Itemised quotes

The economic downturn has shown up on my doorstep in the form of requests for greater detail in pitch documents.  In the last week two different clients (one old, one new) have referred project proposals to Purchasing who have then demanded very specific financial breakdowns.  I had to remind myself that purchasing departments usually have a precise mindset that deals more easily with large quantities of tangible low-ticket items (say, widgets) instead of small quantities of intangible high-ticket items (consultancy).

Because Purchasing Officers / Managers are intentionally removed from the project itself I sometimes find it hard to avoid seeming evasive when I can't break down my figures past a certain point.  "I cost what I cost" is obviously an unacceptable response.  

It is vital to work out whether the person you're dealing with is coming from an administrative or negotiating standpoint.  With an administrator it's simply making the numbers add up, but today I made an incorrect assumption and ended up in a negotiation over day rate before I knew it.

I await the outcome.

Will Ferrell movies

I'm back in the US running a week-long programme.  It's a long time to spend with a group of strangers.  It means that the people I'm working with get to see me in a semi-social context as well as a straight professional one and we won't be strangers at the end of the week.

Personally, the biggest challenge is dinner.  No one wants to 'talk shop' but so many other topics are off limits; religion and politics are fraught, not everyone follows sport (and my knowledge of the 'Big Four' American sports is no better than passable) and you can only say so much about your kids to a complete stranger.

My background presents an additional challenge.  Because everyone else at the table has a pretty similar set of experiences (for starters they all ended up working for the same pharmaceutical company) being a self-employed Australian who lives in the UK arguably makes me more 'interesting' than everyone else.  It's bad manners to dominate a conversation, especially when I've been holding forth all day in the training room.

My solution is to get everyone to nominate their favourite Will Ferrell film.  He's made so many and they're mainstream enough for everyone to have seen and enjoyed at least a couple.  This gambit is good for at least thirty minutes of pleasant, unmemorable yet professional conversation.

His cameos in The Wedding Crashers and Zoolander were his best work for mine.

No excuses

I know I link to Seth Grodin a lot but this really is about all of us little guys.

Opportunity cost

Currently I'm pitching on a huge project; a train-the-trainer roadshow made more complicated by being pan-European and with the usual disconnect between the centralised marketing function in Paris and the regional sales teams.

I can already guess that the project will swallow every available moment of my life between now and deadline with multi-country teleconferences, endless rewriting of PowerPoint slide decks and one-line emails about the need to install an updated version of Adobe Acrobat.  Because I won't let myself to do bad work I will do all of this regardless of the financial deal I strike this week.

Whilst I want the job and I'm prepared to handle the hassle that will come with it I'm also aware of the opportunity cost of getting the pricing wrong.  It's going to be hard enough dealing with all the frustrations brought about by the client's internal politics without having to turn down more lucrative work because I'm overcommitted.  If that happens I'll really struggle for motivation.  This is what undercharging feels like and it's when I do my worst work so I need to factor a sense of opportunity cost into my pricing.

The jobs that have hurt my reputation the most have always been the cheapest.

A long walk

Today was hard.  I slept poorly and unusually for me, late.  It was one of those days where I overcomplicated even the simplest tasks.  Around midday it occurred to me that anything attempted today would take longer and be done worse than if I put it off until tomorrow or next week.

Instead I wrote a list of the simplest things I could think of doing for the afternoon: office filing, doing some laundry, preparing something nice for dinner, finishing the book I'm reading and so on.  At the top of the page was 'go for a long walk'.  So I walked through London to a coffee shop on a busy high street, I bought a coffee, sat in the window and watched the Friday world go by, then I walked home again.

Sure the week ended with a whimper not a bang but at least I ended it with a sense of agency.

The Long Tail

I'm reading a 2006 book by Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine) called The Long Tail.

Whilst its difficult to relate much of the book to my Headcount: 1 model, I was happy to read his thoughts about self-published books: -

"The book becomes not the product of value but the advertisement for the product of value - the authors themselves.  Many such noncommercial books are best seen as marketing vehicles meant to enhance the academic reputation of their authors, market their consultancy, earn them speaking fees, or just leave their mark on the world.  Seen that way, self-publishing is not a way to make money; it's a way to distribute your message."

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Anderson is intrigued by the potential of digital technology (including improved efficiencies in print production) to allow more of us to produce and distribute our ideas.  Every consultant is in the ideas business and we're running out of excuses for not getting them out into the marketplace.

A houseguest

For the past few days an old friend of mine from Sydney has been a houseguest.  She visits London about once a year and it's always lovely catching up with her.  My wife and I feel very strongly about keeping up good links with Australian friends and family and nothing beats chatting with someone face to face.

But for the person who works from home houseguests are always going to be a mixed blessing.  My friend is having a holiday at my place of work.

There's no easy solution to this.  London real estate is far too expensive for me to have a flat large enough for my workspace to be isolated and my friend is here to see me not Nelson's Column.

The best and politest thing I can do is arrange my workflow such that I'm not especially busy for the time we have a guest.  Where that isn't possible I try and stick to my 5am starts and get work done before my holidaymaking friend wakes up.  Otherwise all I can do is close the door, put on the Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones I wear on planes and work quickly.

When we have visitors it's all too easy for me to adopt a curmudgeonly or even misanthropic persona and leave my wife to play hostess.  But that defeats the whole point of self-employment.  One of the chief joys of working for yourself is arranging life so that you get to have wine over a midweek lunch with an old friend when the opportunity arises?

Houseguests are a good thing.

Dressing for meetings

Beware of overdressing for meetings with client, especially if you're going to be at their offices.  As a consultant you want to be seen as a colleague and not a job applicant.

My rule is to go 'one up' on clients.  I try to dress marginally more formally than they do.

• If they wear chinos + jacket + tie then I'll wear a suit
• If they go without the tie then I'll wear chinos + jacket + tie
  
• If they wear open-necked shirts then I'll wear jacket + open-necked shirt (my preferred)

I will always at least carry a jacket and I never wear jeans, even at an off-site meeting.  I always wear leather shoes (not trainers) and socks (so no boat shoes).  I'm also aware that many clients have different dress rules for Fridays.

I know that some suppliers, especially creatives, get a buzz out of dressing as informally as possible because 'they can'.  To me that's tantamount to rubbing the client's nose in the fact that he's a wage slave?

For this reason I'd rather be overdressed and have a client poke a little fun at me for being 'stuffy' than be underdressed.  I can always claim to have another meeting that day where the client isn't as 'cool' as this one (flattery will get me a lot of places).

And a client who complains about any aspect of how I dress on more than one occasion is telling me, in code, that she doesn't want me to get the gig.