Getting to manage your consultancies successfully is something that not only depends on your knowledge in the area where you dedicate yourself to advising, but on many other factors that will decide whether your business comes to fruition or not. Would you like to know what are those factors or elements that you should work on and improve as a consultant to offer a service of 10 that allows you to take your business as far as possible? Well, don’t miss this post!
10 keys to managing your consultancies successfully
Although it is difficult to summarize everything in just 10 keys, the truth is that we could say that this is the best starting point you can have to guarantee a future in the sector. It is clear that you will need much more, but at the end of this post I will tell you where you can get more information to manage your consultancies successfully.
Consultant-client relationship
The key to success in a consultancy lies in the relationship of trust established between consultant and client. And it is that, our work as consultants must start from a deep analysis of the company in which we will realize its big, small and medium problems, but also all its blunders, errors and deficiencies. From there, we will have to be able to transfer solutions to a client and to a team that must work according to our strategy so that we can achieve the necessary results. In the event that there is not a good connection with any member of the company, the results of our work will be substantially diminished. Therefore, every good consultant must have good people skills and be able to deal with all kinds of reactions, having attitudes of leadership and change management.
Method, efficiency and organization
Every consultant must be methodical, diligent and organized to successfully manage their consultancies. We will not be able to carry out our detailed consultancy work if we do not have a clear method to follow that is structured enough to support the wide load of tasks to be carried out, and flexible enough to adapt to all types of projects and clients. In addition, we will work with an infamous amount of information, we will restructure processes, we will train and coordinate people, so our organizational capacity will have to be up to par. Likewise, we must propose the best solution for our client’s problem, and for this reason, it will be essential that we work on efficiency and excellence in all processes.
Contacts and collaborations
A wide network of consultants specialized in areas close to us, and not so close to ours, will be our best ally to ensure the success of a project that is beyond our radius of action. Otherwise, we can find ourselves in one of these two situations: a) Projects that we decide to accept even though they are beyond our capacity and attitudes, and from which we can get an acceptable but not optimal result, and therefore a client who you will not be 100% satisfied; Or b) Large projects that go completely astray due to our greed. However, if we are able to accept our limitations and have other collaborating professionals, we will find unprecedented learning thanks to working side by side with another great professional, as well as a satisfied client who will know how to value our humility and closeness when accepting that Your project is beyond our possibilities.
Make a good impression on the customer
Making a good impression on the client is possible with proper meeting preparation and a clear consulting methodology. It may seem too obvious or superfluous, but this is a particularly remarkable point. The first contact with a client is always the precedent of our relationship with him. If we get a good feeling from the first moment, all the work will go smoothly. The client will have no problem trusting us with his information and more hidden problems, which will make our work easier. In addition, he will trust our decisions more.
client transparency
Transparency and customer information will be key to success in the preliminary diagnosis. If we do not achieve the necessary trust for you to share with us all the pertinent information about your company, we will jeopardize the good future of our work. To manage your consultancies successfully you will need a lot of closeness and empathy with your client.
The decision is up to the client
The last word is always the customer. The consultant has to limit himself to analyzing and defining the best solutions, but the decision to carry them out does not correspond to him. It is important to emphasize this point. We are not the managers or directors of the company, therefore, we must limit ourselves to advising taking into account our experience, but we can never make the decision to start any action without the approval of our client. Managing your consultancies in another way could lead you to serious legal problems.
The implementation of measures should be carried out from the company itself
The company is the one who puts the solution proposed by the consultant into practice, limiting himself to making sure that everything is running smoothly and the people involved are trained to do so. It will probably be necessary to invest in staff training or even restructuring and hiring new talent, but the truth is that the implementation of the proposed actions must be carried out from the organization itself, otherwise we will solve a problem promptly but without proper internal understanding. of it, which can lead to making the same mistake again in the future.
Customer satisfaction
A satisfied client is the best way to grow our consulting business. For this reason, and because we want to do a good job, we must opt for excellence in each new project. The best consultants never have trouble finding new projects, they raffle them off! and they even have the possibility of choosing! If you want to be one of them, bet on quality and make sure that each client is satisfied with your work.
Structuring and genuineness
The success of your consulting method lies in its structure, creativity and genuineness. These characteristics being plausible, but at the same time difficult to find at the same time, every consultant must have the ability to create a unique working method that allows them to structure their projects, but in which creativity has room to adapt it to each situation, moment and unique characteristics of the client in question.
Tools focused on efficiency
Use tools to optimize your work, and if you can’t find the one you need… create it yourself! The best way to optimize our work as consultants is to create tools, templates and solutions that we can somehow replicate and reuse across different projects. The templates are especially useful in the implementation and training phase, so that the teams involved are clear about the steps to follow and the work methodology. As for the tools, they can be a really effective way to improve work processes that we often find in our consultancies.