Consultant thinking: What a difference a word makes!

The austerity regime in the UK has meant that public bodies are being discouraged from purchasing consultancy. Practices are now searching their thesauruses for alternative terms and so expect an increase in sub-contracting, training, project support and outsourcing!

We ourselves have been reflecting on the focus of our work, which has been – and will continue to be – the development of consulting skills. This has never been constrained to consulting practices alone. As product competition becomes greater, in many sectors businesses look for differentiation on a basis other than price. We saw this 20 years ago, when we started, when large IT businesses added consulting to their lines of business. Since then, many other technical businesses have sought competitive advantage and revenue increase by selling their knowhow.

The key to success in selling knowhow and positioning as a business advisor is how well you engage with your customers – something that consultants have always known, other professions attempt, and all those who enter this field come to realise. Engagement goes well beyond customer service, involving as it does an understanding of your customer’s business and active consideration of how you can contribute to improving their business performance. We predict that the need for excellent engagement skills is going to grow among many sectors of the economy – not just in professional services.

In our own corporate journey we made the first step in this direction when we changed our name from Consultancy Skills Training to Elevation Learning. Our mission has been “making an essential difference to the quality of consulting our clients provide”.

In view of this appraisal of the business market we have made a small change: “making an essential difference to the quality with which our clients engage with their customers.”

Well, perhaps it was more than one word...

July 2010