Stop asking dumb 'consultant questions' - Provide some leadership
Stop asking dumb 'consultant questions' - Provide some leadership
Value creation with insight and a point-of-view
“Winning sales” isn’t a useful mindset for client advisors. Offering insight, using your consulting skills, is a more congruent approach.
My friend Stuart talks about educating people so they can buy. That’s the way I like to think about this too.
Educating is different from the usual ‘20 questions’ all the other consultants ask clients … which they're fed up answering anyway …
... like “what’s keeping you awake at night?” … B O R I N G
So, unless you’re a coach, don’t try to elicit needs from the client.
You’re the expert. Clients expect you to bring value creation ideas for consideration and discussion. Radical I know, but it’s okay to share your insight and point-of-view about situations. It's okay, you can go first.
Do this well and you’ll educate people and help them join the dots. They’ll see their own situation through a different lens ... becoming clearer about their goals ... or getting a perspective on what’s holding them back.
How to generate and offer useful insight and a point-of-view
As consultants we want clients to respect and utilise our subject matter expertise. For that to happen we need to offer something fresh. Something that makes your clients sit up and take notice.
I’ve written about using unconsidered needs before and that is my preferred approach. You just need to amplify the need by adding your insight and point-of-view. That’s a good way to create value right from the outset. It allows you to bring a talking point to the table.
Once you’ve introduced the need, insight, and point-of-view use follow up questions. Ask the client what they are thinking now they’ve heard this. Then stop speaking.
Listen and only ask questions to clarify what the client says. This is where the magic happens. This is where your insight becomes a catalyst for action.
The Easiest Way To Build A Point-Of-View
I encourage you to step into a client’s shoes and find challenges. You've tried that right? I mean getting out of your head and into the clients. That’s how you begin to develop empathy. That’s what the best consultants do. You can go a bit deeper with empathy … and then add opinions … developing a point-of-view. Let’s take a familiar challenge and expand it. Imagine you’re a consultancy business owner. You know your consulting team’s development is important … because they’re the firm’s single biggest differentiator … but you are still prioritising paid work … because that keeps food on the table. So, with that context we might come up with a point-of-view something like this:
Consultancy owners who want to differentiate a firm often ignore the biggest advantage … their team members. And even if they do recognise this advantage they don’t take the steps needed to maximise it.
They can’t invest as much in consultant development as they should. Why? Because they aren’t building in enough time and fee margin in projects.
Worse still they often set up compensation that discourages self-investment. Instead of rewarding results they encourage a ‘time-and-effort’ mindset.
When they’ve tried developing consultants they find most training delivers a poor ROI. That’s because there is too much ‘book learning’ and not enough ‘applied learning’.
Most owners know this at some level, but don’t know what options they have instead.
What are your thoughts?
And that’s it. Those few sentences are the opening to an insightful conversation.
The Insight Meeting Framework
My working dog Chile passed away over 18-months ago. This week I started looking for a new puppy. It’s a big decision adopting a dog, especially a working dog. Here are a couple of older briefs about the lessons I learnt from training as a dog handler. The practice before the outcome. and Living with extremely high drive individuals. Am I digressing too much? After all we were in the middle of talking about developing a point-of-view (PoV). What has adopting a puppy got to do with that? Well notice I used the word adopt. That’s me framing a PoV. The Dog Trust sticker you see in the back window of some cars says it all. A dog is for life, not just for Christmas. The current statistics for abandonment suggest people needed reminding of that during lockdown. And a friend asked me recently, “Clive, what is it with all these Cocker-poos … they all behave badly.” My answer, “well of course they are, they don’t have a pack leader. They’re treated like substitute children, not canines. They need exercise, discipline, love … in that order.” “Oh and by the way, exercise means something mentally stimulating, not a walk around the block. Many of the Cocker Spaniels making up 1/2 the Cocker-poo's genetics are working dogs … and guess what … they need work to do, otherwise they make up their own. Like nipping the grandchildren, or cat, or playing the ‘let me out in the garden, let me back in again’ game.” By now, you may be thinking “Clive’s off on another dog rant”. And that’s the point ... For a point-of-view to be worth putting in front of clients it must be rant-worthy. You have to feel passionate about it. Is it something you can get on your high-horse about? Then make sure you have something to say something other people aren’t saying, or are afraid to. Otherwise it’s not adding-value likely to generate worthwhile insight for the client. Which brings us to Insight Meeting Framework a tool you can download here. This is something to use for conversations where you’re starting and nuturing relationships that could lead to a project. (If the client already has a need identified ignore this, jump straight into a project qualification and impact assessment conversation.) The Insight Meeting Framework is a chunky piece of work. More time consuming that the usual mini-mission. More like a mega-mission. My advice is to work though it as a workshop with colleagues. If you’d like some external help please let me know. BTW I’m not advocating that you actually rant when with clients. Be professional and passionate.
The mini-mission
This week buddy up and think with a colleague. You’re going to find some unconsidered needs. Then develop an insight and point-of-view.
What are your client’s unconsidered needs?
Dive deeper for one of the needs. Use the list of questions below to generate insight.
Then use this formula to build a point-of view: User + Need + Insight = Point-of-View
Write down 2-3 bullet points you might use with a client.
Now send me a summary of your discover.
Insight generation questions
How is this situation different from the status quo?
Why has the need been left unconsidered?
What is the real issue behind that?
Which stakeholders does this impact?
What are the implications if the need remains unaddressed (dangers, opportunities)?
What strengths and skills will be necessary to resolve this need?
Why should this be on agenda right now?
What else should I be thinking about?
To recap.
Put yourself in the client’s shoes and came up with some challenges they might have.
Go deeper, with empathy, and see what might be behind these challenges.
Develop your thoughts into a point-of-view that matches, then provoke the client’s thinking.
Use your point-of-view to open up a conversation. Then turn things over to the client. Ask them what they think.
Finally work with them to build on the insights that emerge.
One caveat. You won’t impress clients if you pitch obvious challenges and an obvious point-of-view. Now it’s your turn. The mini-mission this week is to develop your point-of-view. And next week I’ll introduce the final part. The Insight Framework.