How To Select And Work With Your Client?

Summary: Being a self employed consultant you are always concerned about your own and your firm’s image in market. Your efforts are focused on to gaining new clients. Clients with high profile in market definitely add value to your profession. Before selecting and going after such clients you should assess them first and try to find out what opportunity, you may get in future.

Choose Your Clients Well



Another aspect of the famed McKinsey marketing mystique is the firm's "client selection" process. Rather than approaching your practice with the idea that you're hoping someone will want to buy what you do, this line of thinking says, "Fortunate are those with whom I choose to work." Now, you may not want to use that line during a sales call, but it can have an interesting effect on your confidence level if you say it to yourself in the elevator on your way to the call.

And it's more than just braggadocio. It's smart practice management. Why not work for the most attractive clients you can imagine? Wouldn't that add dramatically to the value of the experience you earn in your all important initial engagements? Further, as a tool to help you avoid working for the wrong clients, it's helpful to apply this approach to any situation that looks like it will lead to an engagement with a new client.

Richard Jacques, a marketing and strategic planning consultant in Hartford, CT, asks himself 10 questions before accepting an engagement with a new client:

1. Is it a quality organization: performance oriented, substantial, knowledgeable?
2. Does the opportunity have promise of a long term working relationship with significant repeat services?
3. Does the client or market area served represent real growth potential?
4. Are the client and project adequately funded?
5. Does the project represent a good market fit for my firm?
6. Do I have the capability to serve the client and project well (i.e., talent, experience, manpower and interest)?
7. Will the project be challenging and demanding, yet enjoyable and rewarding?
8. Is the client a good fit for us in terms of values, philosophy and culture?
9. Before devoting more work to winning this engagement, do we have a strong likelihood of getting the assignment?
10. What's our gut feeling?

If you can't say yes to most of these, proceed at your own risk.

I've Got a Client! Now What?

Suppose someone buys your client selection process and says they want to use you? Wow. Time to think again on how this might go, because no matter how many fingers you've held up to check the prevailing winds, you're in the water now and have to start sailing. And what you know so far about the client is like an iceberg, says Bob Schaffer of Robert Schaffer & Associates in Stamford, CT, who consults to consulting firms. Most of the things that could sink your engagement are still lurking below the surface.

Many potential problems center around client readiness, Schaffer says. Illogical as it may be and that's often life in consulting the fact that the client has hired you for this engagement doesn't mean it's actually ready for change based on your work. It could even mean the opposite: that you're part of some kind of obfuscation in which the client is creating the appearance of addressing critical issues, but is instead simply buying time.

So, Schaffer says, look for clues to what the organization is truly willing and able to accomplish. What could you do to turn up more such clues? How well does the company convey performance expectations and how are they received? Do I know the names of all the key players: the single, accountable "client"; subordinates who will oversee implementation of our recommendations; others whose cooperation we'll need; still others whose jobs will be affected?

Specifically, try to ask the client questions that offer an opportunity for both of you to discuss the organization's willingness to create change. Schaffer believes that, too often, consultants focus only on technical questions. For example, if they're discussing inventory levels, the consultant will want to know such details as how many items are being stored and how long they take to manufacture. Instead, Schaffer says, consultants should ask such questions as, "What will be different around here if we're successful?" and "What's your vision of what could be achieved?"

Perhaps the key item in revealing client readiness for change is this (which often doesn't appear until after you're engaged): How well is the organization communicating the mandate for change?

Since no engagement is ever perfectly free of resistance to change or other ill winds, Schaffer makes two suggestions about structuring the project:

1. Share ownership of the project with client personnel and track their involvement every step of the way.
2. Avoid projects in which there are long periods of time between opportunities to deliver results. "Even the most competently performed consulting project can fail to produce returns for the client if the work extends over many months," Schaffer says. "Client priorities may shift or the recommendations may go beyond the client's capacity to respond."

Instead, use incremental strategy on any significant assignment: that is, break the work up into limited, focused sub projects with clear beginnings and endings, then start with one that has a better than average likelihood of success.