Is your Customer busy to meet you do discuss HIS project ?

 

Every project manager has had the experience of a client who simply does what he should be doing for the benefit of the project, making life difficult for everyone in the project team and the company, so you need to chase him

How can we deal with such a situation?

In practice , what can be done?

Let me try to help you here::

• Kick Off Meeting - at he beginning let him know and its main sponsor the importance of the project and its benefits with your customer,

• Vision of the future - inspire your customer thru vision of the future about his project, make sure he understand it creating an emotinoal connection,

• Meet your "super busy" client -  make sure they both know exactly what the short, medium and long term objectives. This will let you divide the work among its resources properly from the beginning, rather than discuss it later. Follow this discussion with a clear project schedule, indicating key milestones,

• Set expectations and priorities from the beginning - make sure that all stakeholders in the project have their expectations aligned and properly handled, and remember "first things first ",

• Schedule weekly status meetings - Modern technology makes meetings easier to be carried out regardless of the distance, it is essential that meetings with your client are conducted on a recurring basis at a pre-defined time, it is recommended that you ensure that your client is aware about recurring meetings through the programmed reminders, especially if you are doing it remotely. After a short time , these meetings will become a point where you will capture his attention,

• Business Lunch - Try to meet him during business lunch and share project status with him, sometimes this is the best and only opportunity you may have,

• Follow-up via telephone to report critical areas of progress - to send the project progress report that contains critical information , that is, required action or not , call your " busy" customer and report on the status and required actions . I say this because the chance he will read his report are minimal. Never connect to whether he received the report, only call with a purpose,

• Have alternative contacts with your customer - as your client is too busy to handle the project is highly recommended that you have a second client as a contact so you can address when the project events become "a little agitated"

?Managing a project can be difficult but rewarding at the same time , the opportunity to deal with difficult customers will give you a great advantage:

Experience !

Adaptaded from the article "Managing a Client who is Too Busy to Focus" de Christopher Scordo