major business issues

How should you go about finding a question of consulting business before you dive in?

There is a tendency among consultants immerse themselves in a problem, collecting and fighting against the large amount of data, logging many hours and little sleep, all in the hope of solving customer problems. Best Practices cautions you against doing so.

Assuming you have met a client and you discussed an issue he had – Maybe he wants to understand how to increase productivity in a large hospital in his group – the first thing you need to do is listen and ask probing questions to understand their needs:

What that the average productivity to him and how does he define it?

Why does he do this study? What is the reason for his pursuit of this exercise?

How the hospital in question to respond to any intervention? How do they think their productivity?

How does this impact existing and ongoing initiatives?

Then the client think that he would like to replicate good practices?

These six questions should only generate about an hour or two of conversation to understand quality issues. Many consultants will try to sell work immediately. Resist to do so.

This first meeting is always to understand the problem, build trust and credibility, show interest, the opportunity to qualify and make sure you get a follow-up session to discuss your ideas. With this information in hand, it is preferable offer to return to him in a week with your thoughts. Anything more than a week may show a lack of interest and it is ideal do not wait too long.

Many consultants away from these meetings and begin to apply their experiences before developing solution. Obviously many will type in "productivity problems of hospitals" in Google and use interesting information to support their cause. This is the wrong way to do it. It leads to solutions that can make the best use of your knowledge, but no solutions to customer. You can also come as a person who is trafficking in a product or solution they already know. You must show you are flexible and can develop a customized solution for the customer.

This is what you should do:

Understand that this is not the first time someone has done or asked this question. Anything that you ask has been addressed somewhere in the world. So you need to do research, but Another type of research. If you visit the following sites, you will probably find specific cases of data, examples and solutions to problems Similar: McKinsey Quarterly, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Oliver Wyman, Accenture, Roland Berger, LEK, Monitor Company, etc. What is good about cases of these companies is that they explain the problem, provide data to support and develop unique solutions.

Many companies including accounting firms tend to provide generic methods and refer to these as the solutions to implement. It is best to avoid them, as they may appear too generic. The approach recommended above will help you understand typical problems, provides examples that you can use in your discussions and, therefore, gives you credibility.

Of ensure that research to develop an approach that you can use to help client that YOU and the rationale for using this approach.

This site (Lillilooloo.com) also has a wealth of information. Somewhere in the database is linked to a series of presentations to help a group hospitals and financial models to support. Thus, a search of the database carefully. The information is likely available, but may be filed incorrectly.

Then search sites like the New York Times, the Financial Times, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. These sites have high quality analysis and an emphasis on understanding the root causes. The examples provided will be credible and provide another layer of understanding

Once you have this information, you need to prepare for your meeting. There are several ways to do so. Some consultants use as PowerPoint and other documents using Word and others like to have discussions. Our recommendation is to write your thoughts without exceeding not a page (both sides are very good), bullet point document from long paragraphs are difficult to follow, and double-spaced.

This 1 page document must show the following:

Your understanding of the problem. What do you do for the client and why?
Some brief, powerful examples and insightful, depending on your reading, to support your next approach.
Your approach and rationale.
What does the customer get to the end?

Done correctly this document will increase enough interest for a customer to have a real discussion that will lead to a more detailed discussion or proposal. At this stage, with a confirmation of your thought you can provide a more detailed proposal.

About the Author

Michael Boricki is a writer for Lillilooloo.com. All articles may be reproduced provided no changes are made and a full reference is provided. Lillilooloo.com is the trusted destination for management consultants, students and analysts to understand the tools and techniques of management consulting. Lillilooloo.com Books provide you with inside information to: understand, follow and replicate consulting best practices. However, we are more than our consulting books. We offer the internet’s largest platform for consultants to upload and share consulting material. We provide a store for members to sell toolkits and manuals. The site offers a fully functional 24-hour back-office where users can tap into our network of consulting specialists to produce high quality documents.

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