Look for consultants who rely on results, not contracts, to maintain and grow your customer relationships. Expect the consultant to show that you're willing to leave unless you know it's a good fit. Find out if your prospective consultant limits your fees and distributes the payments so that they can participate a little more in the game with you. Ask them how they know that an interaction has reached its end point and how they get out.
Stay away from business consultants who don't understand the point, who haven't yet done something close to what you need, or who believe that each commitment is unique and can't draw parallels with other successes. For example, there are project management consultants who can help implement agile methodology in your company. In a nutshell, trying to find the right consultants for “wrong” reasons will likely lead to failed consulting hiring. In this relationship, the client sees herself as the expert and the consultant as an additional pair of hands to do the work, so the client tells her exactly what should be done and how to do it.
Look for evidence that consultants have improved the ratios and sales capacity of their customers' businesses. Most of the time, the only factor that determines whether the consultant is successful in solving problems is the nature of the relationship between the consultant and the client. In any consulting contract, a company usually asks the consultant to collect more data and to modify the recommendations. Thanks to online consulting marketplaces, you can find the best consultants in any niche in a matter of days.
And if you want to restructure your business, a business restructuring consultant can come together and sort things out for you. Find out if your business consultants are trained and experienced to work on your type of needs and if they can balance strategy and tactics. Both the company and the consultant have a shared responsibility to make their consulting contract successful. In this relationship, the client sees the consultant as the expert who can solve all their problems, so they take a step back, assume a more passive role and give the consultant free rein to solve the problem.
