Back to the Home Page

Committed to the development of people and organizations

Effective Consulting Skills for Professionals

The role of the Consultant in the modern business environment requires a complex mix of skills, with many organizations shifting to a more consultancy-led sales approach. The effective consultant needs to be skilled in building solid working relationships within a client organization. The Effective Consulting Skills workshop focuses on the interpersonal skills required by consultants in developing and maintaining good relationships with clients, partners and other professionals, both internal and external to their own organization. The workshop focuses on a number of particular skills that are often neglected by technical consultants when working within an engagement on a client site. These include: identifying and working effectively with both client sponsors and key stakeholders within the consultant’s own organization; understanding the phases of the consulting process; working within different organisational cultures; the importance of the Social Contract to ensure assumptions are never treated as facts; dealing with difficult and damaged relationships and enhancing navigational skills within a client organization.

Organisational Benefits

Through the Effective Consulting Skills Workshop, organizations will:

  • Enhance on-going customer relationships;
  • Improve customer retention;
  • Increase personal effectiveness of the consulting team;
  • Enhance the consulting process within the organization;
  • Decrease the time period taken for consultants to become effective within the consulting engagement;
  • Increase profitability through consultants understanding their role in the sale process, specifically for on-going potential sales;
  • Create a self-supporting consulting team;
  • Gain commitment to a best practice consulting model supporting the organizational philosophy and culture.
 Individual Benefits

As a result of the Effective Consulting Skills Workshop, participants can:

  • Achieve an improved understanding of their own and other’s behaviour and its impact on the consulting process;
  • Understand how to develop and maintain enduring relationships with customers and internally within their own organization;
  • Deal effectively with conflict and difficult people who may be involved in the consulting engagement;
  • Work more effectively as a team member;
  • Understand how to develop champions and sponsors within a customer organization;
  • Understand how to navigate effectively around a customer organization;
  • Work effectively with teams that may seem to have differing needs;
  • Understand how to develop a supportive working environment.

Target Audience

  • Project Managers
  • Professional Services Consultants.
  • Customer Services Professionals.
  • Sales Professionals.
  • Technical Pre-Sales Consultants.
  • Professional Services Managers.

Learning Approach And Content

The Effective Consulting Skills Workshop is designed around the specific needs, and ways of working, of the client organization. This approach is to ensure that the workshop models the client’s specific internal processes.

The workshop runs over a three day period working with eight to ten people at a time. Theoretical models of the consulting process are presented together with opportunities for experiential exercises to practice new skills and new ways of interacting. Role play situations are designed in discussion with the client to ensure they are relevant to difficult situations that the consultants encounter with the client’s actual customers. This provides participants the opportunity to relate the new learning to their individual situations at work. Reference materials and visual aids help participants apply the learning both on the job and in the workshop.