[TheCapn]

>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then need to re-contextualize and regain momentum, all on your dime.

Man. That 3rd paragraph resonates so well with me/my employer. We're an industrial automation company. Family owned. Started from the owner's shed and grew to what we are now. We were built on smalltime clients and our product quality got around through word of mouth and are now at the point where we have massive multi-million dollar clients.

We still support the little guys though. And we get more little guys under our umbrella every year. I think there's still a part of our company that recognizes we have roots in helping the farmers automated their cleaner processes. We also have the nearly identical issue that our OP is bitching about: we're married to these massive clients and we fill the gaps with the little projects. But when the timing is getting tight, the little guys are who loses out.

I'm starting to see the cracks. Clients who built our foundations are losing out on support and growth opportunities. We're more concerned with the next mining project or new facility build than we are selling small guys upgrades and ongoing modernization. It's fine as far as the pocketbook goes but I feel like we play a dangerous game allowing our work schedules to be dictated by the big guys. Eventually they all grow to realize the same thing: the controls part is crucial enough to the business that it needs to be brought in house. Once that happens our value falls off quickly. It's only bad because we're losing our core for the opportunity to play puppet to some truly massive clients.

I feel like I'm getting a bit lost in the weeds, but really my point is just how I haven't really thought clearly about what the perception of our business must be to the clients, both big and small. We play a critical service role among many industries but we also run the risk of alienating the business that's virtually guaranteed to be there in hopes of marrying ourselves to somebody who only needs us now, and probably not tomorrow.

[ghostly_s]

If retaining the small clients is a business goal, you should have a (small) dedicated team devoted to them, that knows how to work in the way that these small clients need.

[romanows]

Don't you think that'd become the "B-team" pretty quickly, though? I think it might fall apart. What might also work is something more like the "pro bono" model of lawyers? Make it a marketing thing, maybe see if the big clients would want to get in on the PR benefits of helping the little clients, maybe rotate your rockstars through the smaller projects and help develop less-experienced talent that way?

[hnick]

It has the risk of being a B-team but it's also a good way to onboard new hires. You get a much higher turnover rate of new things to try, do, and learn. One place I worked did communications generation (PDF letters etc), we had massive clients and 300 hour projects and we had 3 hour simple letters. Churning those small ones out was the best way to get me to learn when I signed up. Just as long as someone sensible and experienced is watching. And some people just don't gel well with project marathons - I'm definitely a sprinter who loses focus on huge projects despite my years of experience. I'd rather do a lot of small ones.

It eventually got sold to a bigger more respectable company and those 300 hour quotes crept up north of 1000 hours and it was impossible to finish any job in under 10 hours but that's another story about internal red tape.

[sanedigital]

Other way around, in my experience. We run a team of ~20 at our studio—the "A-team" all want to work on the smaller projects because they're usually more interesting, they have more control, they get to move faster, etc.

[aetherspawn]

As the owner of a control software company, your explanation about big companies bringing things in-house matches our experiences perfectly, and instead of assuming that they will never be able to bring things in-house due to the niche and a lack of experience, it has inspired me to put some more thought into how to solve this problem as we grow by focusing on having teams dedicated to dealing with and keeping our smaller recurring clients (i.e. have A and B teams as suggested).

[tomaskafka]

> Eventually they all grow to realize the same thing: the controls part is crucial enough to the business that it needs to be brought in house.

I think that creates a narrow operating area for almost all agencies - they need to operate in a narrow gap between "work that isn't valuable enough, so nobody pays for it" and "work that is so important for the business, that they bring it in house".

And you get to play outside this envelope only by finding clients so slow that it takes them years to realize they need an in house team. Now you have a different problem - working for a slow client doesn't push you to get much better.

[zmix]

Why not have a sister company/branch for the small clients? One they grow, you'd be able to transfer them to the big block?

[TheCapn]

Yeah, I like the suggestion, I'll preface in saying I'm not in a "Decision Maker" position at my company though so ideas are only so good.

Ultimately it's a management issue. Internally among the techs/engineers we've talked about it but management keeps pushing to satisfy the client and the temporary compromises we make at one moment start to become permanent mainstays of how we operate. I don't have any confidence that if we had a "B-Team" or "Sub-branch" that when a big enough project came along they wouldn't just poach the needed labour and destroy the separation between them.

You could almost say we operate with an "A-Team" and "B-Team" as we have techs split primarily between the Mining and Agricultural clients but they take our techs often from the Agricultural side to fill in on needs of the mining side. There's no shame.