[Orcnet] Consulting sales cycle

[Richard Westlake]

Keith

With me it's varied from a few minutes to over a year.

Interesting enough ... after a few minutes introduction ... we created a job 
was one of the largest ever ... involving several of my associates.


I've only had one job my entire career that came from answering an 
advertisement ...

and I've never gotten a job because of formal advertising  that I've done.

Typically someone who knows me has referred me to another person they know 
... and the jobs follow from that.

I've found that people who want to negotiate all the details up front and  / 
or who are concerned with minimizing costs ...

are not worth spending much time talking with ... especially the ones who 
want it done really cheap.


Here's quote form a friend of mine who's been at it longer than any of us.

"The probability of the success of a project is inversely proportional to 
the thickness of the contract."

For the most part I've found that to be accurate.


Richard

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Keith Lofstrom" <keithl at kl-ic.com>
To: "orcnet" <orcnet at eeconsult.org>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 9:19 AM
Subject: [Orcnet] Consulting sales cycle


>
> Gents:
>
> I am negotiating with a startup for a few months of work.  So
> far it has taken three weeks of very occasional interaction,
> almost all because of delays at their end (they are starting up,
> after all).  This is nothing unusual for me;  sometimes the dance
> can take a year to complete, though rarely more than 20 or 30 hours
> of time are involved in the setup, a fraction of the billable work.
>
> Sometimes the dance takes less than 48 hours - one negotiation
> was started on the phone Monday afternoon, completed at lunch in
> Southern California on Tuesday, and I was in Boston Wednesday
> doing the work.  But it is rarely that fast.
>
> What are other Orcnetter's experiences?  How long does a sale
> take for the rest of you -- assuming a few months of well paid
> custom design work are the result?  Do longer negotiations fail
> more often?  Do you give up and blow off the prospect after too
> much time elapses?  What is too much?
>
> Keith
>
> -- 
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
> KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
> Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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