I keep finding you’ve got to become borderline obsessed with understanding your clients’ businesses to really make a splash. Not just the surface-level stuff they throw at you in meetings, but the nitty-gritty details that make their world tick. Developing this deep sense of how things work helps the next client as well. It also makes you likely the most valuable person on a bar trivia contest as well as above-average-proficient in Jeopardy; neither of which I find objectionable.
I stumbled across what has become of my favorite reads, Joshua Foer’s “Moonwalking with Einstein” a while back, and while it’s about memory champions doing their thing, it talked about how we store new facts – by attaching them to memories we already have. Quite literally, the more you know, the more you CAN know. Over the years we have stopped acting like straight vendors and started just staying curious about what they do.
Here’s what I know: when you dive deep into your clients’ world, magic happens. You start speaking their language (not just nodding along pretending you get it). You spot problems they haven’t even realized they have yet. When you can walk into a meeting and actually contribute something meaningful beyond your immediate project scope, that’s when eyebrows start raising.
This isn’t a quick win situation. You can’t just skim a company’s “About Us” page and call it research. I’m talking about getting your hands dirty – understanding their industry inside and out, knowing their competitors, and genuinely caring about their success. It’s about asking the questions nobody else is asking because they didn’t do their homework.
The payoff? When you really get your clients’ businesses, you become more than just another vendor they work with. You become the person they call when they’re trying to figure out their next move. You spot opportunities others miss. And plot twist: sometimes you’ll see solutions that wouldn’t have been obvious if you were just staying in your lane.
This takes serious effort. You’ve got to carve out time each week to dive into industry news, chat with people at different levels of the organization, and actually give a damn about what’s happening in their world. It’s not enough to just show up for the quarterly reviews and hope for the best.
This deep understanding becomes your secret weapon. While others are pitching generic solutions, you’re walking in with insights that make your clients think, “Wow, these folks actually get us.” And you do at that point.
Bottom line: stop treating your clients’ businesses like a Wikipedia article you skim before a meeting. Get in there, learn their world, and become the partner they didn’t know they needed. Because at the end of the day, the difference between a good tech company and a great one often comes down to who actually took the time to understand what keeps their clients up at night.
