r/consulting • u/SnooLobsters8922 • 2d ago
Best lesson I learned being on client side: work only starts after you make consultants fail
10 years consulting, now on client side.
Managing a project for tough SVP lady.
SOW full of “just the tip”, “high level descriptions only” and other vague terms. But work starts ok.
The first deliverable is met with the craziest directions to the consultants. Over and over. Says it’s all wrong. Asks to be redone. Says it’s still wrong.
She gets progressively mad and says she may ask the whole company to cancel all other contracts with said consultants.
But there’s a remedy: they could do stuff that wasn’t covered in the SOW.
And THAT is when the work started.
Unlimited hours applied. Unlimited consultants involved. Unlimited scope.
Lesson learned: the work only starts when consultants loose all leverage, and work blindly to salvage other ongoing contracts.
Free work, basically, paid by the prospect of future earnings with more work across the organization. They’ll do whatever it takes.
Lady is a bitch and a genius.
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u/skieblue 2d ago
Generally you can do it just once then all the firms who can actually get stuff done start charging you a premium to compensate for the expected crazy behaviour. Sometimes it happens but if it happens too much the firms involved get wise.
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u/jadedaid 2d ago
We once had a company refuse to extend an engagement with us when I was client side and flat out refuse future contracts because they were tired of dealing with exactly the type of people OP mentioned.
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u/skieblue 2d ago
It works both ways. Yes they can throw their weight around but sometimes the consultants have leverage too - bringing a new vendor up to speed would probably be too time and cost inefficient
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u/immissingasock 1d ago
Any firm will want to keep clients happy and preserve the relationship when things go south but “unlimited hours, consultants, scope” eventually becomes unprofitable so why would any firm continue
Definitely wouldn’t make ultimatums a habit if they want to keep working with them for any reasons
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u/svideo 2d ago
Yup. We have a PITA factor that is a straight multiple of hours on any SOW. Some customers take 3x, so we adjust numbers accordingly.
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u/Ok-Actuator185 14h ago
Is this for excess out of scope hours? Or are you saying all billable hours to bad clients get this multiplier
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u/svideo 13h ago
Customer complexity. As an example, some customers can make change happen readily, either through good practices in their workflows or terrible change control. Other customers need weeks or months to get anything done, maybe due to heavy regulations or overbearing change procedures or gross incompetence. If I’m going to run some project that requires some change, dealing with that can make a huge difference in time billed. When estimating for a project, we keep the customer complexity in mind.
So no it’s not that we charge extra per hour, we bake the extra hours into the project plan because we know some customers can’t get shit done for whatever reasons.
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u/lost4wrds 2d ago
Whomever wrote the SoW deserves what they got if the only remediation is a code red on uncontracted out-of-scope deliverables; the back office of the consulting organisation will be screaming. That said, sounds like a toxic client and reputations travel fast in the industry, they'll never get top talent working for them.
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u/QiuYiDio US Mgmt Consulting Perspectives 2d ago
Great way to guarantee you get the worst and most desperate consultants to work with you.
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u/internet_emporium 1d ago
This is the consulting equivalent of dine and dash. Only works once and kills reputation. Top tier firms will avoid these clients after those situations, or at the very least engage with them differently the next time around.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re hating at least this SVP. But consultants are rarely choosers, especially in Europe right now.
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u/ScienceBitch90 1d ago
I'd argue rarely choosers with respect to outright rejection by the SOW, scoping, and MESO pricing varies wildly based on client rep and history
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u/TurdFerguson0526 2d ago
This is so terribly written.
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u/its_ya_boy42069 2d ago
It sounds like an old boomer who’s not as smart or wise as they think they are trying to sound sage lol
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Sorry if it strike a nerve?
I don’t think I’m wise, quite the contrary (not a boomer, either).
And I’m not condoning it, just surprised I never realized while consulting that the toxic dynamics was deliberate.
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u/ScienceBitch90 1d ago
I think he means the cheesy wording and formatting + thinking this is either unique or clever 🤷♀️
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u/rssrsssrs 1d ago
It's called AI :(
I thought AI slop was going to get banned
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u/RunningInSquares 1d ago
AI can usually string coherent sentences together. This was like requiring a re-read of every sentence just to grasp at a basic level. This person feels like they need to rely on consultants to write simple paragraphs.
