[_ptgt]

>If you show value to the client and you build a trust relationship then you enter into a relational mode that is fruitful for both sides, and you skip/streamline all the tedious commercial topics (RFPs, competitors, beauty contests, the purchasing department demanding a 3% discount...). On the other hand, if you want to milk the cow dry then you end up on a very transactional relationship and you need to start cold selling from scratch after every project, which takes a lot of effort, time and energy.

This is greatly at empirical odds with the near ubiquitous distrust for consultants among almost everyone who has worked with them.

And there is certainly no shortage of willingness to repeatedly cold sell in order to advance one's own career in consulting.

[harperlee]

> near ubiquitous distrust for consultants among almost everyone who has worked with them

Perhaps this empirical observation doesn’t have enough unbiased samples. Consulting in general, more in particular management consulting, and even more in particular strategy consulting (where MMB, McKinsey, Boston, Bain are leaders; and the kind that sparkled this discussion), are 3 different, huge, mature, global industries. So there are empirical odds enough to say that people trust them enough to pay them, which is at odds with that universal distrust you state.

Perhaps that “ubiquitous distrust” is just more prevalent in HN or in the IT industry.