Although a retailer through and through, I had the misfortune to join a “firm” for what transpired, fortuitously, to be a reasonably short period. At that time there were five firms. Now there are four. The one that had an ignominious demise was the one I was part of – Arthur Andersen.

I gradually became appalled at how they operated, and only later did I come to realise why they adopted certain practices. One of these was, “never make a recommendation”. It was a bit like the brokers who advise on stocks and shares – they recommend going short if this, and going long if that. In other words, they actually recommend nothing. They hedge their bets.

Starting a retail consulting firm over 20 years ago, I could not, in all conscience, subscribe to the fence-sitting adopted by the big firms, and some smaller ones. This has advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that one feels good. Another is that one can look oneself in the mirror while shaving and not cut oneself.

One disadvantage though is that one is damned if one does and damned if one doesn’t. A couple of examples. A very substantial privately owned company operating a number of fashion retail stores across three brands. An incompetent CIO. A recommendation by us to introduce a third party to “audit” a very significant project running into millions of dollars. Result: The owner rejected the advice. The project failed. The CIO took a runner. The consultant (my firm), fired.

And so the big four have method in their madness – don’t take a position. Hedge your bets and you won’t get fired. Of course, being ‘right’ got us fired because the owner had egg all over their face. Had we remained silent, we may have survived.

Here’s another example. Another family owned company with a couple of hundred stores. We recommend against a software vendor. While not fired, we were sidelined after the retailer selects the software vendor we recommended against. Result: Software vendor fails. We are ‘right’ and our customer is ‘wrong’. We wait to see whether we are invited back.

In this second example, we may be given another go, while in the first example we are history. The owner cannot divorce reality from his/her ego.

And one final example. This one is a work in progress, but suffice to say our recommendations have been overruled a couple of times. Does this mean we cannot sell our recommendations? Maybe.

The three examples above are isolated cases, and invariably our recommendations are accepted. Which begs the question – at what stage do we, as consultants, fire the client? It’s no minor move, but if we reach a point where recommendations are consistently rejected, it is the client who must ask themselves whether they have the right consultant and whether they have confidence in the consultant. If not, fire them/us.

As consultants, we must similarly make a decision. If our advice is consistently rejected, are we the right fit for the client? Is the relationship good for our brand and reputation?

As a rule of thumb – and as standard business procedure – consultants should:

• Never sit on the fence;
• State their case with balanced reason and experience (not a Googled article); and
• Walk away (without being churlish) if their consulting is consistently rejected by a customer.

Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702