Steve Shu's 21Publish Blog

At my old blog last year, I recounted a story about losing a management consulting deal. Some key snips setting the context for the Dutch Uncle (emphasis added):

• Today I lost a freelance consulting deal to another consultant. Of course I'm disappointed, but once a deal is lost, it is lost ...
• I think the most important things to do after a lost deal are to identify learnings with respect to your company's product offering and sales processes and to preserve prospect relationships ...
• Now I am not going to go into all of my learnings here, however, I think it is useful to consider a concept I learned in Ford Harding's book, "Rain Making: The Professional's Guide to Attracting New Clients". You need to ask as many people as possible (client prospects included) to be straight-up with you. No silverlining. Why did I lose the deal? This is the concept of getting the prospect to talk to you like a Dutch uncle. To quote a passage from Harding's book, "The person who talks to you like a Dutch uncle does it for your own good ... At its worst ... [problems are] like a cheating spouse; friends know but don't tell you about it. "

Well, as it turns out, I actually won the deal. The client prospect came back. That's the happy story for Friday.

To change gears a bit, I actually started blogging probably back in 2003. I had one post up there for about a year on a Blogger account which I eventually deleted. I like to think that I won the deal above in part because what was embodied in my first blog post ever. The essence of what was there was (to my recollection):

• my personal mission statement as a business development professional
• my utmost goal to help people and not to sell to them
• my commitment to safeguard one's confidential and competitive information as a business partner
• my goal to even help you find an alternative source for your problem if my company's solution was not a good fit.

It probably went on and on for a bit, but you get the idea.