Stop forcing good out of time wasters
Here’s something that can help the union of my two audiences.
The hardest lesson I ever learned was to say "no" to something (a client, an employer) that wasn’t a good fit for me.
In the idealized society we create online, nobody has financial struggles and obligations, but let me tell you I did. I was underpaid, in a single-income family, and my marriage was tough. We weren’t that great with our money, with me having more learned the life lessons on personal finances as a teenager and young adult versus my wife who never learned that lesson until recently.
But even with wise planning and budgeting, it wasn’t much to live on among 4 people, so I’d been in job-hunting mode for 8 of the 10 years I was a developer chasing opportunities.
The point of all of this is, when faced with those stakes, I went pretty far into some interviews I knew early on I didn’t want to take. And I wasted my time.
As a consultant, it’s hard to wrap your head around "Do business with people you want to work with." My post on why your employee engagement sucks is acerbic and likely a controversial opinion, given it was inspired by a commenter I didn’t agree one bit with. That probably will rub people the wrong way.
And that’s good. Those people I wouldn’t want to work with, because anyone upset by that is too busy making excuses or focusing on margarita machines to ever fix their problem.
Since I do consulting for HR, one thing I go and look at is Glassdoor reviews and interviews. Not because I think they are valid on their own, but because I can see
- Where discontent (if any) comes from (org-wide or department-level)
- If there are fake reviews
- How/if the employer responds to feedback
- How early (and thus encouraged) an employee post is
These can tell me two things: if there is a problem I can solve and if the org is worth doing business with. When it seems like reviews and what actual senior employees tell me line up with the 3 employee engagement problems — and the org insists they’re not problems — that’s a pass. I can’t solve the problem, because the org refuses to own responsibility for unhappy employees. I don’t want to do business with someone who is willfully oblivious, either.
These all signify wasting time on people who won’t buy anything, or if they do, they’ll nickle and dime, because they don’t get your value.
How you can stop wasting your time
An HR professional once asked how she can encourage employees to leave Glassdoor reviews without making them believe it has to be a positive review. I can make an educated guess when orgs request their employees to do this, and if I can do it, you better believe others will filter those out. If a review has no cons, that’s a serious red flag, and too many of them will defeat the purpose of leaving reviews.
In other words, don’t encourage employees to leave reviews.
Yes, this is counterintuitive, but employee reviews and business reviews are not the same.
If you’re a consultant, make a list of what’ll make you walk away. Know your standards, because they’re only standards when you’re not willing to compromise them for comp. It really isn’t worth it to get business from someone who won’t take you seriously. The cost of getting that check is more than you’re charging them. Walk away.
Nobody will tell you this, either. If you sell for a company, they’ll always acquiesce to "good" bad customers. Since the beginning of my times running a business, lots of business owners said you have to be get the bad customers first to get good ones. There’s no conclusive evidence of this. Research the business of whoever says this, and I bet you it’s not sunshine for them.
Remember this: it’s all about value. For orgs, people want to know you invest in them, and you legitimately care. For consultants, it’s not about your time, it’s about your value combined with your knowledge. Focus on those who understand value.
I’m the Tech Mentor — a developer-turned-salesperson-turned entrepreneur who believes in life beyond code. I teach people how to stop wasting their time.
I write weekdays on Medium and Steemit. I also run Jogral, a company that I spent more time reinventing than operating.
You won’t find me on Twitter, Facebook, on LinkedIn, but you can follow me @dwilikers here and on Steemit, or email me [email protected]. Be sure to comment on this article!