What Your Consultant Wishes You Knew

I’ve been a consultant for most of my working career. 

"Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues - you grow so much." - Indra Nooyi

Currently, I am a co-founder at Dig Insights. Dig Insights is primarily a consultancy that delivers technology solutions, market research, data science, and evaluation services to our large and diverse client-base.

However, I’ve done two meaningful stints on the client-side (a large F.I. and a large Foodservice company). Working both sides of the fence, lends valuable perspective. Valuable perspective for BOTH sides. 

 "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." – Wayne Dyer

Clients pay the bills - so logically the vast majority of the discussion centres around how consultants can do a better job delivering to clients' needs. That’s a valid and important discussion. However, it’s a discussion that we have all heard before many many times. What we rarely discuss is how clients can work better with consultants in order to get a better result.

Don’t worry this isn’t going to be one of those “we have feelings too” type articles.

While I have become good friends with many clients, the average engagement doesn’t end in BFF t-shirts and matching tattoos. No, we expect to be treated like ‘hired guns’. However, even if just hired guns, you should always remember we are on the same side. Our primary job beyond providing the best answers is to make you look good.

 So let’s call this the Jerry Maguire conversation.

 “HELP ME HELP YOU!” - Jerry Maguire

How? Glad you asked, I’m now going to pull-back the curtain on some of the ways clients can work more effectively with their consultants in order to get better results for themselves. 

1. The quote is over your budget? Just tell us. Don’t play the game of “what if we remove this and remove that?” I know it feels strange just telling us your budget, but the reality is if you want to work with us and are honest, we might just take a haircut on fees so we can work with you without losing anything from the project design. If however, we do need to cut, we know our cost drivers and pain-points and can likely come-back with a solution that wouldn’t have seemed obvious otherwise. Finally, if we just can't meet that budget, better to know sooner and revise your expectations without wasting significant time on proposal revisions.
2. Align expectations with the billing model. If you are hiring hourly management consultants you should expect a LOT of engagement. Pre-meetings to the pre-meetings are the name of the game. If you don’t want the project to stretch-out too long and you don’t want surprise invoices down the line, you need to ask for less not more meetings. Conversely, if you are working with a project-based consultant (like market research), then the default will be fewer meetings and faster timelines. If you want more engagement from a project-based consultant, let them know up-front. If you don’t set expectations at the beginning, you won’t get the availability and participation you want.
3. Realize our work will get more aligned with your needs over-time. The life of a consultant is very fragmented. One day you are working on prescription drugs and the next you are testing new ice cream treats. While the perspective we gain from that breadth is valuable, there is also value in specific knowledge. Our third project for you will be ‘better’ than our first. By the third, we will be better able to anticipate what you are looking for in deliverables and we will know your business better. So if you want great work, don’t try to take advantage of the partnership, otherwise we will just price ourselves out of future projects with you on purpose (yeah that happens).
4. Let me know if I’m just a ‘price-check’. If you have worked with us before and we have a relationship, I’m fine to perform the ‘price-check’ role for you. We get it! You need to work with another consultancy because your CEO and their Managing Director went to Camp Itchabite together. Just let us know so we can focus on getting you a price instead of a long detailed proposal that wastes multiple days of effort. Why? Because otherwise that’s how we will treat the NEXT proposal you ask for - the one when you really did want to work with us!
5. Trust us on methodology. I’m not saying don’t ask questions, discuss and debate. I’m talking about the basic stuff. Don’t ask us to defend every methodology decision we make or we will stop defending them at all. What does that mean? We only have so much energy to fight change requests. Eventually, we will just take your challenges as directives even if we disagree! Nothing is more painful than having to tell a client you can’t answer an important question properly because you made changes they requested. It happens more often than you would think.
6. Don’t spring a ‘pre-read’ on us after project KO. Need a pre-read? that's ok, but note that it will add time, not save time. If you rush to a pre-read, then the quality won’t be where you want it to be at the pre-read stage and everyone will be unhappy. If the model is project based billing, trust me we are working as fast as we can, and if we could deliver earlier, we would.
7. Give us any background you have. Is this something you looked at 3 years ago? Did a similar project fail in another country? Are there major concerns that the project is even feasible? Let us know the background and we will do a better job for you.
8. Warn us who is going to be in the room. That V.P. who hates this project and is rumoured to have assaulted a cop once is in the room? Let us know before the meeting. Arm us with the pertinent info. If we are ready for them, we will do a better job at making you look good.
9. We are ok to take the heat, but only if you acknowledge it to us. Did you ignore point 5 and make us change something that led to a major oversight? Remember our primary job beyond providing the best answers is to make you look good. We will take the heat for you, but only if you warned us ahead of time. If you throw us under the bus in the final presentation, it is unlikely to go well.

There's many more tips I could give you, but then this article would be too long and boring to read. You don’t have to do all of these things to accomplish your goals on a single one-off project. Realistically, you can treat your consultants pretty poorly if you never intend to work with them again.

However, as noted earlier, good consultants get better at serving you over-time. So if you really want to effectively leverage your consulting relationships, then use this advice. Ok, I guess it did partly boil-down to "we have feelings too", but if I had just said that I wouldn't be a very good consultant would I?