You’ll often be in positions in which you have to recommend your client to spend money. Perhaps this is as simple as recommending which tool to buy and it’s just a few dollars per month, or perhaps it is which type of employee to hire, or perhaps it is an ad spend with a lot of zeros at the end of the number.
Now let’s make an assumption that makes the situation interesting and complex: your client is making tons of money, hands over first.
When this happens, you will think, very naturally, that your client is making so much money, he can afford the best tool or a large ad campaign, or to just spend his money.
But the thing is, he will always be much more careful and sensitive about his money than you (or anyone else) will be. And I’m using “him” to mean both “your boss/client” and “The Corporation” as an entity. And if you (or anyone) come in and recommends these big spends, it too often feels like your attitude is, “you’re rich, so you can waste your money!”
And this is so common that even if you’re not thinking that, this is how it usually comes off. It’s easy to spend someone else’s money—and that someone else knows it.
There are a few ways to prevent this from being an issue. My favorite way is that, whenever I’m recommending, they spend money, I usually present them with a few options, including one lower budget option. This way, the option is always there. From the boss’s point of view, who is less likely to be taking advantage of you, the consultant or employee who recommends you spend a lot of money, or the consultant or employee who gave you a few options, and one recommends very little spend, one recommends you spend a lot of money, and a third option in the middle? The second one is overwhelmingly less likely to be taking advantage of you.
A second way I deal with this is to often start with recommendations to spend very little money and then scale up over time. That way, you can hit the bigger numbers, but that also lowers the risk because you don’t jump right into it.
A third way I manage this is to explicitly tell them my strategy! “Hey, I treat your money as my own, and I’d rather use the cheaper option, so that’s what I’m recommending. If you want me to explore other options, let me know. “Being told those words explicitly and openly will always be appreciated, by everyone.
Finally, remember that a broader version of this principle applies beyond just money, it goes to the importance of articulating risk factors that I wrote about in a previous chapter. Wasting money is just one type of risk factor and by suggesting low budgets, you’re suggesting minimizing the risk factor of wasting money. So, the larger version is that you need to always be conscious of every type of risk factor affecting the company, and always be trying to minimize them. AMR as goes the acronym that doesn’t exist, but should: Always Minimize Risks.
