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Pragmatic Consulting from the Client’s Perspective

By Lonnie Pacelli

In my career I have been fortunate enough to work for two of the best companies on earth: Accenture and Microsoft. In my eleven years at Accenture I got a tremendous education on systems development, project management, strategic planning, and client service. In my nine years at Microsoft, I took most of what I learned at Accenture and applied it in very practical ways. Both experiences were key to my growth as a professional.

When I left Accenture to go to Microsoft, I found myself moving from the consultant’s side of the desk to the client’s side. At Microsoft, I had the opportunity to work with numerous consulting firms in my various jobs managing IT projects, heading up Corporate Procurement, and managing Corporate Planning & Budgeting. In working with these firms, I had ample opportunity to reflect on my own career as a consultant and think about how much better a consultant I would have been had I viewed things more from the client’s perspective. It is this client-based—or pragmatic consulting—that dramatically increases a consultant’s effectiveness and builds long-term, profitable relationships with clients.

The “Aha’s”

In moving from the consultant to the client role, I was able to clearly articulate some principles, or “Ahas,” that many consultants either don’t understand or don’t practice on a regular basis:

Consulting is more about listening than talking. Being an active listener and asking the client perceptive questions are crucial to getting a deep understanding of the client’s issues and hot buttons. Too frequently, I’ve seen consultants rush in with their perspectives or theories on problems without truly taking the time to listen to what is important to the client.

Sometimes things worked out OK, but there were times where the consultant’s perceived understanding of the problem didn’t match the client’s real problems. The end result was a ticked-off client who viewed the consultant as a pompous jerk.

A consultant needs to resist the urge to present solutions before the client has a chance to fully explain the problems. It could be that the consultant understands the situation very well, but to develop a connection with the client, let the client articulate the issues and concerns. That connect time with the client is important to building the trust and credibility that both the consultant and client need to work effectively together.

True credibility is achieved fastest by demonstrating a thoughtful understanding of the client’s problem. A consultant may have a good grasp of industry or functional issues that other companies face, but that doesn’t mean that those problems apply to your client. When a consultant assumes that problems other companies face automatically apply to their clients, they take a definite risk in establishing credibility with the client. Even worse is when the client explains the problem and the consultant either doesn’t acknowledge it or doesn’t get it after repeated explanations. The longer it takes for you to grasp clients’ problems, the shakier your credibility becomes.

You need to stand in the client’s shoes, understand clients’ problems from their perspective, and not make generation assumptions about the complexity or urgency of the matter. Show an “I feel your pain” perspective of the client’s problem and you’ll quickly get over the credibility hump and the client will want to listen to you.

“Concise” is better than “more.” I didn’t get this as a younger consultant. Many of my presentations were measured in part by how many slides and how much information I could cram into them. It was commonplace for me to create 100+ slide PowerPoint presentations which would take several hours to go through. When I joined Microsoft, I was thoroughly thrashed the first time I created a pass-the-weight-test presentation. I quickly learned to focus on concise, tight, treat-every-word-like-you’re-spending-a-dollar presentations.

Consultants need to stifle the urge to cram as many pretty slides into a presentation as they can. The client doesn’t necessarily need to see all of the gory details. I’ve learned to focus many of my presentations into a core deck and an appendix. The core deck focuses on three components: a concise articulation of the problem, the proposed solution, and how the solution will be implemented.

The appendix contains other supporting pieces of information that the consultant only reviews with the client if necessary. I’ve been able to get my point across to clients in a very crisp, concise manner and deep-dive on questions as necessary. True, you may only need a small portion of your appendix and much of your hard work may never see the light of day, but if you’re solving the client’s problem, who cares?

The client generally knows the theory, but may not know how to apply it. As a client, I’ve sat through too many presentations where a consulting firm brought in its industry expert to talk about the problems that my industry faces. After they had gone on for about fifteen minutes telling me theory I already knew, I would ask, “So how did you fix it?”

More often than not, the industry expert only knew vague details about how someone else dealt with the problem, if it was dealt with at all. Knowing the theory only gets you through the first mile in a marathon; knowing how to apply the theory in a very practical and effective manner gets you through the rest of the race.

Clients want to hear about how their problems can be solved in a practical, straightforward, effective manner, not about lofty theory. If your theories don’t solve problems, save them for late-night philosophical discussions over a favorite beverage.

Relationships are more important than short-term fee goals. True, consultants are in business to generate fees and make money. There’s nothing wrong with a profit motive and a goal to make money. Where it does become a problem, though, is when short-term fee goals cause a consultant to do something that is not in the client’s best interest. Those consultants that always seemed to have one hand in my pocket weren’t the consultants that survived in the long term.

The consultants I respected the most told me things like “I really don’t think you need me on this,” or “You could probably do this yourself and save some money.” When a consultant puts my best business interests over his own fees, my trust in him goes up exponentially. True, the consultant may have a short-term fee hit because he didn’t sell a job, but the long-term potential for win-win between the client and consultant was more attainable and far more lucrative.

Saying “I don’t know” is OK at times. Being a consultant doesn’t mean that the omniscience fairy came to you one night, waved her magic wand, and deemed you the all-knowledgeable one. Sometimes issues will come up that the consultant can’t answer. Some of the ugliest situations I’ve seen were when the consultant tried to fake his way through a topic he had no business addressing. A simple “I don’t know” would have been far better than throwing up a smoke screen and hoping no one asked any more questions.

Having said that, there are two caveats to note: First, whenever a consultant says “I don’t know” she needs to follow it up with “but I’ll find out and give you an answer by x date.” Second, a consultant only gets a few “I don’t knows” before earning the label of incompetent doofus. Consultants must have a deep understanding of the subject matter they profess to be expert in; having a shaky understanding will get you voted off the island in the first round.

True effectiveness as a consultant means you listen to clients, understand their dilemmas, present practical solutions in a concise manner, and demonstrates the utmost in honesty and integrity. Keep these things in focus, and you’ll earn and keep the best clients. You will establish yourself as a pragmatic consultant who sees things from the only perspective that matters—that of the client.

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Lonnie Pacelli is an author, consultant, and speaker with over twenty years of experience at Accenture, Microsoft, and his own firm. He has written a number of books, including The Project Management Advisor and The Truth About Getting Your Point Across. You can reach Lonnie at www.leadingonedge.com.