What’s the real VALUE of External Consultancy?

Whatever the input from an external consultant, whether it be engineering knowledge, executive mentoring, data analysis, running surveys or leading events, it is in both yours and the consultant’s best interest to be clear at the start on the results and the benefits that you will get from the consultant’s involvement in your projects.

You need to be asking yourself the following;

• What is the killer gap to fill?
• What is it that I will point to at the end of a project and say “this was a resounding success”?
• How will I know that things are better – how will it look and feel?

The value of these benefits has to be really significant and compelling relative to what you pay in order to justify the consultant’s involvement and any self-respecting consultant wouldn’t have it any other way.

For you, as the person committing budget, getting to a common understanding with the consultant on this value is the single greatest catalyst to providing you with the confidence in the return that you will achieve on the investment. It can take some time to get to this but it is very worthwhile.

The typical consultant is interested in rates and how many days they are going to spend – in my view this is unethical because it incentivizes time wasting and non-value add activity. I, as a value-oriented consultant, am interested in adding value fast in exchange for fees that are a good deal for both parties.

This a different way of doing business and is dependent on the quality of the relationship and a certain level of trust, but without this understanding, the consultant’s input becomes just another cost to be minimized as much as possible and the real opportunity of the partnership is missed altogether.

In every case and for every person buying consultancy services, the value that they see is different – some aspects of value are tangible and some are intangible and that is normal and valid.

Here are some of the typical outcomes that are valued in most cases: 

• Creating the capability to do certain things.
• Transferring of knowledge and skills.
• Achieving target levels of efficiency, productivity, compliance, quality and so on.
• Reducing Risk.
• Enhancing reputation and prestige.
• Providing confidence and peace of mind.

All of these are focused on what comes out at the end and not what goes in at the beginning such as days, methods, events, equipment, training and so on. All of these are just means to the end and represent no value themselves.

Achieving valuable business outcomes and getting there fast is the real value of external consultancy.

Explicit agreement on the value of those business outcomes between the person committing the budget and the consultant must always be the start point of the partnership– anything else is a road to disappointment.