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Training Course Summary:

This programme demonstrates how consulting as a discipline differs from the traditional selling and account management function and can help individuals within an organisation to gain additional value.

Who Should Attend:

Individuals who have become “internal consultants” within their own organisation, or whose role has taken them away from a traditional support or client selling function into a more “value added” role. Managers wishing to establish a consulting function within their own organisation and looking for new and inspirational ideas.

Training Course Overview/Content:

Introduction & Objectives

Consulting
• Understand what consulting is as a discipline, and how it can be applied to the organisation and to clients
• Understand that the client and the consultant define each other – one of the consulting premises
• What consultants are for – their roles and how they differ, from providing an “extra pair of hands” to providing specialist expertise and “thought leadership”

Client/Consultant Relationship
• What it is and how it affects the way consultants work
• Understanding the needs of the client
• The difference between the perceived need and the actual client need
• Building a client relationship and building trust
• The trust equation
• Getting clarity in agreement

A model of a consulting process
• How models can help
• What a model means in terms of installing it in your organisation
• Installing a process into your company and the way you work
• Process consulting and the work of Edgar Schein in the USA

Skills used in consulting
• Questioning skills
• The importance of listening
• Clarifying client issues
• Decision making
• Facilitation
• Looking forward
• Managing projects
• Managing meetings
• Market research

Trust
• How to establish it and how it can be so easily lost
• How trust helps build a relationship with a client
• Maintaining the client relationship once trust has been gained
• Bringing third parties into a client-consultant relationship
• Owning the relationship

Managing performance
• How managing a consulting operation differs from a pure sales function
• Reward and return
• A model for effective management
• How performance management encompasses all functions

Review of Programme