Paying A lot of Dollars for a little Sense

Is it just me or do people enjoying paying money to hear tech babble and fancy jargon from consultants?  Tell me if this has ever happened to you.  Someone pays you money to look at something, it could be their website, their social media campaign, etc.  You take the time and look over their info and make a few recommendations; but overall you feel that they are doing a great job.  You tell the person who paid you that they’re doing a great job and then they say: “is this what we paid for?”  It’s almost as if people want a huge list of problems and mistakes so that they can justify the cost.

The truth is that sometimes people are already doing a great job at something.  Sometimes their website is great, their SEO is wonderful, and their social media campaign is fantastic.  I feel like a lot of consultants out there are sometimes scared to tell a client that things are going well.  Clients don’t pay me for good news or bad news, they pay me for an accurate representation of what’s going on and if things are good or bad, I tell them.

I don’t know when or why this has happened but I’m seeing it quite a bit and I hear about from other friends/colleagues as well.  We have become obsessed with problems and mistakes, so much so, that we begin to interpret value based on the amount of mistakes and improvements that we can find.  This is completely the wrong approach to anything.  If you look hard enough you will find problems and issues with anything at any company.  Nothing is perfect.

We should be focusing more on the quality of the information and the interaction and less on the quantity of the information and number of “issues” that we can find.  A 40 page report is not more valuable than a 25 page report and a consultant who gives you a list of 100 issues is not more valuable than a consultant who gives you 25.

What’s your take on this?  Do you agree?

thanks for reading!