How to Be a Good Consulting Client: 4 Tips to Prepare Yourself

So you found an amazing consultant or a freelancer that you're pretty sure if you just pay them for their expertise, they're going to pay back in dividends in the solutions they can provide for your business or your team. That's awesome. But you know by now that consultants aren't exactly the most affordable resource. You are hiring the best and brightest in a particular area and usually the cost reflects that. Because you're an awesome person who watches this channel. You are probably trying to figure out how can you prepare yourself and show up to be the best possible consulting client. Because you know if you show up your best and that consultant isn't as amazing as they seem, you're going to get some great value out of that session and you want to make sure that you are setting everybody involved up for success. First of all, thank you for caring enough to do that. As someone who has been a consultant for years, who has been a consulting client for years and is now training an in house team to become consultants, I have been looking at this puzzle of how to become a great consulting client from multiple angles for multiple years. And so in this video I'm going to be sharing four tips you can use to better prepare yourself to be an amazing consulting client and more importantly, get the best possible results out of that expert that you're so excited to work with. Ready to get started? Let's begin at the end. Actually, we're going to start off with number one, which is all about having the end in mind. What you need to do here is reflect on your own situation and try to understand not only the symptoms you're seeing, but the root cause as well as possible. The deeper you can go before you bring in your consultant, the better the starting point you give them so they can dig even deeper in less time. So what does this actually look like? Well, when communicating with your consultant, either on your call or in your prep information, try to communicate with three pieces of information. First, the result you would like to have. Yes, start with the end in mind. That's exactly what we want to do. So. So for example, if we had someone working with us at ProcessDriven on a ClickUp consulting engagement, they might say, hey, I really want to be able to prioritize my work on a given day. That's the end result. I want notice how that end result is usually going to be about feelings or actions and not on specific ways to approach that solution. Again, that's kind of what your consultant will be there for, is figuring out the how. You just want to Give them the parameters for what that destination should look like. The second piece of information you want to share is the attempts you've had so far. So if you've already attempted to solve this problem, tell your consultant what you've tried and what did or did not work. This is fantastic context to provide in your prep document if your consulting engagement has that, or in the audit stage of a discovery situation. For the example I gave at the onset, if I'm trying to prioritize my work in ClickUp, maybe I already tried using due dates and it didn't work. So I could say, I have already tried using due dates by setting a due date on every task I have. It didn't work because I got very overwhelmed and I kept putting things on weird dates and then I had 27 overdues every day. That would be an example of giving some attempts and outlining what you've tried in the past. The final piece of this, and this is the one you really want to go with, the lightest touch, is any hypotheses you have. So we do not want to go into a consulting engagement necessarily saying, I know the solution, because if you know the solution, you probably don't need the consultant. But if you do have a hypothesis of some kind that you want the consultant to weigh in on, you might want to add that as your third piece. So, for example, if I'm trying to organize my day in ClickUp, I've already tried due dates. My hypothesis might be, hey, I watched this video from this chick on YouTube and she was using priority flags to prioritize work. I think that would really work well for us. Do you think that could be a good option? What we're trying to do here with this hypothesis is to let the consultant know where our existing biases are. We're not saying this is the solution, we're just saying this is something that excites us or seems like the direction we might want to explore. The purpose of these three steps is just to be as clear as possible and kind of implement the CARS framework we talk about in some of these other videos and to make sure that you're not in a position where you're repeating yourself or having to say, oh, I've already tried that, because I don't know about you, but I've been on so many consulting calls where you'd say a problem, and before you can even give any context, you're already being attacked by advice. This kind of thing of having these three pieces can help prevent that advice attack and force A little bit of pacing on the part of the consultant. So they're giving you information that's appropriate for your context. Of course, if you are experiencing advice attacks from your consultant, you might want to wait for tip number four at the end of this video. It may help you. Now that brings us to tip number two. So consultants, the best ones, right, they can think on their feet, they can figure out a problem just looking at it and say, ah, that's it. Because I've solved the Same plumbing problem 2000 times, I know how to solve it. But to set up whatever kind of consultant you have for the optimal result, you want to give them some time to really think on it. So you're not just getting their gut reaction or their first instinct. You're giving them time to review what you have, analyze it and bring with you plan A, A, plan B and plan C. And the only way that's possible is if you give your consultant context when they need it. Most Often this will be in the discovery phase of an engagement. So those first few weeks or months of a consulting engagement, or if you're working with more of a strategy session, VIP day model, this might be the prep intake form you have before you even go to the session. Whatever avenue you have for providing context, use it, okay? Most consultants charge you for the time that you are sitting down with them or the time that they are actively working. But the vast majority of the majority of smaller business consultants, which is what many of you would be experiencing, they will generally charge a flat rate for audits, prep, analysis and that kind of stuff. It's all kind of bundled into most services, not every, but most. So use it, okay? Do not be that person who fills in a prep assignment for a strategy session and just says, just a few issues. I'll talk about it on the call. Do you really want to waste 20 minutes of your call explaining something you could have typed in two sentences and waiting for the consultant to gather what you're saying and understand it? Why? Why waste your time on that non result? Instead, what you want to do is take advantage of those avenues. You have to again give that context. We talked about it in step one and give it to your consultant as early as humanly possible. Because it's only going to benefit you and give you more attention and brain power than you would if you just sprung something on this professional. Now, speaking of being professional, let's go