Pragmatic Consulting through the Client Perspective

In my job I've been lucky sufficient to work for 2 from the ideal organizations on the planet: Accenture and Microsoft. In my eleven many years at Accenture I obtained a tremendous education on devices growth, project administration, strategic organizing, and customer assistance. In my 9 years at Microsoft, I took almost all of what I figured out at Accenture and learned how to utilize engineering consultancy inside a pretty functional and productive fashion. Each activities ended up key to my development like a specialist.

After i still left Accenture to go to Microsoft, I found myself shifting within the consultant's facet with the desk for the client's side of your desk. At Microsoft I had the chance to get the job done by using a substantial amount of consulting firms in my different employment controlling IT projects, heading up Corporate Procurement, and handling Corporate Organizing & Budgeting. In working with many of these firms, I had ample possibility to reflect on my own occupation to be a consultant and think about how much better a consultant I would have been had I viewed things more in the client's viewpoint. It is this client-based, or pragmatic consulting that dramatically increases a consultant's effectiveness and builds long-term win-win relationships with clients.

The "Ah-ha's"

In transferring through the consultant on the customer role, I was able to clearly articulate some principles, or "Ah-has," that many consultants either don't understand or don't practice on a regular basis, as follows:

Consulting is more about listening than speaking - Being an active listener and asking a lot of questions from the shopper is crucial to getting a deep understanding from the client's issues and hot buttons. Too frequently I've seen consultants rush in with their perspectives on theories or problems without truly taking the time to listen to what is important into the client. Sometimes things worked out OK, but there were being times where the consultant's perceived understanding on the problem didn't represent the client's true problems. The end result was is a ticked-off shopper who viewed the consultant as being a pompous jerk.

A consultant needs to resist the urge to present solutions before the shopper has a chance to fully explain the problems. It could be that the consultant understands the problem very well, but to develop a connection with the client, you need to let the shopper articulate their issues and concerns. That connect time with the shopper is important to building the trust and credibility that both the consultant and shopper need to operate effectively together.

True credibility is achieved fastest by demonstrating a thoughtful understanding from the client's problem - A consultant may have a strong understanding of industry or functional issues that other corporations face, but that doesn't mean that those problems apply into the customer. When a consultant assumes that problems other firms face utilize at the shopper, they take a definite risk in establishing credibility with the consumer. Even worse is when the shopper explains their problem and the consultant either doesn't acknowledge the problem or doesn't get it after repeated explanations. The longer it takes for a consultant to grasp the client's problems, the shakier their credibility becomes.

A consultant needs to put themselves in the client's shoes, understand the client's problem from their point of view, and not make generation assumptions about the complexity or urgency on the problem. Show an "I feel your pain" viewpoint of your client's problem and you'll quickly get over the credibility hump and get the client to where they want to listen to you.

"Concise" is more important than "more" - I personally fell victim to this for a younger consultant. Many of my presentations have been measured in part by how many slides and how much information I could cram into a presentation. It was commonplace for me to create 100+ slide PowerPoint presentations which would take several hours to go through. When i joined Microsoft, I was thoroughly thrashed the first time I created a pass-the-weight-test presentation. I realized quickly to focus on concise, tight, treat-every-word-like-you're-spending-a-dollar presentations.