If you ask a range of people, what to them, represent the key skills of an effective Consultant, you will get a variety of answers, and often people can easily tell you what they don’t’ value in a consultant rather than what they do value. A common issue for many, is the inability of a Consultant to listen to them, and for many, the lack of proactivity, or feeling of partnership, coupled with unreliability give many consultants a bad press.
Consulting skills are not the preserve of Consultants, but are skills required across the board in most businesses today.
To be a successful Consultant requires a broad range of skills and approaches. They need to be viewed as a safe pair of hands, reliable, able to ask challenging questions, be able to influence, provide cost effective and innovative solutions and be a superb listener, to name but a few attributes.
The Consultancy Skills course has been designed for anyone in business who provides an internal or external consultancy service. It is suitable for those that have a lateral relationship with the client and aims to provide the skills and techniques needed to do so effectively.
Please note, this course can be delivered either virtually, face to face, or it can be delivered with a blend of both formats. We will customise the content and duration in line with your learning and development requirements.
As the business environment becomes more complex and the pace of technology-led change continues to accelerate, the level of knowledge that technical professionals need to have to successfully plan and implement IT related projects continues to increase. Many organizations are moving from providing commodity products, to providing professional services and complete solutions. This is equally true in the public sector, in which services are offered to the public, to businesses, and to other government departments. It is also true for internal service organizations—organizations that offer services to others within the same company or government body.
As solutions become more tailored and client decision making groups become more diverse, technical consultants need to be able to develop a recommendation that is clear, concise and compelling. The challenge is however that taking complex technical information and presenting it in business-oriented terms can be difficult. Consultants need to be able to understand their clients’ communication preferences and needs and deliver their recommendation in an influential way.
As clients’ problems become more complex, and the desire to implement solutions that not only meet needs but deliver true business value increases, technical consultants need to develop a more in-depth understanding of their clients in order to be successful. This shift combined with the fact that the solutions many organizations or internal support functions offer are also becoming broader and include more services means that technical consultants have to have business acumen and better problem solving and analysis skills.
The real value of technical consulting comes after a recommendation is accepted by a client. Through successful implementation, the client has the opportunity to realize the value of the solution defined. Often however, technical consultants are not involved in the implementation, and even when they are they have to work with and through others to help their clients achieve the desired outcomes. Without proper implementation planning, there is a high risk that the solution will not deliver the anticipated value to the client, which could negatively impact the credibility of the technical consultant and damage their relationship with the client.
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