Stop Client Scope Creep In Professional Services Businesses

The next thing I want to cover this idea is how you can stop Scope Creep. This is something that, like, when I was a consultant, I kind of. I saw it pop up all the time. Particularly when I started my systems consulting business. I would start with a project. You know what it's like. You start with a project, two months later, the workload expands. Sometimes you don't even notice it. Like, it's in the name Scope Creep. It creeps up on you. It's a little thing here, it's a little thing there. Oh, can we do this? And unless you have a way to manage it, it can become really frustrating for you, for the client, overwhelming. And then once you say yes a couple of times, then you condition them that, oh, yes, you say yes all of the time. I can just keep asking. And then it becomes awkward if you need to say no. Or that's outside of Scope. So you want to think about this stuff upfront because it turns a profitable project unprofitable. It sets that expectation and allows for what I call time vampire clients. They basically suck your time. And they're the ones that always, you know, bang the loudest on the drum to get your attention, and they'll be calling you directly and that they just want everything done for them. And what ends up happening is you get to this point where you, even if it's unconsciously, you just go like, it's just a painful client when they call. And those clients, not only do they not feel great, but they become horrible for repeat work and also referrals. So it's a problem that you're so much better off solving and preparing for upfront. And it builds perfectly into this idea of this Trojan horse offer. Because what causes scope blowout? In fact. Yeah. I'm going to ask if you want to type into the chat, what do you feel causes scope blowout? And I gave a little bit of a hint earlier, but type into the chat, like, is it the expectations that you set for the client? Is it not being clear? Is it just the nature of the beast? Is consulting work a situation where there's always going to be scope blowout? There you go, Wendy. Lack of clarity on time, task territory. You hit the nail on the head. It is lack of clarity that is 100% it. And you need a very clear scope up front. I remember. And you can imagine what it'd be like when I started my systems consulting business. Systems consulting. Like, where are the edges on that? Oh, I want this systemized. That's it. You said you were going to come in and systemize my business. And I feel like now I've got all of these other departments and other parts of my business that need to be systemized, like how do you put the bookends on that? And that was something for me, I kind of struggled with for my first few clients until I realized exactly what the problem is. And it's exactly what Wendy has noted there, which is it's around this lack of clarity. So once you identify what your Trojan horse offer is, part of that is making sure that the Trojan horse offer solves a very specific problem for the client. Once you know that you're solving a specific problem, it makes it easier to define what the deliverables are and define like get a clearly established timeline and you want to agree to all of this up front. So that way it becomes much easier when the client goes off track and they say, oh, can you do this and that? And then nudging you, it's much easier for you to come back to that document and say here's what it is that we've agreed on. Because the only reason that there is a problem is the client has a picture in their head of what they're imagining you're doing. You have a different picture in your head of what you're doing and that misalignment is creating the problem. And then one thing with me, like I found, like when it comes to clients, I'm a little bit of a people pleaser. Like in the early days I wanted to go above and beyond and I always do. But then that was easy for certain people because I didn't know how to rein it in to then for people to take advantage of that and just ask for a little bit more and a little bit more. So what I ended up developing, and you can see a screenshot of it there on the left with my systems consulting was, and if you've read Systemology, you'll know about the critical client flow, that first three month engagement with a client. We define the scope of works based on the critical client flow and we agree this is what we're doing. And as part of that process I'm trying to, I say lower the expectations. And I suppose that's what it is. I'm trying to basically under promise, maybe that's better, not lower the expectations, but under promise what I'm going to give the client, which then makes it easier to over deliver. And I'm, I always find I'm infinitely better off to under promise and then create more systems and go above and beyond what it is that they're expecting and then they feel great about it. So I, what I do once we sort of, I started off by getting this very clear document and you want to be thinking about the same. You think about your Trojan horse offer and then you think about the clear deliverables and you think about how you use that to, in the selling process and how you use that as you're going through delivery. I would then transfer that into this scope of work document and you can see here's the spreadsheet here where we would identify what the systems are that we would be working on. And you'll notice it's only small, so you might not be able to see. But this down here says coming soon. Any time that the client asked for something that was outside of the agreed upon works, then it would appear underneath the coming soon. And I'd say, oh look, it's, you know, we've got our order of priority. We know what it is that we're working on. Let's work on this first and let's capture that idea because it's a great idea and we'll circle back around to that at the end of that initial engagement. And like that is, it's, it's hard for the client to dispute it. They don't like, they don't even dispute it because it was agreed upon. And this is like, yeah, of course this is like, it's that clarity and it aligns your thinking and their thinking. Azim had a little suggestion he's typed into the chat here. He'll often get the client to sign off what they don't want also. And then that brings clarity, which is a great idea, which is maybe you introduce into the conversation this idea that, oh look, at the moment you have loads of like and I'll use systemology as an example, you have loads of leads at the moment. So leads aren't your problem. So we don't need to worry about focusing in on your lead generation systems just yet. Let's focus on, I think that's a great way to do it, identifying, well, where is the pain for them. And let's focus on solving and fixing that pain rather than opening up the this scope of works again. Everything that I'm sharing with you, all I want you to do is run it through your own filter. Think about it in terms of your own business and how can you just take these ideas and you'll find particularly this one around, you know, customer satisfaction and around this idea of limiting scope, it will skyrocket. Your customers satisfaction. After I started doing that after my early clients, it enabled me to over deliver on the promises and this become a core part of the way that I market systemology. I feel like the best proof is always the proof of the client who had the problem, worked with us, got a fantastic result, and now is happy to share that. And by doing this idea of defining that scope of work, it makes it much easier and you can even build that into your sales process. At the end of this, once I deliver on this and you absolutely love it and we solve this problem for you, I would love to tell your story. To have other people who are in a similar situation hear your story and then go, oh yeah, this could work for me too.