FamiliarITy

Disclaimer: This post is based solely on my observations as an IT services professional for the last decade. Your point of view might be different. Deal with it!!

Familiarity breeds contempt, says the adage. In an ever competitive world of consulting, outsourcing & services industry, familiarity breeds a lot more than just contempt.

In most IT services companies, the client relationship managers take up the dual responsibility of sales too. To stay ahead in the rat race, you always have a new strategy or solution. Assuming you have a great product or service to sell, the deal clincher is how you market it. This is one place where familiarity is a foe. If your client has known you for years and have seen you in action, he/she would know your limits by now. They have seen your negotiation tactics, they know how far you would go, and what your breaking point is. There is no element of surprise. There is limited room for negotiation and as a result, lesser profit margin.

The biggest complaint you hear from couples who have been married for ages is that their spouse takes them for granted. Same applies to a client relationship too. In long client engagements, you start getting treated as one of their own! There are definitely advantages to this. But it has disadvantages too. The bar is being raised constantly. Your client might have employees who have worked with them for half a century and knows everything inside out. You cannot keep the same people around for that long. The career paths and the company direction of IT & consulting firms is different from their end customer.

To get your foot in at a new client, you might have agreed to some aggressive timelines and billing rates. But if you were not proactive enough to set the expectation that this is a one time deal to prove your proficiency, you are in big trouble, Negotiations & changes of billing rates and SLAs are difficult with long term clients. If your star performer is being billed at $x an hour, you can increase that $x to some extend based on market conditions or what not. But there is only so far you can push without straining the relationship. The same person could be positioned at a different client location at a higher rate.

Last but not the least: you snooze, you lose! Business trends and technology is changing at a blinding pace. Unless you work in different environments with varying management styles and problem statements, you lose your competitive edge. You tend to practice & preach the client's way of doing things just because you haven't explored any other options. This not only hampers your career, your client is also losing out on any thought leadership from you.

So I guess the best adage for today is "Variety is the spice of life!"