Client meeting mistakes

I went to a new client today, the one I wrote my first statement of work for. I'm very excited about the project, and not quite sure why. It could be because I have the emotional investment of "my first project start to finish."

Heading over to the client's office, I wasn't particularly nervous, so much as worried that I had prepared well enough for the meeting. I detest wasted time, and meetings are a big waste of time for many people. I shudder to think of how many tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars some previous employers wasted in status update meetings where at any given time 95% of the engineers are just waiting for their turn to speak (schedule a different group to come in every ten to fifteen minutes, unless the rest of the engineers need to hear what the others are doing).

I was hoping to keep the meeting short, meet with the client, get my answers, and leave. Five of the client's employees were in the meeting, so they were as motivated as I to keep the meeting short. After an hour, I had what I needed. However, based on some of the conversations at the meeting, I messed up in a few places.

At least my mistakes were few in number: it could have been a lot worse.

My first mistake was, when bringing a list of questions to a client, not having my own answers to my question ready.

I asked for a few sites they liked, with the intent of asking what they liked about the site, which features they liked, which features they hated. The first answer was, "Let me ask you, what sites do you like and why?"

As soon as he asked that question, my thoughts were, aw, crap, I didn't prePARE! Dammit! Okay, start scrambling. Of course I had prepared, but not enough. I should have sent my questions to the client so that he could ponder the questions, also.

So, yeah, I started scrambling, and listing the sites whose design I wanted to emulate, should I ever get around to actually changing my site (such change is currently scheduled for next week, and I'm looking forward to it).

My second mistake was not sending the list of my questions to the client beforehand, so that they could prepare as much as I could. No reason everyone in the room couldn't have been fully engaged in the meeting, minimizing the amount of waste.

My third mistake was not installing and testing all the products I'm recommending for the client. I read up on a couple of modules that I was recommending for the client, but, in reality, I haven't installed them, I haven't played with them. If they don't work as advertised, I'll be eating the cost to bring them up to spec.

Even with these obvious mistakes, I think the meeting went well, and I'm looking forward to this project.