The Core Consulting Skills  By Calvert Markham

Special Training Program of IMC Thailand, an official country member of ICMCI

Specialist or technical expertise alone is not sufficient if consultants are to deliver excellent results for their clients and prosper in their business. Successful Consultants need additional skills in four main areas.

Problem Solving  which is at the core of a consultant’s work, grasping the essentials of the issues that face clients and developing effective ways of addressing them.

Project Management  the value that consultants deliver to clients is most often through the vehicle of a project and so project management needs to be done well. However, there are particular challenges in project management for consultants they need to be aware of and prepared to overcome.

Managing Client Relationships the work of a consultant is delivered in a client environment which presents difficulties when clients are part of a different organization often with different values, agendas, the power to reject consultants and their advice.

Commercial Aspects of Management Consultancy  Consultancy is a business like any other which if it is to survive and thrive needs to sell its services and be managed well to operate effectively.

Program Modules

D1 Consultancy problem solving :

• Introduction to consulting process

• Problem solving process

• Problem definition

• Problem analysis

• Data Collection

• Solution generation

• Implementation

D2 Project management for consultants :

• Developing term of reference

• Principles of project planning

• Sources of risk and how to manage them

• Practical techniques in project delivery

• Forming and managing project teams

• Challenges in consulting projects and how to deal with them

• Completing a project

D3 Managing client relationships :

• The importance of the client relationship

• Different communication skills required in selling and delivering consulting project

• Running client meetings

• Structuring your thinking for reporting to clients

• Making presentations

• Report writing

• Influencing skills

• Negotiation skills

• Principles of change management

D4 Commercial aspects of management consultancy :

• The consulting proposition

• Promotion

• Prospection

• Different selling styles

• The economics of a consulting

• Pricing

• Commercial dilemmas and how to address them

• Consultant development