Usually, posts like this are focused on how to be a great consultant in order to deliver excellence for your clients. However, great consultancy is always a partnership and clients have a critical role to play in making projects successful.
Here then are our Top 5 Tips for being a Great Client!
- Be Clear – know what you want, and also what you don’t want. What does success look like for you in this project? What are the parameters you want us to work within? What are your ‘essentials’ and ‘desirables’ – what are your ‘deal breakers’? Ensure that all internal stakeholders have shared their views on this and that you have an agreed understanding of the outcome you are looking for.
- Be Open – share with us as much as you can. We bring the expertise and external industry perspective, but you know your business. Tell us about your culture, your people, the way things are done. The more you can share with us the more we can align and target our solutions.
- Be Honest – don’t like our suggestions? Tell us! Tell us honestly what you think of our ideas. We want to delight you, so if we miss the mark first time please let us know so that we can adapt and amend things.
- Be Accountable – let us know who is responsible for making decisions and giving approvals, as well as who else needs to input into those decisions. A single point of contact through which decisions are made and information is shared usually works best.
- Be Realistic – we need to balance aspiration and pragmatism. If you need the work done really quickly, there may not be time for multiple reviews and pilots, if you need it done to the highest possible quality standard, this will increase the time and cost involved. We are very flexible and pride ourselves on adapting our approach to fit your needs, and we will present as many options as possible – but even we can’t deliver a Rolls Royce without the budget to match!
What else would you add from your experiences? When does the client-consultant relationship work best in your view?
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