Top Consulting Skills: Ability to Understand, in Detail, the Current State

Things are not always what they seem, and the best consultants assume that many things are not at all as they seem. The current state is often a matter of perception. To complicate things further, each stakeholder often has a completely different perception from one another.

Often times, a consultant is brought on board by a senior manager or executive who has determined that there is a challenge that needs to be addressed that can’t be addressed internally. The business may lack the time, the expertise, or both, to solve the issue. So here you are.

The first thing most consultants will do is to speak with the executive to understand why they were brought on board. What is the problem from the executive’s perspective? What has she done to try to address the problem? What has work? Has not worked? Why?

While the executive may be a wealth of information and she will often speak with authority on the problem, simply listening to the executive and then driving to a solution would be a mistake. In all relationships, somewhere between “my truth” and “your truth” is “the truth.” This means that the consultant needs to talk to many stakeholders to get different perspectives. He must learn where there is alignment and misalignment. Where is there agreement and disagreement?

So, first, the consultant must find out who the most affected stakeholders are and talk to each of them in detail. As he speaks with each stakeholder, he should ask “who else will be affected by whatever decision we make on this matter?” The answer will present an additional list of stakeholders with whom the consultant should speak. In other words, don’t get a list of interview candidates from your sponsor, meet them, and call it a day. Look for additional perceptions that may be critical to formulating the right assessment of the current state.

The consultant needs to learn from multiple stakeholders at different levels in the organization:

1. What are the motivations of each stakeholder? How do those motivations shape the stakeholder’s point of view?
2. What is believed to be the problem? How is each affected by the problem?
3. What symptoms are presenting themselves in support of the problem statement?
4. What have they tried to solve the problem? What has worked? Not worked?

Individuals can be motivated in a lot of different ways. Some will be motivated by a successful outcome - finding the best way to resolve the issue and drive forward successfully. Others are motivated by fear. “If I talk to these guys, will I loose my job or sense of autonomy or ownership of the solution?” Knowing how one is motivated allows you to frame questions in a way that allows the stakeholder to be the most receptive and to apply judgement to the information you are gathering.

Additionally, many of us will often confuse the symptom with the problem. Is the problem that we have too many meetings making it hard to get work done, or is the crazy meeting schedule a symptom of some other problem, such as a lack of clear direction, lack of clear decision making ground rules, or lack of sufficient resources.

Getting to the heart of the current state is a critical first step in the consultative process. Do not get consumed with solving the problem at this point. Just stay focused on understanding what’s going on. You will get to problem resolution later.

Consultants ARE sales people

While I did work in a stand-alone, boutique consulting firm for a time, most of my career has been in embedded services organizations within software companies. In these organizations, the companies typically have a dedicated, product sales team who is also expected and compensated to sell professional services (PS). The Services Practice Manager and some senior consultants often support the Product Salesperson to sell PS. Let’s face it, selling product and selling services are different, even for a “consultative” salesperson. Products have features and functionality that can be more easily compared to competitive solutions. Products can be demonstrated, they can be touched, and the value can be illustrated visually in the sale process. OK, its not quite that simple, but the fact is, when you buy PS, you are buying access to people. You can’t illustrate the value of PS by demoing a person. Or can you?

I believe that while consultants are not salespeople in the traditional manner - they don’t carry a bag and are not paid on a commission basis, they are salespeople. (I am not speaking about partners in stand-alone consulting practices, by the way.) The way we sell as consultants is through being a solid consultant and demonstrating what we know and our approach to the consultative process..

Whether its in a pre-sales capacity, supporting the product sales team, or in post-sales delivery, consultants need to sell the prospect or customer on the fact that she knows the space and has the expertise needed by the customer to meet their needs and objectives. One way we do this is by joining the product sales team in pre-sales meetings to understand the customer’s pain, learn about their success criteria, and start discussing a model that can be used to ease that customer’s pain and drive to full attainment of their success criteria. We build credibility during pre-sales that should drive the deal and set up a successful engagement. What we do in pre-sales is very similar to what we do in post sales: We ask insightful questions, listening (a lot), and provide some amount of consulting throughout the conversations, giving the customer a strong impression that we can help.

