Have you ever had a professional consultation but the result didn’t take you anywhere? Fortunately, in 20 years and over 900 clients, I have only had to deal with dissatisfaction a few times. More often than not, it has happened in my role as a customer. And I have heard a few complaints from clients about my consulting colleagues. In any case, I’ve found that both the consultant and the client can contribute to making sure that the consultation doesn’t just become an unnecessarily expensive conversation.
Most consultants are freelancers or in small businesses and under their own name. In this type of business, reputation plays an extremely important role. So the goal of a consultant, like any other reasonable freelancer, is not to take your money and disappear, but to build a reputation and develop a stable and sustainable business. Which implies having happy clients.
So when a consultation doesn’t meet your expectations, it’s usually not a matter of bad intent, but rather a misunderstanding, differing ideas or unclear communication. How to prevent these situations and what can be done to make the consultation truly beneficial? That is what I´m covering in this article.
The most common reasons for dissatisfaction
Dissatisfaction can have various causes. And the source of dissatisfaction can lead to different ways of dealing with it.
1. Unprofessionalism
Being at the agreed time at the agreed place. To be on time. Send the promised documents. Keep your word. These are business basics for me. And if they don’t work, that’s a pretty clear reason to complain. Reliability shouldn’t be a competitive advantage, but matter of course.
Of all the possible reasons for dissatisfaction, this is probably the one we have the most control over as independent professionals. Plus, we can use a variety of tools to make it easier to keep our rules and promises. For example, I myself have used Youcanbook.me as booking system, Trello and Notion for notes, Google Calendar and other useful apps for many years.
2. Factual errors
We pay legal or tax advisors explicitly because they know the laws and regulations and can help us come up with a solution that fits within them. Marketing and business consulting is more often about diagnosing the situation and designing a strategy.
But even in this field, there are rules that need to be respected. For example, I’m certainly not going to advise you to send out emails to a database you’ve bought, or put stickers on doors in the Prague metro. I also won’t advise you to advertise on Facebook without warning you that you will become an identified person for VAT purposes as a result.
We’re human, of course, and mistakes can happen to anyone. A good advisor, in my opinion, should acknowledge it and offer the client some sort of resolution. Equally, it makes sense to keep educating yourself and expanding your knowledge in your field and those of your follow-up, so that the advice you impart is factually correct.
3. Conflict of values
Sometimes an advisor may give you advice that may work, but it conflicts with your core beliefs. For example, selling through aggressive discounting. Or to close a campaign sale at midnight and reopen the cart in the morning. Or “tweak” the information you present about yourself on your networks.
In my experience, it brings the best results if you work with people who share your core value system. They have a similar worldview, belong to a similar social bubble, and attach importance to similar things as you do.
If you’re offering a service, it makes sense to be clear about your values and then communicate them clearly. The best place to do this is on the web or on social media. Or in blog articles. For the record, mine are authenticity, trust, kindness, simplicity and personal development.
If you’re going to approach an advisor as a client, I recommend choosing not only by expertise, but also taking values into account. What a person stands for is usually very easy to see from their public presentation. It also makes sense to let your intuition play a role – it’s when it comes to values that it will usually guide you correctly.
Your most dissatisfied customers are the best source for your lessons learned. Bill Gates
4. Failure to comply with the assignment
Most people turn to counselors when they want to find a solution. Which works best when you have both enough information about the current situation and a concrete idea of what parameters the outcome should meet.
The consultant should ask detailed questions and come up with a result that fits the brief. Alternatively, explain meaningfully why the brief cannot be met and offer an alternative solution.
If you are entering into a consulting relationship as a client, it makes sense to draw up an assignment before the meeting. Most consultants are able to guide you to a definition of the assignment, but I don’t think it’s worth it. It depends on hourly rates, but more often than not, it works out cheaper to hire a coach to formulate the assignment and deal with the consultant after the fact. Alternatively, work through the assignment yourself, or with the help of ChatGPT.
Problems can also arise when the consultant specializes in something other than what you need. Today’s marketing is very complex and each consultant has a slightly different focus and also a different zone of genius. With me, for example, you might be good at business mindset, strategy, or website structure, but I’m not the right person for, performance marketing, social media, or the latest marketing trends.
5. Different expectations
Sometimes a consultant comes up with a proposal that you simply don’t like. For example, they might recommend that LinkedIn would be the best platform to showcase your service. But you don’t like the network and you don’t feel like setting up a new profile.
Or you may find that achieving your goal will take a lot more work, cost more money and require a lot more stepping out of your comfort zone than you originally anticipated. Alternatively, you came into the consultation already internally set up for a different type of output.
I personally recommend giving it a shot. You usually seek out a consultant because your current practices are failing or you don’t see a clear direction in front of you. And you’re paying them to show you exactly the solution that you never would have thought of on your own. What he advises you is often backed by experience and years of practice. That’s why I advocate leaving resistance aside and trying out the suggested course of action at least on a small scale. After a few months you can evaluate it and decide whether it is worth continuing in the direction you have taken.
6. Non-functioning chemistry
Some people you like at first sight. While this is not true of others at all. I’m talking about that feeling where you don’t like someone from the start, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. Or they remind you of someone you didn’t have a good experience with.
Of course, that kind of thing can happen between a consultant and a client. Like values, you can often tell this from a public presentation. Look at videos, reels or photos rather than text. Some consultants have this situation covered in their terms and conditions. I, for example, offer the option to end the consultation within 15 minutes with no charge, if we find that we are not on the same page.
7. Sensitive spot
Business, in my opinion, is a type of personal development. It shows us aspects of our character and personality that, had we not decided to go into business, would probably never have come up. Thus, it can and does easily happen that a question or remark uttered in a consultation hits you in a sensitive spot.
It may be a situation or area that you have not addressed. A painful memory or even a trauma from the past. Or a sudden unpleasant realization. The very personality of the counselor can be a trigger. In fact, we often subconsciously choose people for counseling who mirror what we need to process.
So try to think of such a thing not as a reason to complain, but as an opportunity to look at your wounds and vulnerabilities with new eyes.
As a trained psychologist with therapeutic training, I can work with some of these types of situations. Alternatively, I can recommend other therapists or professionals who can guide you through what the consultation has opened up for you.
How to deal with dissatisfaction?
Of course, in the role of a client, you can put the consultant in the mental box of “useless jerk” or “complete bitch” and not deal with it any further. But I think that’s a pity. Not only will you not get what you need this way. But you’ll also waste your money and reinforce your belief that there’s no point in commissioning any consultancy services at all.
A better option is to be clear about what bothers you and which of the above types of dissatisfaction you are experiencing. And then share that with the consultant. A good consultant wants to continually improve their service, so feedback is welcome. In addition, they may offer to add information, better explain their perspective, or give you further direction.
Sometimes it helps to give it a couple of days and look at the information you’ve gathered from a distance. But it certainly doesn’t make sense to let dissatisfaction ferment for a year or two. Communication is the key. Often this is what determines whether cooperation will be useful despite initial doubts.
