It went so wrong. We had a client conference call recently that went so sideways I ended up on Pinterest browsing through Christmas stuff while listening to him rant. It felt like we were talking to a 1970’s executive who was smoking and drinking his martini’s while dictating to his secretary and letting his ego do the talking. Keep in mind, this client was in a high tech, cutting edge industry, but it felt like “Silicon Valley 1970”. Any question I asked was wrong including when I told him I did some research on the company he worked for - that was wrong! I was told I shouldn’t do any research! Oh my, the ego.
We do research on all companies we work for – the background information we gather on employees, the company website, Glassdoor, press releases etc. is priceless. We can gather all sorts of info. on people and learn who they are by how they present themselves. For example, when they say they are “published” and it’s only a blog – everyone has a blog - or they have a “white paper” and it’s their non-expert super short opinion with little to no facts. Or they claim to have worked at a job for 15 years when in fact they have been consulting and bumping around for the last 15 years.
All that information creates a character profile. Research is priceless! I have been blessed with amazing clients over all these years but this potential high tech client was a definite NO! We declined to work with them – no going back to the dark ages.