We, essentially, provide a demonstration of our model and approach as well as highlighting the specific skills of our consultants through this process. The customer is most likely speaking to multiple organizations and will determine which consulting team is best equipped to help them meet their objectives through their people, process, and technology.

Inevitably, potential customers do not view the consultant who sells as a salesperson. This works to our favor, of course. For right or wrong, there are often negative connotations of “salespeople” and, even though the consultant is on the call to help scope and close a deal, we are viewed as subject matter experts, not salespeople. If we play our cards right, we will foster a strong, trusting relationship with the the customer, and the customer will be willing to share concerns, pain, and needs with us in a way they won’t with someone in a traditional selling role.

“Selling” doesn’t end when the ink is dry on the contract, though. Once we start a project, we will get introduced to new stakeholders - folks who were not part of the pre-sales process, who don’t know us. We need to convince them that we can do the job, that we can help them meet their objectives - we are back to "selling." Then the consulting begins. Throughout the engagement, we learn, we listen, and we advise. In the words of Peter Block, we “help our customers ask and answer their own questions,” and we show the customer a vision for a better and less painful future. Throughout the engagement you will, at a minimum, be selling your ideas and your vision for their future.

As a consultant becomes more senior, she is expected to help drive follow-on PS and product sales. Again, we are not “the” salesperson, but we are trusted advisors who work with our customers more closely than a salesperson ever really could. We have the ability to not only ensure “this pain” is addressed, we have the ability to learn about other pain the customer has that “we are able to address” through our products or services.

A colleague of mine, who once worked for a Big 4 consultancy, shared with me that his previous firm offered a training program they called something like, “Helping Your Customers Buy.” Notice that the word “sell” is no where in the title of this class. This is because, for many consultants, being perceived as a salesperson is seen as a negative. The message of this training, though, is that if you knew your customer has pain that you can address, why would you not talk with them about that, even if it means they have to sign another Product Order Form or Statement of Work?

Think about it, when you are not feeling well, and you go to see your doctor, the doctor works to diagnose the source of the pain you are feeling. If he identifies another health issue while investigating the pain you had when you came in, he doesn’t refrain from saying something simply because the new issue is not the pain you came in to discuss and/or because it could cost more money to get the health issue resolved. Rather your doctor speaks with you about what he found, the concern and/or risk, and what next steps he recommends. You, of course, have the right to a second opinion, or to ignore the problem, but knowledge is power - the doctor knows this - and you now have new information to help you improve your overall health.

So how do you “sell” without “selling”? It is actually easier than it seems in my opinion and experience. Years ago, one of my company’s customers was struggling. They were using all aspects of the product they purchased - 100% utilization, but they did not feel like they were really getting value from their spend with us. They were questioning whether they should renew the contract. (Think of the guy at the gym who goes faithfully but is not losing the weight he wants to lose.)

The Account Manager (salesperson) suggested that they meet with Professional Services to see if there was anything we could do to help them get value. They knew they should be getting value, and they were open to talking with us. The Rep asked me to join a call with the customer. We had a preliminary conversation about what they were doing and why they thought they weren’t able to get value. I asked a lot of questions and learned a lot. I felt strongly that if one of my consultants could work with them for 2-3 weeks, we could develop a "path to value" for them. They agreed, and we got started with  a three-week, billable services engagement designed to find that path.

In the first few days, the consultant realized that many of the things they were doing with our product were redundant and not adding value. Her first recommendation was to turn off a slew of things they were doing with us - a scary thought for a SaaS company that makes money on consumption of the product. Still, she knew it was the right thing to do. The customer complied, consumption went down, and the customer instantly trusted the consultant to do right by them.

Over the next week or two, the consultant identified a number of things they weren’t doing with our product that they really should do. She made recommendations and help them set up those things. Unfortunately, they didn’t buy enough of our stuff to do everything that she was recommending. The end result was that the customer called their Rep and bought more of our stuff - more than doubling their spend with us. The consultant was not in “selling” mode at any point in her work. She was acting as a highly-skilled consultant, understanding what they needed, and advising them of how to meet their needs. Success!!

So, worry less about whether you are “selling” and worry more about listening to your customers, understand where they have pain you can address, and help them buy when that is the right thing for them to reduce their pain.