Consultants can be expensive, but they are often worth the money. With the insights from a single consultant, you may be able to transform your organization and get much closer to achieving your goals. However, you need to be strategic if you want to get the full value from this collaboration.

How do you harness the full potential of the consultants you hire?

The Potential Value of Consultants

A good consultant can help your business in innumerable ways. They can give you new ideas. They can help you understand flaws and weaknesses in your current approach. They can stimulate creativity. They can even give your employees new skills and perspectives, which they can use to perform their jobs better.

Consultants also come in many varieties. They can help you with almost any conceivable issue, assuming you have the ability to search for a good fit and compensate them appropriately. For example, fractional CMOs function much like traditional CMOs, eating, assisting, and perhaps even temporarily leading your marketing department. They can help you analyze weaknesses in your marketing approaches, generate new ideas for marketing success, and ultimately lead your marketing department to better results.


However, you aren’t guaranteed to see good results just because you paid for a consultant. What steps can you take to harness the full potential of the consultants you hire?

Getting More Value From Your Consultants

These are some of the best strategies to get more value out of your consultants:

  •       Exercise discretion when hiring. One of your most important responsibilities is to exercise discretion when hiring. Just because someone has experience doesn’t mean they’re going to be a good consultant, and just because someone is a good consultant doesn’t mean they’re the right consultant for your business. You need to be extremely discerning here, as you’ll have a wide selection of candidates to choose from. Who has the skills, knowledge, and experience necessary to solve your biggest problems? Who is going to work most effectively with and for your organization? Pay especially close attention during the interview process to make sure you find the best fit.
  •       Know your goals going in. It’s much easier to be successful in business when you have solid goals grounding your efforts. You’re going to be able to get much more value out of your consultants if you know why you’re using them in the first place. Before you even start the search for a new consultant, write a list of objectives down. What questions are you trying to answer? What problems are you trying to solve? What does a successful arrangement look like to you?
  •       Be open and upfront from the beginning. Once you have these objectives in place, make them prominent and visible. When you begin working with your new consultant, be open and upfront about your goals, desires, and expectations. Good consultants will flexibly work with you, but they can only serve your interests if they know what they are.
  •       Set standards for communication. Communication is indispensable for a good consultant relationship. Early in the process, work out a formula for when and how you’re going to communicate. How often are you going to meet? How are you going to meet? Or how should these meetings unfold? What if you have questions between meetings? You don’t need every detail methodically planned out, but you should have a general plan in mind.
  •       Listen carefully and take all suggestions seriously. You hired this consultant because you wanted their expertise, so make sure you listen carefully and take all their suggestions seriously. That doesn’t mean you need to adopt all of their ideas or that you need to follow everything they say, but you should at least give it serious consideration.
  •       Allow more employees to engage with your consultants. Consultants are teachers in addition to advisors, so pair them up with your employees whenever you have the opportunity.
  •       Take recordings and notes. You may want to take more recordings and notes, so you can concretely remember what you talked about and what conclusions you’ve reached.
  •       Ask lots of questions. Be proactive in asking thoughtful questions. Treat your consultant as a walking encyclopedia of knowledge and try to get as much of their wisdom as you can.
  •       Translate everything into action. Finally, try to translate everything into action. Ideas and recommendations are good, but only if they are applicable and functional for your organization.

Hiring a consultant isn’t always the right move, and it’s not always easy to find the right fit for your organization. But if you’re willing to follow these strategies closely, hiring the best consultant and working with them as effectively as possible, your organization stands to benefit massively.

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