Six Ways You Can Always Add Value To Past, Present, And Future Clients
The key is to be the most amazing wide-angle lens and equip clients with insights they can't get because they still need to do the work you're about to undertake.
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Companies Kept Using This Same Expression
Early in my consulting career, I noticed a few companies using the same expression to describe what they were looking for:
A wide-angle lens.
They wanted help to understand things like:
How do they compare to others?
What should they be thinking about that they’re not at present?
What are the trends they need to know about?
Who’s doing this best? What are they doing differently?
They wanted someone who could examine what they were doing and put it into context with the broader perspective of the industry.
This brings us back to why you shouldn’t target organisations that most need your help.
The organisations most likely to hire you are already doing great and want to improve. They’re willing to invest the time, energy, and resources to improve. And they need your help to know what better looks like and how to get there.
This is why it helps to position yourself as a wide-angle lens. You need to provide organisations with expertise they can’t easily access themselves.
And you do that by doing the hard, unseen, work of a great consultant.
Where Do You Add Value As A Consultant?
Your years of in-house experience aren’t as important as you might think in consulting.
What matters more are the assets you can bring to the party that no other consultant has. While you might naturally have acquired some of those assets already, the rest need to be acquired through the work.
This means doing the research, the calls, the analysis, and the relationship-building so you can provide the client with a level of knowledge and information no one else has.
If you’re going to be a wide-angle lens, make it your mission to be the best in the world.
I’d recommend the following.
Deeply understand the needs of clients. It would be best if you had undertaken dozens, ideally 100+, research calls over the years of consulting to understand the needs of organisations in that sector deeply. You should know what they’re struggling with, how they’re solving those challenges, precisely what steps they’re taking to solve those challenges, and the impact they’re facing.
Build up a database of outstanding examples - make sure you have your own maturity or index for comparing organisations against one another. You should be able to recite plenty of excellent examples in any situation to support the point you’re making or help clients understand their situation better. A great database is your secret weapon. It helps to add value to almost any situation.
Know the significant trends in your sector. It would be best if you were on top of all the major trends in your sector. You can do this either by consuming the existing research or undertaking your own research. You should know the size of your industry, the adoption of different technologies and techniques, changing budgets and headcounts, and trends in how organisations are attempting to solve their challenges. You want actual data on this - not a collection of anecdotal examples.
Who does and doesn’t do great work? It helps to build a list of people who do great job in this space. This might include those who do great work in-house, implementation partners who do great work, other consultants, designers, developers and more. You exponentially add value to a project by recommending people they should hire and working with who you know will get the job done.
Know the vendors and technology providers in your space well. You should know the strengths and limitations of different technology platforms. You should know what they cost, how long it takes to implement them, and which are better for which kinds of clients. You should have inside information from people about what they would do differently if they were beginning the process of working with each vendor again.
Connect well with all the key people. You won’t rise alone as a consultant. It would be best if you were well connected with platform vendors, authors, other consultants, those doing work at significant organisations, those running conferences and events, etc.… You must regularly connect with people, learn about them, help them, and build those relationships. You begin by building relationships at your level and then gradually expand beyond that.
Now, whenever you have a call or interaction with clients, you should always be able to provide them with insights, knowledge, or connections they didn’t already have. This is also a tremendous way to market to former clients.
Summary
You should always be able to provide additional value to anyone in your sector.
But you have to do the work. This means:
Undertaking several research calls per week.
Building and updating your databases/maturity indices - review 3 to 5 examples per week.
Connecting and collaborating with platform vendors. Send one or two emails per week to make the connections.
Undertaking industry research - aim for a report at least once every 6 months.
It’s not always the most exciting work you want to be doing, but it’s the work that will add the most value in the long run.
Good luck!