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Complimentary eBook: Consult This!
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Consult This: 62 Tips to Consulting Success, by Michael Mclaughlin
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Consultants: FYI
This Month in Management Consulting News
Interview: Bob Prosen.
Bob Prosen thinks there's just too much business theory in a world where practical advice is what's really needed. To solve that problem, Prosen wrote the book, Kiss Theory Good Bye: Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company.
We asked Prosen his views on the state of business management and leadership and how he'd address the problems he regularly observes.
We're also featuring articles on how to hire the perfect consultant for your practice, why your questions shape your credibility in a sales situation, and how you can create more opportunities by getting real with your clients.
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Guerrilla Consulting Moment
The Center for Sales Innovation is studying women in business-to-business sales. If that's YOU, your help is needed.
The survey takes about 7 minutes to complete. It's sponsored by the Center for Sales Innovation at the College of St. Catherine--the largest women's school in the US.
Guerrilla
ConsultingSM Web site
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ConsultingSM blog |
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The
Guerrilla Consultant -
a newsletter dedicated to applying the principles
of Guerrilla Marketing to the work and lives of
consultants.
"But We Thought That Was Included..."
A reader recently asked how consultants can balance a client's apparent lack of interest in the nitty-gritty details of a project with the need for clarity before the work starts. When you press for those details, what can you do when a client says, "Whatever...just make it happen, ok?"
Sensing the client's impatience, some consultants may feel they don't dare ask any more questions for fear of blowing the sale. Instead, they leap into the void, with arms and legs flailing, hoping for a safe landing.
The predictable result of this ill-advised approach is the client question every consultant wants to avoid, "Wait...weren't you going to do that as part of the project?"
This month, we'll discuss how to get certainty instead of hope, without threatening the sale or your client relationship.
Enjoy the article, and
let
me know what you think.
Mike
McLaughlin
Co-Author, Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants Principal, MindShare Consulting LLC
It's a Slippery Scope
Project scope is a familiar, basic concept. Once you and your client settle on the project objective(s), you must establish project boundaries. If the project objective is "what" you intend the project to accomplish, scope spells out who you will work with, and the processes and systems you'll focus on.
What's equally important, but often missing, is to discuss what's excluded from the project. Just bringing up that topic will cause some clients to yawn or fidget.
But if you let client impatience with details put you off, you and the client will gloss over essential issues of scope. You may get the project running fast, but then you will have to resolve scope issues on the fly, as they arise.
In ninety-nine of a hundred cases, that is sheer folly--for you and the client.
Few things hobble a promising project faster than disagreement with the client about what is included in a project's scope. Not only does unclear scope threaten budgets, schedules, expected benefits, and project profitability, but your client relationship can suffer too. The last thing you want is to end up arguing with your client about what is or isn't "covered," especially when the project is underway or nearly finished.
The worst part is that, for many consultants, scope problems are self-inflicted wounds, not the result of inattentive clients making unreasonable demands.
Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic
The link between project scope and budget, timing, and value is indisputable. Small changes in scope often result in large changes in project outcome and cost. So, if you leave a sales meeting with a fuzzy or non-existent statement of scope, expect to be groping in the dark for the duration. Even the best project manager can't overcome a muddled statement of project scope.
| "The worst part is that, for many consultants, scope problems are self-inflicted wounds, not the result of inattentive clients making unreasonable demands." |
Creating a clear statement of scope should hardly be drudgery, even for a big-picture client executive who hates the details. In fact, doing so in advance often saves the client time and money in the end, which you should always be ready to point out.
One consultant, who was charged with helping a client breathe new life into a company's customer order management process, raced headlong into a project with this objective:
"Help to improve the speed with which each customer order can be processed, while reducing returned merchandise, and maintaining current, high levels of customer satisfaction."
The project bogged down in less than a week. Disagreement arose about which of the company's customer service centers would be investigated for the study, how the company's order fulfillment process fit into the project, and whether or not current measures of customer satisfaction were adequate to determine the impact of any recommended changes. The consultant sat on the sidelines while these crucial issues of scope were hammered out.
| "Creating a clear statement of scope should hardly be drudgery, even for a big-picture client executive who hates the details." |
The client sponsor found himself backpedaling with his colleagues, explaining why a consultant was on board--and being paid--before they had properly defined the project. The consultant inadvertently burned some client bridges by proceeding with the project without clear direction. And the time spent to correct the early oversights was greater than the time it would have taken to nail down scope at the outset.
Clearing up scope with regard to the people, processes, geography, and information systems didn't require reams of paper. A concise statement of scope replaced confusion with clarity:
"The scope of this effort will focus on the 75 Customer Service Representatives in the Northeast Service Center who serve catalog customers and use the Ajax 1100 customer order management system. In this initial project, the team will not address the company's order fulfillment process in its distribution centers, or the order process used for government customers."
It's true that many projects fly out of the starting gate, and some details are resolved after projects kick off. And that's not surprising. After a client goes through a process to select a consultant, both consultant and client are excited and anxious to get rolling.
Just make sure the decisions you leave to later aren't the showstoppers. You can iron out administrative stuff like invoicing, payment, and expense reimbursement after the project starts, if you have to. But don't leave project scope to chance.
Shifts Happen
Reaching consensus on project scope sets a foundation for success, but it doesn't prevent the client or the consultant from pushing the agreed-upon boundaries--often without a change in timing or fees. It's easy to inadvertently pile new expectations onto an existing project, and that often happens from impromptu hallway conversations with a client.
Projects are always unpredictable, so it's normal to rethink scope along the way. Often, minor changes in scope have no serious impact on a project. And you can consider your client's request to expand scope as a signal of trust.
However, if you agree to changes in the project, but hesitate to bring up the impact on your fee, you're behaving like a subordinate, not a peer. And that mindset makes it difficult for you to do anything other than roll over and do whatever the client asks.
If you have confidence in your value, it shouldn't take great courage to insist on scope discussions before a project begins or to revisit fees if scope changes later. Such interactions are part of the collaborative nature of consulting and a routine part of doing business as a consultant. Any consultant who hesitates to engage in fee discussions resulting from a scope change is headed to a future of low-profit work.
The Roots of Success
How you define and manage project scope contributes to every project outcome. And projects are the consultant's calling card. Great project work often paves the way for additional client work and referrals, while marginal work can have the opposite effect.
Too many projects and relationships are derailed by preventable misunderstandings. Of course, you want to be flexible and respond to what clients say they want. But bending over backwards too far leads to failure, and project scope issues are often at the root of that failure.
Even if clients are reluctant to focus on the details of objectives and scope, it's your job to make sure they understand that those are the roots of success, and that you need to agree on exactly how you will get there.
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