The problem: between sessions, everything fades
- Your recommendations evaporate. Nobody wrote them in the right place, and the client's team never saw them.
- You recap every time. An hour-long session, twenty minutes spent finding where you left off.
- Your clients blur together. Six owners, six ways of working, and everything on your hard drive.
Four principles
1. One space per client
Each client has their own place, with their strategy, goals, team, documents and decision history. Nothing gets mixed, and you always know where to look.
2. Every session ends in writing
Decisions and actions, with an owner and a date. Not four pages of minutes: a short list the client can find.
3. A status update before every session
What moved, what's stuck, what changed. Ten minutes of preparation, and the session picks up where the last one ended.
4. The memory belongs to the client
Everything written lives with the client, not in your files. Their team can use it between your sessions, and keep it when the engagement ends.
Moving the client forward between sessions
The value of an engagement is often decided between meetings. A few practices that work:
- actions visible to the client's team, not just the owner;
- automatic or scheduled follow-ups on what was decided;
- letting the team write or update its processes without waiting for your next visit;
- a channel for simple questions, so they don't all go through you.
Managing a portfolio of clients
| Need | Good practice |
|---|---|
| Know where each client stands | An overview: next session, overdue actions, open topics. |
| Never mix information | Separate spaces, including for your AI assistant. |
| Compare and prioritise | The same framework with every client, so you don't reinvent your materials each time. |
| Prepare fast | A status update generated from the client's space. |
AI helps a lot here, as long as it stays sealed from one client to the next: see AI for consultants.
And at the end of the engagement?
The best sign of a successful engagement is what remains: a written strategy, clear roles, shared methods, recorded decisions, which the client keeps using. It's also your best referral.
On the job: becoming a right-hand to business owners. On methods: small-business consultant methods and tools. From the owner's side: working with a right-hand.