Hiring The Right Consultants To Help Grow Your Business
Last year, Inc. cited several example scenarios of what happens when not having the right consultants. They tend to come up with their own brand of ideas that conflicts with the company’s values. We’ll spare you the horror and summarize that many of the scenarios led to arguments and stunned reactions from gawking office staff.
No one wants to see that.
Before hiring a consultant, ask yourself one question: Do your usual consultants have the right answer to this specific challenge?
Can Business Consultants Be The Remedy To Stagnation?
Hiring the right consultants who have successfully worked for many other companies helps you and your team gain a different perspective. Assuming your own team already has many years working with you, they’ve perhaps fallen into a creative rut on how to approach new challenges.
When you’re hiring the right consultants, you’re setting up the promise of bringing more extensive knowledge to areas where you lack knowledge.
- Outside knowledge helps you fill in when your own team hasn’t kept up on the latest changes in various aspects of the business. Consultants work with every company imaginable and know the realities of what’s going on in the outer world.
- Finding fast solutions is another reason to hire a consultant when your own team feels exhausted in finding creative solutions. Burnout is so easy with in-house employees, especially with few windows of vacation time in marketing departments. Consultants have continual knowledge of new methodologies and are always brainstorming. Creativity is at a higher level, which means faster implementation.
- Consultants diagnose problems as a form of a business audit. They scope out issues you may have preferred sweeping under the rug, and then they find proper solutions.
- You gain access to a team focused exclusively on your problem, rather than relying on your own team members who are preoccupied with their daily work. By having a team that does not have to worry about their other duties in your company, you can utilize the flexibility and availability of a group of consultants whose entire job is to help solve your business problems.
There is no question about it, using the right consultants can help you go faster and higher. But the main question remains: How to find the right consultants for growing your business?
Vetting Your Business Consultant: Finding The Right Consultants
Finding the right consultants in today’s overcrowded market of consultancies can be a major challenge and a time-intensive project. Earlier, too many businesses were hiring the wrong consultants for the job. Hasty consultant hires were being made at a price that was not appropriate to the value given. Frankly put: the consultants were too expensive for the value they offered.
What you’re looking for is a consultant who is capable, who listens, and who is ready to dig in, understand how your business is structured, and strategize for how to solve your most challenging business problems. Basically, you are looking for consulting providers with the right “consulting DNA” profile.
Furthermore, you should be very clear on your needs both in terms of capabilities (what the consultants do), the industry experience, the culture, the delivery model, etc. And from there on, start looking for the right consultants.
We recommend using an open-sourcing approach to a consulting project. Starting, of course, by looking at the consultants you already know about and then broadening that network to other consultants.
Thereafter, you’ll have to vet the consultants by properly checking their references and getting valuable feedback from their former clients. As a result of this, they will always be able to source the right consultants both in terms of competencies, fit and budget generating impact, client satisfaction, and savings. Or in other words, you could say, value. You probably must have heard the famous quote by Warren Buffett. He said, “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” We all understand the concept of “value”, but in our experience, this sound principle is not always applied when buying consulting services.
It’s never too late to start doing things differently
Since far too many hires occurred out of desperation when things were falling apart, or without scoping out whether the consultant’s skills fit correctly with the company’s goals, we developed our system to ensure that not only do you get the best value for your money but that you find the right consultant the right way in a time-efficient manner. Too many hires are not well done, but unfortunately, it is not unavoidable. But the good news is, you can change the way you buy consulting. This means, having the adequate support of the top management, changing the process, and at the same time, having a dedicated buyer for the consulting category.
To know more about the make-or-buy for consulting services, read this article. And if you need any help with consulting, our doors at Consulting Quest are always open for assisting you!
Lastly, in order to select the right consultants for growing your consulting business, watch this video as it provides you with valuable tips on how to do so!
Hélène Laffitte is the CEO of Consulting Quest, a Global Performance-Driven Consulting Platform and author of “Smart Consulting Sourcing”, a step by step guide to getting the best ROI from your consulting. With a blend of experience in Procurement and Consulting, Hélène is passionate about helping Companies create more value through Consulting.
