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Zusammenfassung von The Consultant’s Handbook

Name: The Consultant’s Handbook
Rating: 4.2 (80 reviews)
Author: Samir Parikh

Samir Parikh

A Practical Guide to Delivering High-Value and Differentiated Services in a Competitive Marketplace

4.2 (80 Bewertungen)

22 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

The Consultant's Handbook by Samir Parikh is a comprehensive guide for new and experienced consultants alike. It covers topics such as consulting methodologies, client relationships, and navigating difficult situations.

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What’s in it for me? Learn the principles of success in the consulting business.

What is consulting? A high-impact service delivered across a wide variety of specialist domains. But all consultants have a common interest: To leverage their skills, knowledge and experience to get the best for their clients. This is something that countless people, from management consultants to software developers and even travel agents do almost every day.

And there’s a common set of principles that can help you to do that. After all, if you want to make it big, you’ll have to satisfy your customers, learn to fight your corner, take the views and expertise of others on board and structure interactions with clients as efficiently as possible.

With more than 25 years of professional experience directing consulting engagements across the globe, Samir Parikh has distilled these principles into The Consultant’s Handbook.

Packed with practical advice and engaging, real-world examples, it provides the ultimate crash course in delivering high-performance results in a competitive marketplace.

In the following blinks, you’ll learn

how to make a good first impression and establish your credibility with clients;
when to argue your case and when to defer to your client’s own expertise; and
how to structure a killer project proposal.

Consultants leverage their experience, expertise and networks to get results for their clients.

Consultancy is a term that’s become grossly inflated in recent years. Today, it’s hard to get a handle on what it really means.

So let’s start with a definition.

Consultancy means using two ingredients – your expertise and experience – to help your clients realize their goals. These pillars can support a basic consulting proposition.

You can see how this works by imagining an architect who’s been commissioned to design a house. The architect uses two things to fulfill his client’s brief: his architectural knowledge and his experience building similar houses.

Whether you lean more heavily on expertise or experience varies from situation to situation. If the architect is fresh out of school, he won’t have much hands-on practice behind him and will emphasize the things he learned during his studies. On the other hand, someone with 20 years in the industry is likely to lean on a wealth of experience from past projects.

But there’s also another aspect to consultancy – harnessing the collective efforts of your organization to act in your client’s best interests.

This is especially true of bigger consultancy firms. An essential part of their brief is deploying their networks and resources as efficiently as possible to address a client’s needs.

They achieve this by cultivating a knowledge-sharing culture. Databases and networking help pool information about previous cases and make it available to those who need it.

Finally, there’s the question of how interests align. The consulting company’s interest may be to sell the client additional services, but this may not be what the client needs.

As a consultant, it always best to act in your client’s best interests. Focusing on short-term gains will end up annoying clients and undermining their trust in you. That means jeopardizing future collaborations.

Most importantly, acting in their interests preserves your consultancy firm’s credibility. That’s not as gratifying as instant profits, but it’s integral to your company’s long-term success.

Consulting assignments require careful preparation.

Say you’re the manager of a company that’s deciding which consultancy firm to hire. How would you feel if the consultants you’d invited for a preliminary meeting turned up not knowing any of the basic information about your company? Not great, right?

That’s why any consulting assignment should always start with thorough preparation.

Consultants can establish their credibility by carefully positioning themselves.

Whatever field you’re offering your consulting services in, there’s one essential thing you simply cannot do without: trust.

That’s why it’s so important to position yourself as a credible source of professional advice from the get-go.

Find the right balance between structure and flexibility to maximize the efficiency of meetings.

Consultancy involves a lot of back and forth. Addressing your client’s needs and issues requires plenty of interaction. That usually comes in the form of meetings.

So it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of meetings. The way to do that is to have a clear structure that helps you ensure the key issues are being addressed.

Make sure you send your client a clear, structured and precise proposal.

The first step to winning an assignment is successfully positioning yourself as a credible source of authority. But you shouldn’t overlook the written proposal you’ll be submitting for your consulting services either.

So what should that proposal look like?

Consulting is all about knowing when to stand firm and when to give way.

Standing your ground when you know you’re in the right is an important and admirable trait. But you also need to know when to give way and acknowledge that your clients may know things that you don’t.

As you’ve already learned, your job as a consultant is to act in your client’s best interest. That includes speaking up when you think they’re making a mistake.

Remember the 50-50 rule to ensure client satisfaction.

Few things influence the way people understand the world today more than the internet. That also goes for your clients. Their satisfaction doesn’t just shape your current relationships but also the way your future clients will view you. After all, reviews of your service are only ever a few clicks away.

So what’s the best way of managing client satisfaction? Well, you should start applying the “50:50” rule. That means devoting half your attention to results and the other half to your client’s experience.

Plan for potential resistance to make sure you get your assignment done as efficiently as possible.

Consulting teams aren’t always welcome in the offices of the companies that have hired them. It’s easy to see why. Consultants often recommend significant changes which, if implemented, can result in layoffs. Then there’s a more primal factor – people don’t like outsiders telling them what to do.

That means that anticipating potential resistance and uncooperativeness is an essential part of your work as a consultant.

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Worum geht es in The Consultant’s Handbook?

The Consultant’s Handbook (2015) is an indispensable field guide to the world of consultancy. Packed with top tips, illuminating examples and hands-on advice, it’s the perfect explainer for consultants past, present and future, as well as anyone keen to pick up some consultancy tricks to boost their performance in adjacent industries.

We’re thrilled to announce that the author has worked together with Blinkist to create this book-in-blinks for you.

Bestes Zitat aus The Consultant’s Handbook

What happens in delivery is the real test and is the door-opener to future collaboration.

—Samir Parikh

Wer The Consultant’s Handbook lesen sollte

Business graduates interested in consulting
Consultants looking to boost their careers and pick up new ideas
Anyone involved in client and stakeholder interactions

Über den Autor

Samir Parikh is a business consultant, practice manager and consultancy CEO with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He is the founder of the global consultancy firm SP-Consulting, which has completed projects in over 50 countries.

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