I strongly believe it’s the mix and match of technical and personal skills that makes a consultant tick, keeping this in mind I have listed out some important personal skills that every consultant needs to be aware of, and most importantly practice!!
Interpersonal & Communication skills
- Remember consulting is 70% listening and 30 % talking. So listen more until you know exactly what the client wants and rephrase the same requirement to get it confirmed from the clients before beginning to work on it, most importantly always have it in black and white.
- In any meeting give the customer the first 10 minutes of it, and if possible get others from the clients side involved in the initial discussions too, this gives you time to assess the situations your clients are in and identify the key players in the meeting, then you can begin to discuss your points with these key players.
- Keep it simple, simple and simple. Use jargon with your colleagues who understand and would praise the fact you know these, but avoid doing this with a customer who isn’t familiar with these jargons, speak the customer’s language.
- After your first interaction with a potential client on what your services or product is about, make sure to draft a document with most of the exact same words you used during the discussion and circulate it with him. This way there is a record of it and he could get back to it anytime he would like to. Always inform your clients to let you know if someone else is interested in your service so you could approach them directly, referrals most often than not, work well.
- Be truthful, period. If there is something you are not sure of, it's always fine to let the customer know that you will research on the matter and get back to him, and make 100% sure you do in the next 48 hours.
- A general rule that all consultants have to play with is that “Customers are king”, that’s fine cause they pay for the service or product, but a consultant should be able to question a clients assumption, ask "why not” questions if the clients assumption are vague!!
- Always rehearse the question in your mind before putting it across, it’s a combination of good questions and good confident answers that’s shows the consultants ability to understand the issue at hand.
- You must have the ability to say “No” sometimes in the best interest of the projects, however before making this call its always better to get another perspective on it and always be nice about it.
- Do something the customer would appreciate but didn’t ask for. There is fine line between doing this and doing too much, so make a realistic delivery plan before doing so and keep the client informed of the plan.
- Always consider the impact a decision in the project can have on the project environment, best way to do this is to keep other relevant parties informed as well when an important decision is made. No one likes to feel left out!!
- As a consultant you are selling yourself together with the service and product. You are your own BRAND ambassador. Make sure you have everything set to make a good first impression, because like the saying goes 'there is never a second chance to make a good first impression'.
- Don’t make Promises you can’t keep, and if you can’t keep your promises…. don’t make excuses!!!
- If you have promised your customer you will deliver something against a deadline, make sure to send a reminder that you are working on it!! Clients like to know that someone is working on it rather than being left in the dark.
- As a consultant you’ll have a lot of challenges, just enjoy it and keep moving forward. Remember Murphy’s Law "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, but remember it’s your reaction in the end that could determine the outcome of such a situation.
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