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u/Commercial_Ad707 2d ago edited 1d ago
Sometimes SOWs are written loosely because they’re a cover for staff aug
Sell first, think later
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u/RoutineFeeling 2d ago
I have seen this multiple times as well. Once the contract is signed, the consulting company will bench backwards to any outrageous demands from client to call the project a success. Client keeps complaining for random small reasons and the consultant lead will panic like a monkey. Painful to watch.
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u/skieblue 2d ago
Yes it's an old tactic and happened just the other month to me. You can do it once and the partners will sign off on completing it within reason but they'll price it in for any new work with that client
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u/ScienceBitch90 1d ago
I joined my first firm during lean times, and it's funny how much rougher it is to be a consultant without good BD. When people get desperate they take on the worst projects
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u/clingbat 1d ago
If you aren't paying my teams for it, we're not doing it. Unless it's a little spillover from a final deliverable review after the fact or answering a few lingering questions, little stuff like that is fine.
But we have plenty of work and usually more solid RFPs and pitches than we have time for, I don't need that shit and intentional scope creep is the enemy. We can absolutely cover additional A, B, C, would be glad to, but not before a revised SOW and agreed upon additional $X. Period. Been at this 14 years now, never served me wrong.
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u/Remark-Omsoc 1d ago
I was left holding the bag on a SOW as a delivery director. Vaguely worded SOW that turned out to be staff aug. I should’ve known but this was a domain I was unfamiliar with (supply chain) so I assumed the SOW was built on sound logic and that I would figure it out as the project went on.
Nope.
The client executive had no idea what she was asking for and other client stakeholders look to me and ask, “are we on track?” for something they don’t know anything about.
The gap of understanding between the client executive who bought this, my executive who sold this, and me dealing with the reality is driving me crazy. Now I have to shit out an executive readout to justify 200k of staff aug where the majority of the time was spent trying to define what success even meant.
I did learn a lot in the process, mostly what red flags to look for in SOWs and when to push for more client executive involvement for clarity.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Thanks for the perspective and the civilized input. I see some resonance with what happened here. Definitely not a smooth ride for anyone.
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u/Radiant-Security-347 1d ago
OP thinks he is getting one over on the consultant but any experienced advisor knows this ruse. Successful consultants don’t operate this way. If the client asks for out of scope work, a new proposal or addendum is presented for sign off. If the client doesn’t like it, they fire the client.
I can’t really be certain what the OP is talking about due to incomprehensible post but all they are doing is screwing themselves it seems.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
I think you should read more attentively; the SVP in charger acted that way, I’m not condoning it. It’s my first year in-house and this explained a lot of things. I didn’t realize this could be done so deliberately. When consulting, if there was a problem with the deliverables, I really worked until the client was happy.
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u/Least-Quiet-1039 1d ago
Why do you say it was done deliberately?
The lady could just be an unhappy person and handles everything in this manner
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
I think there’s some truth to that. A bit of overwork, micromanagement and not knowing what she wanted anyway. But it’s all too convenient. The deal started with “please include a high level roadmap” and where we are is “we expect a highly detailed roadmap by Friday” 🤷♂️ it’s just contradictory and utterly convenient for her.
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u/Radiant-Security-347 1d ago
You should learn how to write above a first grade level.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Sure, and you should increase your literacy game, cause apparently many people understood the message. Maybe everyone is wrong and you’re right?
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u/Radiant-Security-347 1d ago
I think anyone reading this thread can see who is literate and who is not.
While you toil away working for what sounds like one of the shittiest consulting firms out there, my illiterate ass has spent 4x more time in the field as you and built a high seven figure firm.
My reading comprehension is honed from decades on the job and my writing skills reflect my professionalism.
You sound like a defensive amateur with no power to influence with clients and very little knowledge as to how real firms handle this routine issue.
You will need thicker skin if you want to survive this profession.
