Can web developers and middlemen get along?

Business
1

(note: when I use the term “middleman” I could of course also be referring to “middlewoman”)

My web design/dev company is 10 years old. Although I say it myself, we’re one of the more respected companies in our region, and have a very (unusually?) strong customer service focus. While some companies focus on the churn of winning new clients for their profitability (i.e. very strongly new sales focussed), over half (and rising) of our revenues come from repeat business from existing clients. We work very hard to keep them (happy), e.g. we employ a fulltime account manager whose job is to ensure customer satisfaction.

But we’re becoming increasingly disillusioned with working with middlemen, i.e. individuals or companies who act as the “go-between” between ourselves and the client.

I think it’s fair to say that, on average, a web project with a middleman is quite a few notches more stressful and time consuming for our team (and therefore less profitable or even loss-making) than a web project without a middleman involved. We’re getting to the point where we’re seriously considering declining to tender for project (as is our right and choice!) if a middleman will be involved through the project cycle.

The main (overlapping) challenges:

  1. Middlemen tend to be excessively picky about the design and functionality of the site, demanding round after round of changes. It feels to us like he’s got something to prove to the client about how “tough” he can be with negotiations with 3rd parties on the client’s behalf.
  2. The “chinese whispers” effect. We advise the middleman something. He reinterprets and advises the client. The client responds. Middleman advises us the response. We’re like “huh?”. And repeat. This is not the “fault” per se of the middleman - it’s merely an observation of the fact that the more people you have in a communications chain, the (exponentially?) higher chance of miscommunications occurring. There’s simply no way around this one -except to remove the middleman!
  3. No doubt partly because of the chinese whispers effect, we’re suspicious (paranoid?!) that some of the recommendations we’re making simply aren’t getting through to the client. Or worse case we sense that the middleman is actually bad-mouthing us to the client - and we have no right of reply.
  4. Middlemen seem to tend to have a blame mentality, rather than a supportive “we’re all in this together” team mentality. When mistakes occur (yes, we admit we do - but sometimes because of those pesky chinese whispers or, dare I say it, the middleman screwing up!) it’s always all our fault. Middleman takes little or no responsibility, and certainly doesn’t want to admit to the client that it was they who screwed up. It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: middleman squeezes us, we make more “mistakes” than normal, middleman decides we’re not up to the task and squeezes (e.g. micro-manages) harder.

OK, this is starting to sound like a rant (which actually wasn’t my intention), and so I’m going to change tack!

You know what? People who know me know that I tend to prefer to see the best in people. I believe that there’s no reason why multiple professional people working on the same project with a common vision (do a great job, make a reasonable profit) can’t get along and produce a good result. The more cynical on my team would have stopped us quoting on projects via a middleman long ago. And yet I keep trying it, convinced that we’ve just had a run of bad luck. Not only that, but I’ve written a 4/5 page plain English document on the subject that I present to and discuss with middlemen prior to a project commencing. It’s called something along the lines of “How to get excellent results working with our company: a guide for middlemen”. It lays out what we feel are reasonable professional standards to expect from one another, how we as a company work (trying to avoid surprises!) and what a typical web project lifecycle looks like (in case they didn’t know). So I’m really trying here! Honest!

So I have two questions to throw out there:

  1. Are you a website company who has successfully learned “the secrets” of successful collaborative projects with middlemen? If so - throw me a bone here! What suggestions for improvement in our approach can you offer us? What are we doing or not doing that causes us to follow the same (mostly) downhill path when middlemen are on board?

  2. Are YOU a middleman? Don’t be shy now! What do you need from me to help us all get a great result for the client and where we all get to make a worthwhile profit?

In summary: in our experience, it’s not possible to see a middleman as “the client”. There’s a different dynamic going on. I’m genuinely keen to see if I can come to some deeper level of understanding about the true nature of that dynamic in order that we can enter into projects involving middleman with more confidence of a successful outcome than we do right now.

Semi-off topic: I was recently pointed to this excellent article about how a web project can go bad even without a middleman involved! And I absolutely agree with the moral of the story that it’s primarily OUR responsibility to work on OUR communication skills in order to arrive at successful collaborative outcomes.

2

You probably need an in-depth analysis to really get at the crux of the problem. If you could put your finger on the real cause, this thread would not exist …we wouldn’t be discussing it.

And most people are pretty bad at systems dynamics problems.

So, the best thing to do is test out assumptions. I will make some observations based on clues I find.

These don’t sound like middlemen, they sound like sales people. A marketing/sales dynamic suggests itself as a way to go. The document sounds like a good idea, but again it’s hard to tell without reading it.

And most sales people are notorious at chucking policy directives and promising things they know full well can’t be delivered to get a sale.

I’m genuinely keen to see if I can come to some deeper level of understanding about the true nature of that dynamic in order that we can enter into projects involving middleman with more confidence of a successful outcome than we do right now.

I suggest a focus on a specific, profiled, target user of the site. Let me be perfectly clear that this is not the middle man, OR the client they deal with. It’s the person you guys were supposed to be building the site for.

Let me make a guess. You have not engaged in persona design and scenario walkthroughs.

These are tools divergent groups use to gain a consensus and get their heads right about what they are trying to accomplish.

Probability argues what’s going on is everybody claims to know what the user is all about …without one scrap of collected data from users. Bad idea when you want good collaboration between groups.

You want want discussions to go from what “The user wants.” To, “because Katie is a mother of four, and concerned about x, the site should have Y.”

Want a near supernatural arbitration model: Try a user test.

Want a tension release mechanism: You put your version up. We’ll run ours in an A/B Split Run comparison and see who’s right.

3

I’ve established quite a few relationships with 3rd parties who are good at getting work but then need to feed it out to people like me. But… they either put me directly in touch with the client or they accept what I say, I don’t let them get involved in the design of a website or implementation of an SEO or PPC campaign, ever. The last thing I need is someone suggesting changes to my work before the client even gets to see it. No chance. Usually we work to present me either as a regularly used sub-contractor or even as an employee of theirs. I just let them rebrand everything I do because all I’m interested in is earning the money and getting more work from them. I get work independently so I’m not completely reliant on this type of work, it’s just another route to market for me.

I’ve had a few experiences like the ones you’re describing, those jobs were the last jobs I did with those people.

That article you linked is hilarious btw, I lol’d IRL :lol: