Why and how to hire a consultant ?

As consulting firms develop and new structures arrive on the market, requests are pouring in from independent owners or investors who sometimes feel helpless when it comes to issues to resolve, business challenges to take up or management to strengthen. Discover the important points to select the partner who will accompany your project from the smallest à la carte advice to the operational management of your company.

Why call on a consultant ?

The use of a consultancy service falls broadly into three types of needs :

1. Need to set up a procedure : your need is defined, the problem is known, just apply the right method. You are looking for an expert in the procedure, a methodical. Example of procedure: ISO 9001 certification, hotel classification, HACCP method, etc.
2. Need to solve a problem : the central issue motivating recourse to outside help is “what is the problem?” The consultant is an expert in a specific field, a specialist. Sample problem: “Why does our sales take off they not?” In this case, the consultant in business strategy makes a diagnosis to understand the causes of sluggish sales and makes recommendations to reverse the trend.
3. Need to clear up a situation: understand what is happening, unravel a situation … The consultant intervenes here on a more complex issue, not necessarily linked to a particular area. The situation is unclear. The consultant is an expert in the sector of activity, a generalist and conduct a diagnosis to clarify the situation, ask the right questions, etc. We are dealing with more general issues with multiple possible ramifications. Example: the recovery of a company.

Being a consultant also means explaining, or rather transmitting, knowledge in order to reach a perfect agreement on the project to be carried out. It also means mastering perfectly the financial dimension of the decisions to be made or the recommendations presented. It’s a real job and, like any real job, it cannot be improvised.

Adept of the procedure or experienced

• The first, consultant who is too inexperienced or too formatted, he will brutally apply the reference model without too much discernment, at the risk of profoundly modifying the organization and limiting its ability to innovate.
• The second, the consultant who knows and loves his job, will have better understood the reality of the company. He took care to clearly identify its specificities, those that make the difference, those that constitute the organization’s own identity. He will know how to judiciously highlight them. This is where the source of the potential competitive advantage lies. It is not necessarily a particular process or activity, it can be, and in a more informal way, the quality of the relational network that a brutal rationalization process risks destroying forever.

So here is the advantage of carefully choosing your consultant. If the intervention of the professional consultant must turn into a competitive advantage, it is good to know that many organizations have been put in difficulty as a result of interventions badly conducted or led by incompetent people !

A method for choosing a consultant

1 – Define precisely your needs and associated objectives in a specification

This reflection or pre-diagnosis is crucial. It conditions the subsequent choice of the consultant. Take the time to write down the reasons for your request point by point.

•  Insert context elements to help consultancy providers understand the reason for the need (creation of a new service, competitive pressure, etc.).
•  Explain the constraints weighing on the project (budgetary, organizational, etc.), which provides information on the room for maneuver left to the professional to carry out his advisory mission. 
•  Define the resources made available (workgroup, key user, etc.).
•  Specify the scope of the assignment : the processes, services on which it can intervene, the geographical scope…
•  Prepare a general presentation of your business: workforce, markets, history, significant events, etc. The consultant must be able to really get under the skin of your structure to understand the why and how as well as all the interactions.
•  List important projects in progress or not yet launched : to prevent the mission from interfering with another present or future project.
•  Write down the goals. They must be encrypted. For example: reduce absenteeism by 20% in 1 year.

This formulation of needs may be amended subsequently after your discussions with the firms.

2 – Ask yourself if you really need a consultant 

After having analyzed and made an inventory of your needs, it is opportune to check if there are no internal resources, the skills available to deal with the subject. If applicable, analyze whether this resource has time to deal with the subject. 

Weigh the pros and cons of the opportunity to work with a consulting firm. Among the positive: external eye, sharp expertise … As for the brakes: risk of dependence, confidentiality, acceptance of internal teams …

3 – Make a pre-selection of 3 firms

An inescapable question arises: should you choose an independent consultant, a medium-sized consulting firm or a consulting group ?

• Independent or micro cabinet for 2 to 3 people: they are generally specialists with specialized skills. The advantage is that they have a strong expertise in the field that interests you. On the other hand, for larger issues, they cannot answer your project on their own. However, some freelancers have a generalist profile and can intervene to give an overview.
• Medium-sized consulting firm : these structures, most often regional, of a few dozen people, have the advantage of offering a wider range of skills than an independent consultant. They generally offer good value for money compared to large consulting firms. However, they encounter positioning difficulties between the self-employed, combining flexibility and low cost of structure – and the large groups, with their commercial strike force and their plethora of offers covering almost all the needs in terms of advice.
•  Consulting group : you are dealing with national or international firms. A single entity can respond to all of your issues (organizational, quality, financial, marketing, etc.). Most of the time, the assignments are carried out by young consultants under the supervision of more seasoned seniors. The contractual relationship is very strong, the cost of missions is high. 

Take into account the complexity of the problem and its scope, the expertise of the professional displayed in the field in question, the size of your company (it is often desirable to work with a supplier of equivalent scope for a question of position of power in the business relationship).

4 – Meet candidate consulting providers

If possible, prefer a face-to-face interview. Conference calls facilitate a quick meeting, but make it more difficult to assess whether the “current is on”. Human contact is a fundamental element in the success of the mission.

We advise you to use an evaluation grid to compare the profiles and offers of each.

In the case of a large firm, ask to meet the consultant who will carry out the assignment and make sure that it will be this person who will intervene throughout the assignment. The contact can be made by a senior and the mission led by a junior… 

5 – The selection criteria to retain the future partner who will support you

Even if, very often, the recommendation of your network has an influence on the choice to approach a consultant, here are some key criteria :

•  Skills in the field, qualifications, experiences  : this is criterion n ° 1. It is for you the assurance that the consultant is able to provide a credible answer . Do not hesitate to ask for the justification of his previous missions or more generally of his experience. Pay attention and ask for clarification if certain passages are not clear. 
•  References : to complete the first point, ask for clear references related to your field of activity and the issue being addressed. 
•  Understanding of the problem : pay attention to the transcription of the situation in the engagement letter submitted by the candidate companies.
•  Relevance of the proposed assignment with regard to the question asked : are your needs understood? Perfect ! But what about the proposed answer ?
•  Cost of the offer : compare the costs according to the details of the services offered. Prices are set per day or at a flat rate for a global assignment. Beware of very tempting offers. Is it to compensate for less specialized expertise or to face financial difficulties? The return on investment for you may, in this case, not be up to par.
•  Relational with you and with those he will meet in the company – This subjective criterion is very important. If you don’t have a “feeling”, if you don’t feel comfortable with a consultant, the success of the assignment can be affected. Even more so if the person does not inspire you with confidence.
•  Ability to communicate : Choose a profile that has real interpersonal, oral and written communication skills. Consulting assignments require numerous exchanges with internal employees. The consultant must know how to listen, understand and reproduce his diagnosis and his recommendations orally and in writing. Of course, he must also master the presentation tools and take care of the rendering of the presentation that will be made to you.
•  Integrity : Be careful not to share the same consulting company as one of your competitors. In this regard, do not forget to draw up and have a confidentiality agreement signed !
•  Financial strength of the consultant : Check how long the company has been in operation and if there are any comments left by customers. It is absolutely necessary to avoid a professional who leaves you in the middle of the mission, or else, absorbed by other concerns, who is not fully invested in the entrusted work.

Sound advice in the hotel, restaurant and leisure sector :

When your need requires understanding a situation, in order to correct and improve it, or even manage your structure, you must ensure that the experience acquired by your future partner is validated by a independant manager’s expertise. The control of the company, of a hotel structure with its challenges, its constraints and specificities allows to have a general view and it is an essential asset for the success of the entrusted mission including the understanding of the needs of the head of business, entrepreneur.

Piloting :
The leader is a captain: He has, along with a crew, passengers whom he must carry to port. Leadership and management work together to develop and execute strategy. But it is leadership alone that defines the vision and the framework for the company’s broad strategic directions. It is in this capacity to be a leader, that is to say the skilful pilot of the hotel operation that a leader will stand out.

Structure :
The hotel industry is about standards. A hotel establishment positions its development on a brand, a network, a strong image. This brand will be fueled by the differentiation that the hotelier will bring to service and amenities. This differentiation is embodied in the standards, that is to say the level (fixed and non-negotiable) at which the customer wishes to obtain his service and therefore on which the hotelier must be uncompromising. In the service of these standards, the one and only way to structure this operation is the procedure. The purpose of a procedure is truly to encompass all the characteristics of a position or function so that no random factor disturbs the proper execution of the service and halt the hotel machinery. It is in this consistency in reaching the standard that the hotel will draw its strength.

Control :
“Trust does not exclude control” we often hear in companies, the manager becoming master of unannounced visits to each of its departments. Indeed, without automatically wearing the establishment’s police officer uniform, the hotel manager must be able, himself or by delegating, to have a permanent eye on working methods, compliance with procedures and the smooth running of his teams..

Representation :
The business manager is also his first salesperson. For good reason, one of the primary missions of this function is to be the face of the brand, the hotel, a network, the one that will carry within him (and his attitude) the savoir-vivre and the elegance of establishment. This very Anglo-Saxon approach can be summed up in what we call “walking the talk”. Also, this approach to service professions calls for permanent visual and verbal contact between managers and teams and the customer in order to anticipate their expectations.

Innovation :
“The real voyage of discovery does not consist in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”. This quote from Marcel Proust sums up rather well the idea by which a hotel manager must perpetually renew his eye on his establishment. Through this ability to introduce new services, to rejuvenate its services or to be inspired by successful models, the innovator will breathe new life into his establishment permanently.

• multitasking;
• attention to detail;
• problem solving;
• the personality ;
• flexibility.