to tip number three. In the age of primarily virtual consulting, which is what most of us will be experiencing, we want to make sure we can show up virtually and professionally. The thing I don't want is for you guys to be so excited about this amazing consultant you're working with and then miss the call because you couldn't get Zoom to behave. You don't need to be a YouTuber or have like a fancy setup or anything. But if your consultant provided a Zoom link or a Google Meet link or a team link, something in order for you to join that call, test the link in advance, test that you can get in, that your audio works, that your sound works, and that you're able to share your screen in advance. It is painful how often I would have consulting clients when I was doing consulting work, just show up 15 minutes late because they couldn't figure out the Zoom link or their computer had to get restarted or this, that and the other. And as a consultant, it's a tough spot to be because you've reserved our time. We can't refund it just because you weren't able to show up. That time is gone. But at the same time, it's such a terrible feeling when you are the client to know that you had to give up a quarter of your session because you just couldn't get Zoom to work. So as basic as this sounds, make sure you have all the necessary logistics you need for your consulting engagement, particularly if your consultant might not be the most process driven or the most technologically savvy. Make sure you've got the link you need or the venue, if it's in person, all of the relevant details and that you've tested it all out. Finally, last but not least, the tip number four, and this is kind of bounces off the last tip because the last tip was super easy, right? Just make sure your tech works. That sounds simple, but this last one is about finding a consultant that gets you that you understand both literally and figuratively, and someone you're actually going to respect and trust. I think it's, it's really hard, particularly when you're looking for niche consultants on a topic that's really specific, so you don't have a lot of options. I think it's very easy for us to, as business owners or leaders or managers, to talk ourselves into hiring a consultant because we need help in that area. But just because we need help in that area and that person knows that area, that does not necessarily mean it's going to be a great consultant client fit. So, for example, I might say to my sales team, hey guys, we're looking for a client that is, you know, a team between three and 50 people for the most part. They already use the project management softwares that we work in. They are serious about getting their processes and systems in place in order to scale. And they already have at least one person on the team who is focused on this operations puzzle. It's not just something that's being stuffed under the rug. They're really serious about getting their SOPs, for example, in place. And they've probably already tried a few things before. That is who we serve sales team. And for anyone who doesn't meet those requirements, it may not be worth making it a consulting engagement because they're just not going to be the right fit. And that's the kind of conversation I have as a company owner here trying to make sure that we're not overselling because we could be working with a lot more consulting clients than we currently do. But I'd rather be select and make sure we satisfy. This fourth tip for you. When you're finding your consultants, I want you to keep this in mind. Just because someone knows something you need to know doesn't mean they're going to be the right consultant for you. Two symptoms that you may not have the right consultant is one, you're not getting each other. So you're explaining things in words that make sense to you. And they are either advice attacking you or just not getting it. They're not hearing the words you're saying and understanding them. That could be cultural misfit, that could just be the way you speak just doesn't line up with the way they think. But if you're experiencing that at any point, that's probably a sign that that consultant could be the wrong fit for your personality, your company, your industry or what have you. You really want a consultant where you're trying to explain something to them, they just get it and vice versa. When they're explaining a concept to you, you want to just understand it because your brain works the way their brain works, or at least complimentary. You know, if that isn't there, you might be introducing more headache than it's worth. And beyond that kind of emotional communication based compatibility, the other half of the equation you also need to consider is more of a competency compatibility. And this sounds cold, but I've just experienced it where folks will hire a consultant and it's just not quite clicking. I've hired them anyway and you don't quite understand that person's expertise. You don't quite view them as the expert. So despite hiring them for expert help, you then end up arguing with them about their advice or their consulting. And while debate and asking why would you say that is really valuable? You don't want to be in a position where you're basically playing a debate team with your consultant because you guys just have such opposing missions, visions, values and views on the world. Ideally, your consultant will be both emotionally and mentally compatible with you and your business and your industry. You want to be able to talk to them like a human and know they're going to get it. And at the same time you want to trust that they know what the heck they're doing. And when they tell you, hey, you probably don't want to do this, here's why. My 10 years of experience say that that's a bad idea. You want to at least respect them enough to say I understand why you're saying that. Even if you choose to make a different choice, you want to make sure that you are in alignment mentally with what they are thinking about. Especially when it comes to things like values and ethics. Okay, just take my word on that one. So those are my four Go to Tips when it comes to being a great consulting client as someone who has been a consultant, been a consulting client, and is now teaching consultants, I hope these four are helpful. Maybe helped you see things in a new way. If you have a tip of your own though, please do share it in the comments below. This is just my experience. Oh and if you are interested in working with ProcessDriven here and experiencing our consulting services, please know that that is something we now offer inside our process driven membership. So yeah, we're a little. We're a little weird. We don't just offer our consulting to anybody but people who come into our membership and start learning our framework. We offer consulting to help you implement that journey. So if you are someone who is looking to build a foundations of process for your business, that means things like documentation, sops systems and workflows, that kind of geeky goodness and you're looking for little help for yourself or your operations manager to implement that Journ exactly where we help join our ProcessDriven membership. The info is in the description below and you can find out more about our consulting services once you're on the inside. Anywho, I hope this was a helpful little random video here. If you enjoyed this, please do like and subscribe. And until next time, enjoy the process.