One of the things you learn as a business analyst is that business owners say one thing, but what they actually do something different. Truth be known I really pay little attention to what people say; instead I watch what they do!
After 400 business analysis in 20 years, you come away with one thing and that is "life is too short" to deal with people that think money is the root of their existence.
The happiest people I know have a lot of money not because they worked hard but because they hardly worked at all. They made money with their heads not their hands and heart!
When I was doing consulting full time I had a 50% closing rate. because in the first ten minutes I asked a simple question? What is your priority - more time or more money. The one's the told me more money usually ushered me out of the office within the first:30 minutes.
They felt that they didn't have time for what I was pitching them.
But I'm an analyst and realize that 50% of the people are going to answer the other way and so I didn't want to waste time with some "phoney entrepreneurs" who wanted to build his life on other people's backs.
I was like Mohammad Ali in these situations because I would just jab their faces until they kicked me out of the office.
One of the things I heard most in the first five minutes of all my initial analysis was ... "I'm (we're) all about customer service..." and then when you ask them to see their telephone answering policy they say - "what telephone answering policy" or worst yet, "I use an automated service."
Here was my standard answer "so let me make sure I understand this - you do not have time to write down the standards that you want to set the first time someone calls your business because you are more focused on getting more people to call so you can grow your business.
And the first phone call to your business is so unimportant that you could care less what the person that answers the phone sounds like or says?
Got it. And usually at that point the conversation went great or went south and either way I was happy, because if the client was all about money then why did he fill in a form that says he needed an "unbiased, third party analysis of his/her business". And that usually set off the storm.
I went on to explain how simple a standard phone response is and then I watched (not listen) watched his response.
It's not about how big you are or even if you work out of your home - the start of any new business relationship starts with a phone call...don't you think it's a great idea to have a short outline of how to deal with a new inquiry?
That to me is a huge advantage for a business owners and like I said only half of the 457 different analysis I did in 20 years merit my time!