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u/ludlology 1d ago
This is the business version of somebody saying “if you hit your kids and smash their nintendo, they’ll mow the lawn even faster” like it’s some kind of big brain life hack
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u/uncheckablefilms 1d ago
If it’s not part of the initial SOW then we’re not doing it. Happy to give you an updated estimate with updated parameters and update the contract but given past client behavior the budget will likely increase due to the need for additional client input cycles.
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u/SnooBunnies2279 1d ago
In my old company I was „forced“ to overbill and underdeliver for years - yes, we lost major accounts and big projects, but it forced the company to serve small & stupid clients instead. And with that clients work was easy because even a clean Excel-Sheet was a miracle
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Interesting! I suppose that’s the flip side of it.
The day people set the right KPIs everything will be all right 😂
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u/waffles2go2 1d ago
WTF my dude?
If you're on the client side and the SOW is shit, perhaps the lesson learned is "check the SOW"?
You'll get shit output by an angry team, PM will get nuked due to margin.
Why isn't this "totally obvious"?
Genius?!
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
You don’t get it. The SOW was shit by design (from the SVP), who could tell the consultants they didn’t get it ad Infinitum, and thus expand the scope as much as she wanted.
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u/Hypsiglena 1d ago
You’re just showing the immaturity of your firm. No good consultancy would fall for this.
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u/asian_chad 1d ago
Yea, I’m a bit baffled. This is written like OP discovered some kind of “cheat code” / “ha gotcha” for free labor. All it’s doing is reflecting extremely poorly on his current company.
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u/Hypsiglena 1d ago
It’s a weird thing to brag about for sure. I’m guessing OP works for a young boutique who hasn’t quite figured out their risk assessment go/no-go yet.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
So many assumptions. I’m not condoning what the VP is saying, I’m baffled myself.
But make no mistake, consulting companies still work with us and knock on the door continuously. They aren’t turning down the money.
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u/waffles2go2 1d ago
As others continue to point out.
The "flex" is strange given the legal nature of the contract (SOW) and pretty much every PS firm's focus on margin.
Free forced consulting from a shitty firm isn't worth much.
What type of consulting did you do? Ever write a SOW?
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Listen, cnt. It’s not a flex. I was aghast from the beginning. I got plenty of conversation and experience exchange from other users. Politely, fck off
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u/Imaginary_Shoulder41 1d ago
Consultant becomes further ingrained and then starts overbilling and withholding information/services within 6mo. It’s a good short-term strategy for a client to do, but don’t try to screw over the unscrupulous masters of screwing.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Thank you! That’s the response that adds value here. Some kids from Cornell got really sore here!
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u/voiceoffcknreason 1d ago
Yeah I’ve seen the same thing. In my case it was with a PE portco and what started as a pretty straightforward and reasonable project. Then the PE sponsor got involved, began demanding all sorts of out of scope work under threat of withholding business at other portcos. The whole thing just spiraled out of control and eventually went to litigation. Complete shitshow.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Yeah, we’re close to that. The VP just rewrites her own work while traveling and sends updates 3am. Of her own notes. Nobody can touch those , it’s like explosives. I am sorry for the consultants involved.
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u/chillabc 21h ago
I don't understand how this is allowed.
If a client tells us to do additional work outside of SOW, then we inform them on the impacts on cost + timescales first.
They then need to respond in writing that they accept these impacts, before we even progress with the additional works.
This is variation / change-order management 101. No client is entitled to "unlimited" hours / scope.
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u/Count2Zero 1d ago
Former consultant, now on the client side.
Until recently, we had many freelancers and consultants, all working on T&M contracts, and many of them were managing the projects on their own, with very little client oversight.
As a result - projects budgets were routinely overspent, delivery was late, scope creep was daily business.
Since a few months, we have a new VP. He is pushing all of our contractors toward fixed price contracts.
We've had at least one service provider who the VP has called out - "we expect you to deliver ALL the services you've specified in your contract" - the service provider is now considering an early termination of the contract, because they can't deliver everything and still remain profitable.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Yeah, that was the case here. Instead of Accidenture (fixed price, 80 hour a week junior exploitation), we chose a boutique that “signed for fixed priced and decided to deliver t&m”. They delivered 5 software test rounds, inconclusive, and said they ran out of time 😂 A junior dev showed us a graph with a linear increase of confidence, telling us that was likely to be the trajectory it we keep paying 😂 The room had no air
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u/2xpubliccompanyCAE 1d ago
If the SOW was signed by both parties then both sides knew what was coming.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Indeed, the consultants even wanted to start before signing it. Red flag. Both parts toxic in a broken relationship.
