Complex IT Project Management: 16 Steps to Success

13.2 The Customer May Not Always be Right

But the customer is always the customer. Call them necessary evils, call them a nuisance, but call them. Here are a few more strategies or tactics used by good sales people that you should consider adopting:

• Engage your customer in your processes.

• Solicit their opinions.

• Create an open relationship based on honesty and professionalism.

• Do more listening to them than speaking at them.

• Push back politely if you feel your boundaries are being challenged.

• Be sure they get bad news from you before someone else tells them.

In other words, treat them the way you expect to be treated at home, in the workplace, or at the mall. I have seen many problems created by managers reluctant to deal with customers, so they end up avoiding them, shaving the truth, or even lying. The trouble is, people resent being treated shabbily and usually find out if they are. That is a really difficult perception to correct, and it generally leads to a lot more scrutiny or micromanagement than you need. In my view, having these good customer management skills is a far more accurate gauge of project management competency than the ability to create an awesome-looking Gantt chart or being a guru in the technologies you have been engaged to deploy.