and we're building for their success.
Dealing with New Hires
**2b. Have a system for ensuring quality.**To make sure delivery is consistent across teams and projects, have a style guide or checklist for deliverables to help new teams maintain your brand/quality / level of work. Alternatively (additionally) have Sr. Consultants who oversee solution design and conduct standards review during UAT or QA review.
**5. Take Notes. Record Action Items.**Emailing Action items to the internal and external team at the end of the call is a great way to prevent surprises and is cannon fodder for project management practices that require end of week notes (gross ;)
Make new hires responsible for capturing action items and decisions while they're shadowing calls. Yes, it's menial labor for a more experienced resource but it exposes new hires to how we work and gives them a mission that requires attention to detail.
Defining a Sr. Consultant
**6. Senior Consultants consult.**A Sr. TC doesn't have to build pretty dashboards, and similarly, a Sr. BC should not dabble (too much) in dataflow development, but they DO have to understand how the solution they're building fits into a business process.
A good TC must recognize when the technical requirements/solution won't meet the users' requirements. And similarly, a BC should be able to identify how other businesses used technology to solve the current problem.
A good TC must pick up the generalist knowledge of a business analyst. A good BC should learn the fundamentals of applied data science and advanced analytics. Then between the pair of them, they should be able to identify more sophisticated solutions and workflows (custom apps and workflow design)
6b. Don't reinvent the wheel. Be Resourceful & Do ResearchDon't stop learning. Allocate time in your day for Udemy.The project or type of analytics you're being asked to deliver probably has a name and has years of methodology documented in textbooks, blog articles, or short YouTube videos. Don't rely on your (probably) shallow knowledge about a new project.
Your client is probably asking for a "simple use-case" because they don't know much about automating or optimizing their work. That's why they're asking for a consultant!! Impress your client with a handful of wireframes or solution designs inspired by work you've seen elsewhere.
**7. Ask a lot of questions.**It's easy to assume you know more than the client-- we're consultants after all! Hubris comes with the territory.
The more decisions and assumptions you make, the more on-the-hook you are if the project slips or go sideways. Make the mistake of over-informing the client, or spending too much time debating the finer points of your decisions. If the client made the decision, this covers-your-A if something blows up.
*Ideally, you'll discover insight they hadn't previously thought of.*DataCrew and Onyx Reporting will be running a free workshop on becoming a better consultant on May 25 and June 1st.
