{"id":7070519,"date":"2026-09-30T14:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/som2nypost.com\/?p=7070519"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:36:06","slug":"some-disadvantages-of-consultants-using-intermediaries-conferences-that-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/som2nypost.com\/?p=7070519","title":{"rendered":"Some disadvantages of consultants using intermediaries : Conferences That Work"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"AAs a consultant, I try to avoid working through intermediaries. Sometimes an intermediary can be useful, but putting another organization between me and the ultimate client can create problems that neither the intermediary nor I can easily solve.<\/p>\n

Here are two examples of times when working through an intermediary didn\u2019t go well.<\/p>\n

1. An intermediary hires me to produce white papers for a sponsor<\/h2>\n

I was once contracted to write white papers for an event industry publication sponsored by my intermediary\u2019s client. The first few assignments went fine. I wrote the pieces, they went through minor edits, the articles were published, and I got paid.<\/p>\n

Then a problem arose.<\/p>\n

I sent my client the piece for my latest assignment, and they wrote back that the sponsor wanted several significant edits. I made them and explained that after a certain date, I would be very busy and would need any further edits finished before then.<\/p>\n

Several more rounds of requests followed. Despite my warning, the sponsor kept requesting additional changes right up to the deadline.<\/p>\n

Eventually I told my client that I simply couldn\u2019t keep editing the piece. We had run out of time.<\/p>\n

They were annoyed with me, which I suspect reflected their own difficult position as much as anything I had done. They paid me for the work, but the article was never published.<\/p>\n

My client, the intermediary, was trapped between my time constraints and the sponsor\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n

That ended our professional relationship.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, it would have been helpful if my client had shared more of their own frustrations about being caught in the middle. Instead, I experienced their communications primarily as increasingly urgent demands from their client.<\/p>\n

The intermediary was in an impossible position. Their client wanted something that their contractor could no longer provide within the available time.<\/p>\n

The fundamental problem was that I was responsible for producing the work, but I had no direct relationship with the person ultimately deciding whether the work was acceptable.<\/p>\n

2. I\u2019m contracted by an intermediary to create software for a large book publisher<\/h2>\n

When I was an IT consultant, an organization contacted me to ask whether I could write macOS software to display the contents of a video disc of images that would accompany a well-known medical textbook.<\/p>\n

They asked what I would charge.<\/p>\n

After learning they were an intermediary for a large, well-known textbook publisher\u2014and that the publisher had a reputation for paying contractors slowly\u2014I decided to charge twice what I normally would for the work.<\/p>\n

Everyone agreed to my fee. I delivered the software on time and sent my invoice.<\/p>\n

The large textbook publisher took eight months<\/em> to pay my intermediary.<\/p>\n

Even though I had anticipated a long delay, I was still annoyed. For eight months, I had no certainty about when\u2014or even whether\u2014I would be paid.<\/p>\n

When the payment finally arrived at the end of the year, I was relieved.<\/p>\n

The extra money was nice, but it didn\u2019t compensate me for months of worrying about whether I would get paid.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I decided to avoid intermediary contracts whenever possible.<\/p>\n

The intermediary problem<\/h2>\n

These two experiences taught me that intermediaries can create two quite different kinds of risk for consultants.<\/p>\n

In the first case, the intermediary created a communication and authority problem<\/strong>. The person paying me wasn\u2019t the person making the final decisions about my work. My client had to reconcile the ultimate customer\u2019s demands with the constraints of the person doing the work.<\/p>\n

In the second case, the intermediary created a payment problem<\/strong>. I had completed the work, but my payment depended on someone else\u2019s customer paying them.<\/p>\n

Neither problem stemmed from bad intentions. They were structural consequences of having an additional organization between the ultimate client and me.<\/p>\n

Intermediaries can make sense in some situations. They may find work that I couldn\u2019t find myself, handle administrative tasks, aggregate specialized expertise, or provide a useful relationship with a large organization that would otherwise be difficult to access.<\/p>\n

But if I\u2019m going to work through an intermediary, I want to understand exactly what role they play, who controls the work, who owes me the money, and what happens if the ultimate client changes its mind or doesn\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n

Consequently, I now generally prefer to work directly with the organization that wants my work. It eliminates a layer of communication, authority, and payment risk that I don\u2019t control.<\/p>\n

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    As a consultant, I try to avoid working through intermediaries. Sometimes an intermediary can be useful, but putting another organization between me and the ultimate client can create problems that neither the intermediary nor I can easily solve. Here are two examples of times when working through an intermediary didn\u2019t go well. 1. An intermediary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7070520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[231423],"tags":[11591,14914,18071,45981,418],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7070519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-consulting","tag-conferences","tag-consultants","tag-disadvantages","tag-intermediaries","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nSome disadvantages of consultants using intermediaries : Conferences That Work - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/som2nypost.com\/?p=7070519\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Some disadvantages of consultants using intermediaries : Conferences That Work - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As a consultant, I try to avoid working through intermediaries. 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