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Buying Valuable Advice, Volume 1, No.1,
April 2003
Consultants and the consultancy profession are often
lambasted over failing to deliver the value expected by the client.
Some consultants
do fail to deliver. However, in these situations clients often
conveniently forget that it’s their poor selection and management
of the consultant that is often the cause.
Most buyers of consultancy services are senior managers / board
members and their decisions are often made on an emotional or ad
hoc basis.
They become preoccupied with the number of days needed, fee rates
per day and the tasks to complete in this time. Buyers’ focus
on cost and not value is because it is easier to quantify cost
rather than value.
Here are some straightforward dos and don’ts to help increase
the value consultants deliver to you.
Do
- Buy value not time and / or tasks – this allows the
consultant to be flexible in using the most appropriate methods
and time
to best advantage. If you have a fixed price and estimated duration
for clearly defined outcomes that you value then the number
of days or tasks the consultant completes is irrelevant.
- Always
make sure that the solution is appropriate for your business
and not theirs.
- Be a good client – good consultants have many clients
and they treat each one differently. To get the best consultants
and the most
value you want them to treat you better than their other
customers.
- Make sure you understand and manage each
other’s expectations,
it gets embarrassing watching grown ups cry over unexpected
outcomes.
- Describe
how you
see your
organisation
being improved
by the
consultancy
assignment.
Even if
you don’t have a detailed
brief this will guide the consultants.
- Use the skills of listening and hearing. They are vastly under-utilised
and their value underestimated. Consultants love to talk and
give opinions – LISTEN and HEAR – its free advice and you
don’t have to use it.
- Use consultants accumulated experience of your organisation
effectively – you’ve
paid for the learning curve, now make use of it!
- Use consultants experience and expertise to help set the specification
for the project. Do it with the right consultants and you’ll
be surprised at the impact!
Don’t
- Use the consultants if you don’t trust them. Opinions and subjective
recommendations are likely to be part of the outcomes and if you
don’t trust the consultant you won’t trust the
results.
- Re-invent the wheel or suffer from not invented here syndrome – leave
your ego behind - somebody somewhere has experience of most issues
and it’s likely to be for sale at the right price.
- Think industry or organisational experience is always needed. A good
brain and sound process thinking is an effective antidote
to stale decision making and entrenched attitudes.
- Believe you can develop a competitive advantage by following
the herd. Trends and fads are all very well but haven’t
you noticed they change frequently and cost a lot.
- Rely on history as the sole predictor of the future. What has been
successful elsewhere may not deliver the same results
in your organisation. Remember your business is UNIQUE in context if not in content.
© Qualitar Consulting Limited. All rights reserved. If you share
these tips with others please always include our copyright and
say they came from Qualitar.
If you would like more information
on the results we can deliver and the services we provide please
e-mail us at enquiries@qualitar.co.uk
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