Why Should I Hire a Consultant?

"A consultant is someone who provides value through specialized expertize, content, behavior, skill, or other resources to assist a client in improving the status quo in return for mutually agreed compensation"

Alan Wiess

I know that I need someone to help me with my problem, but how do I know that I need a consultant? Why should I invest my company's money and time in a consultant? How can I measure the return that make in this investment?

In his book, "Million Dollar Consulting", Alan Weiss goes on to define the categories of value that a consultant will bring to a company. These are the key areas of value that you can use to evaluate whether the consultant you are considering using to solve your problem to is the right one for you.

1. Content. This is the most common consulting value. The consultant you use must know what they are talking about. Consequently, you will probably be able to find consultants who have worked in a specific field or industry that you need help on. Many people who break out of corporate life to go into consulting base their business on content consulting.
2. Expertise. Many consultants have an expertise that transends a specific industry. For example supply chain management; or change management. These consultants can adapt their expertise to a variety of problems and across multiple industries. You will find people who have worked across diverse industries and companies to have developed this type of expertise.
3. Knowledge. This is a quality of people who have "been there before". Knowledge includes an understanding of process as opposed to content. Real process knowledge come with experience. However, don't expect the consultant to have the same level of knowledge of your business that you have.
4. Behavior. A consultant with good interpersonal skills in virtually never behind the scenes. These interpersonal competencies may be of value to you in facilitating groups, leading teams, resolving conflict, enhance brainstorming and creativity, listen to customer or employee feedback, etc. Mediators and arbitrators are examples of consultants with with this competency.
5. Special Skills. Some people have highly developed, well defined skills that are in high demand. These are often talents and innate abilities. For example, some people have a sense of style that makes them excellent image consultants. These people may not know anything about the content, or have precise expertise of knowledge related to your business. But, these consultants will have a gift or talent that you cannot acquire independently.
6. Contacts. Good consultants are normally well connected and will be able to get the right person for the job at hand, if they themselves do not have the necessary expertise, content, knowledge or skills that you may need for a specifiuc task. A well connected consultant can also be a good lobbyist for you.

Consultants will bring one or more (or all) of these competencies to bear to help you move from the status quo to the improved position.

Business Advisor Online

Here is a great resource for small businesses (and others)! Business Advisor Online is packed with great information - like having a management consultant on your staff. They do a great job of collecting valuable articles by category, making it easy for you to find business information that you may need.

Here is their Strategic Thought Of The Week around Competitive Advantage.

"Competitive advantage, to be effective, doesn’t have to huge and pronounced; it can be incremental and subtle, as long as your business is consistently better in some way and customers perceive it that way. Every business would like to have a “better mousetrap,” but few actually do. Choosing a small, but effective, way to differentiate your business and sticking to it is sometimes all it takes to separate you from the pack."

It’s the Network! The power of Professional Networking.

"Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." - Vince Lombardi

I would like to turn Mr. Lombardi's quote around:
“The network’s commitment to individual effort – that is what makes an individual successful.”

After leaving a career at a Fortune 100 corporation to manage my own consulting business, I relied solely on networking to start up. I firmly believed that, as a consultant, people would help you if they liked you! And the only way to get people to like you – is to meet people.

However, if you want more out of networking than just a nice chat over coffee, you better be prepared to sell your ‘product’ – you! This is what I did:

1. Prepared my elevator speech – a 30 second delivery about what you do
2. Wrote a detailed resume. Having a detailed resume forces you to go through the process of writing down your accomplishments. This resume is not to be given to anyone unless it has been edited down to suit the reader.
3. Met with people I knew for coffee, breakfast, lunch or after-work beers. The price of self-marketing. Objective of meeting was to get referral contacts (I tried to get at least 3 names for the price of a lunch).
4. Met with people I did not know, but who had been referred to me by mutual friends. This was the opportunity to deliver the elevator speech and follow up with the adjusted resume.
5. Built relationships; developed an addiction for Starbucks; and had fun
6. Got my first project work – within 4 months of leaving the mother-ship

Furthermore, there are great networking tools for the serious professional networker. LinkedIn and Open BC are the best professional networking tools that I found on the web. Also, find professional organizations in your area. Join-up and/or attend their events.

And yes, once the networking pays off and you get that first project - you must deliver! Deliver on your promise to your network and yourself. Do you have any good networking lessons to share?

"To get a foot in the door, people must like you; to stay in the house, you must deliver value."

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SMALL BUSINESS VIEW

Networking is probably why you are successfully running a small business. This is one area where big business can learn from small business. This is what makes small business nimble, attuned to the market, and able to manage through change better.