Defensive Customers

Take a moment to see where the customer is coming from and position them & you for a successful implementation

Transcript

For many of our projects, the customer’s executive buys the consulting services while the customer’s employees work with us. Sometimes, this purchaser has not asked for any feedback from the employees on what to do or how to do it. Many times, it seems like the only thing that is communicated is ‘Hey guess what we bought to do this task. Help them get it done.’ Pretty sketchy right?

The poor employees then don’t know what this means for the company or even for their future employment. When they are not included in why the purchase was made or why we were selected, but we were forced on them - they then feel unvalued and under-appreciated. Also, very frequently we are coming in with an automated way to do the employee’s current jobs (such as report development and data research) and the employee immediately thinks that they will get laid off after implementation.  Of course, they might not tell you outright but you can see the employee is on guard when they are reserved and not fully answering questions, or by being abrasive and not agreeing with anything being done. 

Can you see now how these situations put them on the defensive to start with? This defensive behavior can damage the success of the project. Before you immediately go to the executive sponsor with this issue (which is an option by the way), try to come in as a listener, offering value-add to their daily jobs. Mention how automating will free them up to do more valuable work and increase their productivity. In our world, the reports don’t yet interpret themselves. So automating the report development for instance will free them into researching the trends and developing action plans to achieve success.

My next podcast will dive further into listening – a key ingredient to your success in a project, with your team, and in your life.

Until then, stay safe everyone!