Experts aren’t experts on your business
Let’s assume you are the owner of your business (Congrats!), now close your eyes and imagine… wait open your eyes again this requires reading. Imagine you are going to sell your company to another talented individual which means you need to train them to replace you. How long would that process take? How quickly could you be off to Belize with a fat check and the knowledge that you trained your replacement adequately? Don’t forget all of the tribal knowledge you have and the absolute unit of a walk-in closet full of different hats you wear on a monthly basis. Is it a Quarter? A year? More? If you haven’t done it before, that kind of knowledge transfer will take more time than you could believe.
The reason I am bringing this up is to illustrate the chasm of knowledge that an external expert has about YOUR business. When talking workflow automation, how can someone legitimately know if their shiny gee-whiz solution with pretty graphs will make you more competitive at selling bespoke pretzel storage containers? It is your job to fill in the gaps when working with an expert and get them to see a full and honest picture of how your work flows.
Here are some flags when first working with an expert. Whether that be in Operations, QuickBooks, Accounting, Method CRM or some other tool:
Green flags
They ask a lot of questions about how your company operates
Their questions go beyond the scope that you originally asked them about
You say out loud: “huh, I actually had not thought about those implications”
They have the heart of the teacher and want to show you how to do things yourself
Yellow flags:
You wish you could hire them as a salesperson for your company (When looking for advice and solutions, be cautious of charisma and a quota)
Red flags:
They provide solutions without hearing about the stories your management team and employees have
They were not precise with your requests. A lack of processing what your needs are will likely not get better with time.