Do you guys ever feel like wanting to roundhouse kick your clients to the head? It's like they're illiterate and can't read simple emails you send. It's always corporates, never have this problem with the PE's. Goddamn they suck. /end rant
Edit* Please do not take this post seriously. It was meant to be in humor... at least for the most part
| +130 | Is my life over after not getting GS? | 32 | 1h | |
| +100 | BEING WHITEGIRL IS PARADISE | 18 | 25m | |
| +73 | Best IB group on the Street | 35 | 52m | |
| +65 | Thoughts and tips on how to speak like an investment banker. | 25 | 20h | |
| +58 | BIG FOUR ARE PARADISE | 15 | 20h | |
| +48 | Tell me one good reason why Jefferies isn’t going to be a top bank in the next 5 years | 23 | 13h | |
| +38 | UBS Outlook | 28 | 1d | |
| +35 | How to deal with egotistical team? | 6 | 3d | |
| +33 | Highest Paid Bankers in Toronto? | 51 | 19h | |
| +31 | Are you “less ambitious” for having long term goals outside of NYC | 13 | 4h |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
If you think that's bad you should try working on-site with clients as a consultant.
sounds like you've got a bright future in sales ahead of you
lmao - this is an internal battle. It will never show on the outside.
The funny part is that they make fun of you for the exact same things.
I know haha. Goes both ways - this was just a lighthearted, slightly humorous, rant
Maybe you're a bad communicator?
My email: We haven't yet addressed the headcount issue
Next email returned by client: The headcount issue hasn't been addressed
I'm open to ways to improve my communication, but this was a bit ridiculous
Happens everywhere. I saw this plenty of times from clients when I was in banking, but now that I'm on the opposite side, I see it from banks too. We will get CIMs with terrible formatting, pitch books with our company's name misspelled, bankers who clearly are unfamiliar with their client's business, etc. Sloppiness is not just limited to clients, unfortunately.
Yeah I remember when I interned in corpdev we got a few teasers from no-name boutiques that were awful. In that case I understand, but I was just referring in general to clients who are "too busy" to read an email and miss out on important info etc. It's not a large population and a majority aren't like that but the minority that are like that, piss me the hell off.
"bankers who clearly are unfamiliar with their client's business"
this is why I am a huge proponent of industry coverage
As in a group like GS TMT or Barclays Natural Resources? I agree, but in my example, unfortunately, these bankers were industry bankers.
As am I, but there are some strong coverage shops that run shitty processes. Running a good process can sometimes be more important than effectively positioning the client.
That being said, I've struggled to develop a better niche than the broader Industrials because of sporadic deal flow all over the sector.
Wait until you get your reviews done and they complain about every little detail.
I am on the consultant side, FYI.
Not much you can do but make sure sh*t is getting done, because it's the end result that matters.
"Fuck the client"
Constantly. The worst is when they are truly clueless but think they know what they're talking about and insist that you are wrong even though they are paying you to guide them to the right decision. There are good clients, but I'm talking specifically about the flagrantly delusional clients who just think they're the tip of God's BSD.
Dude yes you get the essence of this post. Most of them are actually pretty good and not too assholey. It tends to be the non-corpdev people (ie. loud and boisterous sales heads) or non-finance people who sadly don't "get it"
Here is a typical conversation I had with clients when I was on the opposite end of the aisle:
Me: Can you please send over your most recent P&Ls and Balance Sheet?
Client: It's not ready yet.
Me: Ok, thanks, do you know when we can expect it? Its the last item that's pending and we then we are good to close.
..........dead silence for SEVEN days
Client: (sends me an email with manager CC'ed) What is going on over there! We been waiting TEN days and haven't heard back anything!
Me: (takes keyboard and breaks it over head)
An interaction almost like this is what triggered this post.
Haha major +1 on this. Clients that don't have information handy are the worst. It's always your fault in the end, despite their total incompetence.
That's what the email paper trail and cc function are for.
+1000000000000000000 this. I save all my emails. It has saved my ass countless times.
An associate during a previous internship threw a keyboard out of the window once because of a similar situation (sadly, an internal one).
Weak, If you are going to destroy your keyboard, do it in style. Like smash it against the desk so hard that some keys fall in secretary's cleavage.
There are a LOT of mid to senior level guys you will encounter as clients who are not good at keeping up with email. I would just recommend you pick up the phone and call these guys whenever possible.
And it applies to finance and consulting, and life in general. Aside from executives having mind boggling volumes of emails, sometimes things get lost in a server or whatever. Follow up is crucial and prevents these kinds of scenarios.
Better to have them complain about being all up in their business as opposed to radio silence.