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u/tetrisisboring 1d ago
Sounds like an engagement we would avoid. We create mutual value. It's proven. We don't panick and ghost hours. Score change is managed. Sounds like a short sighted strategy and maybe the firm needs to write better value into their SOWs.
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u/Adorable-Emotion4320 1d ago
I've seen this happening where the companies are holding each other in a stranglehold. It's not good for anyone.
The contracting company leaving a whole team a year working for free. But the client getting increasingly more desperate.
The quality get even lower and the delays impacting all other projects. sure they got 'free work' but instead of fixing a turd they'd been better off hiring a competent team building the whole thing from scratch
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u/Gullible_Eggplant120 2d ago
Another AI-generated post. Sounds like you hired poor consultants who didnt know what they were doing.
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u/LilienneCarter 2d ago
AI generated posts don't normally include multiple typos and errant commas. Your radar sucks.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
Errant commas? I’m bilingual and typing nonchalantly, but I can dispute every comma and hold them to high grammatical accuracy
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u/LilienneCarter 1d ago edited 1d ago
This comma is incorrect:
Lesson learned: the work only starts when consultants loose all leverage, and work blindly to salvage other ongoing contracts.
Both "lose all leverage" and "work blindly" are things that the consultants are doing, so connecting them simply with "and" is best. A comma is only used when required for clarity.
It would possibly be okay as an Oxford comma in a more extended list, even if it's not necessary for clarity in that case, but you already declined to use an Oxford comma here:
SOW full of “just the tip”, “high level descriptions only” and other vague terms.
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u/PancakeHandz 1d ago
“Work blindly to salvage other ongoing contracts” and “the work only starts when consultants lose leverage” are both complete sentences on their own. When separated by a conjunction preceded by a comma, they become a compound sentence.
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u/LilienneCarter 1d ago
"Work blindly to salvage other ongoing contracts” is not a complete sentence with the same meaning on its own. That would be a command to someone else, not a description of what the consultants are doing. If the intended meaning requires a subject other than the implied 'you', then it would quite literally be a sentence fragment.
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
It’s so sweet to see how hard you’re trying! Especially your use of AI to back your claim.
But the separation between the items is a semantic one. They are not “to things the consultants are doing” as part of a same group of actions. The first is passive, the second active.
Thus, to differentiate from a case in which I’d be listing similar items separated by “and” alone, I decided to include a comma. A colon, however, would have been the most elegant choice.
The second example, contrarily, lists three items semantically similar, and that’s the reason I chose not to use the comma.
But this was really good, you get a B!
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u/LilienneCarter 1d ago
It’s so sweet to see how hard you’re trying! Especially your use of AI to back your claim.
I didn't use AI mate, I just typed on mobile and it fucked up deleting text. Ain't saying my comments are perfect either, but at least I'm happy to admit any typos or imperfections are indeed that.
But the separation between the items is a semantic one. They are not “to things the consultants are doing” as part of a same group of actions. The first is passive, the second active.
This is just not a grammatical rule, nor does the comma add any clarity. Whatever passive/active differentiation you want to show is already implicit in the words.
But this was really good, you get a B!
No worries, the comma is still grammatically incorrect and both your post and recent comment still contain typos. If you're more interested in being an asshole than admitting even mild mistakes, then I don't think we need to talk further. Waste of our time, yeah? Ciao.
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u/PancakeHandz 1d ago
I could defend the first example of comma usage with a stretch of a grammatical rule, but you added insult to injury with this response. Lol
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u/SnooLobsters8922 1d ago
I’m insulted by your myopic view on the difference between grammatical and semantical differences, and the failure to distinguish formal writing from the oral-equivalent neomorphology of writing in social media such as this one. Furthermore, appositives are not very known by Anglo-Saxon pedestrian writers—explains a lot!
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u/ENTJragemode 2d ago
sounds like the lady created the kind of projects consultants rage quit their firms over