Aon, phone calls, and tons of emails

In my last post, I talked about what I've been up to for the last couple months.

In this post, I'll give you more of the juicy details of it all. You might remember my trip to Washington D.C., if not, click here. During that trip I met with 5 federal consultants (rather like management consultants, but they consult different governmental agencies instead of businesses).

Since then, I've had a great phone conversation with a fellow who works for Accenture (a management consulting firm that specializes in IT consulting), and a good dozen or so email conversations with consultants at firms like AT Kearney, and Aon.

I've had two great face-to-face networking opportunities since the trip to D.C. One was in Houston, and the other in Dallas (I'll write about my Dallas trip in my next post).

You probably know that both Heidi's and my families live in the same corner of Houston, so we've gone down there for the last several Christmases. Well, last October or so, a huge consulting firm named Aon was on campus for full-time recruiting, and there I met one of their employees who works in the Houston office. I told him I'd visit him over Christmas break, and I was true to my word. He was great enough to set up a lunch with himself and another Aon employee, so I could get a better feel for their business. He then took me on an hour long tour of the office, introducing me to just about everybody there, including several of the office's senior VPs.

During lunch that day, he asked about my dad's job, and after I explained my dad's business to him, he got really excited because he had just finished a case (an engagement) with a very similar firm, and wanted to know if my dad might be interested in their services.

Two phone calls and two days later, I was sitting at another restaurant eating breakfast with my dad, my contact at Aon, and their senior vice president of Sales for the entire Houston office, watching the SVP do the sales pitch to my dad. It was incredible - such a great opportunity to get that inside look at Aon, how they work, how they sell, and the services they offer.

I was very lucky to be able to see all of that. Oh, the powers of networking. I'll tell you about the Dallas trip soon.