Just my $0.02
I routinely had to close my eyes and count to 5 when I worked in public accounting
If you're exclusively using emails to communicate with clients then you have yourself to blame. Email is the lowest form of communication and very easy to ignore, forget, and disregard
You know what's not easy to ignore? Someone calling you every 5 minutes, with high energy and a pleasant demeanor, and who is completely and shamelessly unaffected by your inevitable annoyance
I'm a first year analyst.. No CEO or CFO or any upper management would appreciate a call from me lol
Several general things here, even though I don't know the specifics of your particular situation
It's not just about what they most appreciate, it's about getting done what you need to get done and creating the largest possible net benefit to any given situation. Everything has an upside and downside
If you can email someone then you can call them, or call someone that works for them, or arrange a call, or at the very least leave a voicemail
No one needs to know or be reminded of your being a first year analyst. You are a representative of your firm
What I'm trying to say is that it's very easy to complain ad nauseum about mentally challenged clients. It's much harder to accept how things are, weigh the pros and cons of various actions, and take command of a given situation to make things go your way without destroying any relationships
I've had the pleasure calling these old goofballs. They know if I'm calling them, it means their peeps aren't getting crap done and their bosses are going to rip them a new one.
You'd be surprised. If you're contacting people for info and not getting an email back, a call or escalation to your supervisor makes you look proactive. You may get scolded but it's far better than letting something slip.
Executive level folks are getting carpet bombed with emails. I've even gotten calls from executive level people when they just look at their inbox, see "50 unread" and decide....the only thing I care about at this moment is cuz deliverable so I'll just call the last person I talked to.
Something like this is a huge opportunity to shine. If you're in touch with the client, guess what, you're now in the relationship aspect.
My take away from this is dumb people are dumb and assholes are assholes regardless of job function.
The one I'll always remember was not from the client side but an industry coverage director who was added on our project from another office and who could not understand that the requirement for his perspective was limited. Every telco or client meeting drifted into him lecturing everybody about end-market industry/tech specifics.
PE clients are demanding af and are arguably worse to work for. On the other hand, great experience to sell in buy-side interviews.
I find that they have ridiculous demands at times (ie. sunday afternoons....) but in general are much easier to convey information to and communicate with. Not to say I have any trouble with corporates, but since PE guys are generally ex-IB, they get it.
always remember kiddies, clients pay the bills, and therefore your salary. treat them poorly at your own peril.
side note: Going Concern when are you finally going to do an AMA? I've always wanted to know your story
My story is distinct/unique enough that even a relatively basic description would make it easy to identify me in real life. Even just describing my current job would make it easy to find me. Not that I'm some BSD or anything, but I do like being anonymous on here, otherwise I would feel more constrained in what I post
I can appreciate that, keep on keeping me guessing GC
While I agree with the majority of this post, I will say that your clients sometimes have internal pressures as well. That means running the actual business. Whatever transaction you are working on is likely to be important to the client but if they are not operating to hit their revenue/EBITDA numbers, nothing else matters.
nah man they just want to be treated like stars - feel important. if you don't write a case study for every suggestion they feel like they are not getting their monies worth and if you do they feel like you are patronizing them. you are fucked and going to get yelled at or talked to or slapped around no matter what.
what I do is that i never take it personally. if they start yelling, I let them vent and ask them what they think can be done to improve things. after they are done reading you from the book of business cliches then you can actually get on with your work. the trick is to lead them to your conclusion and make them feel like it was their idea. they don't give you as much shit if you do that (they know when you're doing this - some of them anyway but don't resist it because it makes them feel like BSD)! :)
Great advice actually - thanks for this
I work in Big 4 so our clients are always smarter than us.
It's not just clients. I'll send 10 emails explaining something in a focused and detail oriented manner to team members. I'll get half sarcastic half serious complaints about repetition and then questions that were clearly answered in my previous emails. They'll then make a joke about how they never read my original emails. ...HA...HA...
How do you guys deal with difficult clients? (Originally Posted: 03/02/2016)
We've all had clients that are irrational, not open suggestions, and always want to do things their way. Fine -- we're getting paid, and whatever the client says we'll do it his way if he's not willing to think differently.
But how do you deal with the clients that change their minds all the time, resulting in more work, more surprise deadlines, etc.? In these cases, it results in real work and damage to us and we can't just adjust our thinking.
How do you guys mentally deal with situations like this?
Part of being a project manager and dealing with clients like that is clearly defining what the scope of work is for an agreed-upon cost. Any changes to the work should be handled through a solid change control process. I, personally, am happy to operate in an Agile environment but the tricky thing about operating within that management style being prepared to control scope creep as it comes up. If someone wants to operate Agilely but doesn't know how to the lack of structure will result in frustrating problems like what you have mentioned.
If someone really has a tough time with that they should read the PMBOK and learn to manage with a Waterfall project management style.
Unfortunately, most online materials discussing these topics are geared toward software development and implementation. This is why the PMBOK is the best place to learn the basics, it's actually a framework which is designed to apply to any type of project management (including consulting work). Going to the PMBOK itself removes a lot of the super-specialized application of concepts that you will see in resources online.
It would be great to work under a project manager like that, but that does mean that the manager has to bear the brunt of handling the difficult client (so that the client's antics don't affect the team).
Out of curiosity, how do you mentally deal with them then? Any mental trick to say a firm No even though they keep saying you MUST do this and that, while maintaining the potential for future business?
Not really any mental "tricks" to it, just experience navigating the waters and learning to step back and breathe. Ideally, the project manager should get the brunt of the client requests for change in scope, etc. but you'd be surprised how many people try to slip them by the staff as well - hoping they won't notice or won't say no to the request. In a perfect world all changes are directly given to the project manager or the project staff escalate them immediately for consideration. Instead of thinking of it as "bearing the brunt" of client requests, I prefer to think of it as being able to effectively perform the monitoring and controlling functions for the project.
My thought process is complicated and really depends on the type of project I'm doing and nature of the changes to the project scope/schedule/timing. My number one objective is to achieve the goals of the current project which everyone agreed to at the outset. How I respond to requested changes is largely dependent on how it impacts my ability to do that.
In any event, I always try to step back from the project and never let it become personal. It's just a job and part of my job is keeping the projects on track, close to budget, and on deadline... without driving all my staff to quit or clients to hate me.
The solution to this problem is highly situational, but setting up a process to make changes can help as someone mentioned.
Another way is to frame the agreement on deliverables in such a way that makes it very hard to change it, for example, if you align with someone extremely senior and make it explicit that only what's in scope will be done, then it might be easier to fend off any person with a ranking below that who tries to change it.
If it's the senior sponsor who changes his mind then your role as a manager is to frame the impact on time/ resources to the partners through options and a recommendation. They are the most appropriate people to deal with this type of issue
How would you react if a client called to cuss you out? (Originally Posted: 09/14/2013)
Let's say you were dealing with buyers and you did/said something fairly minor that the client didn't agree with, and he called you up and started cussing you out. Would you put on your IB rep face and meekly take the beating? Cuss him out back? Hang up?
client always comes first.
Kick his ass
Say, "Ok." and then wait for the awkward silence to pass.
I usually go with "What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo"
lol@gorilla warfare
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m…
Hehe, this monkey's been playing too much Call of Duty.
The client wins here, so just suck it up and acknowledge where you "went wrong" and how you will "improve". If it's at a point where business is suspended or a new rep is needed, then your manager will have to step in, soothe that person's ego and discuss any changes which will improve the relationship.
Ducimus aut dolores sit vero et. Explicabo magnam autem harum. Deserunt voluptas omnis culpa quam libero maxime ullam. Voluptatem ex recusandae illum necessitatibus non facere. Consectetur dolor molestiae occaecati eos. Occaecati magnam ea nisi neque. Asperiores distinctio sunt odit deserunt qui provident voluptas dolores.
Numquam porro voluptatem ea beatae molestiae. Placeat ullam occaecati consequatur omnis nihil. Ut et aut libero pariatur quas architecto ad. Assumenda odit corrupti perspiciatis saepe voluptates placeat quis. Aut facere autem maiores eaque.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Modi culpa eos molestias repellat dicta. Natus ut unde sunt sint quod. Ut nostrum aut omnis inventore accusantium perspiciatis iusto deserunt.
Molestiae in fugiat ut architecto adipisci facilis dolore omnis. Ratione saepe optio sint quaerat nemo. Non non nulla porro distinctio. Nostrum porro soluta et atque. Et suscipit aut ea libero odio officiis. Adipisci quod et voluptate sit.
Qui libero explicabo quisquam nesciunt. Placeat eos inventore quia assumenda. Unde vero deleniti quisquam id architecto. Officiis vitae quas est. Tempora rem autem ut voluptate sunt ea in.
Nemo et necessitatibus tempore qui aliquid quis enim. Et et magnam consequatur officia nisi.
Eligendi et dolorem aperiam dolorum. Dicta ea excepturi non ut vero harum a. Et blanditiis est eligendi voluptas ex dolorum. Atque tempora quam illo vel.
Vel hic voluptatem dolor quae. Perferendis minus officiis animi est laudantium. Eaque delectus aut ducimus voluptatem. Itaque aut iusto possimus recusandae blanditiis corrupti. Minus deleniti officia itaque quod nam. Non suscipit aliquam nulla dolore officiis vitae totam. Rem quos quis dignissimos ea.