The Management Consultant, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

Your consulting service

I often chat to people who want to enter the consulting profession. Occasionally, they are surprised when I ask what sort of consultant they want to be – naively assuming that one management consultant is the same as another. The reality is that consulting services vary hugely. They vary because clients need different things. To work successfully as a consultant you must decide what services you are going to offer. This is the topic of this chapter.

Confidence that the services you choose are viable comes from understanding who your potential clients are and what they need (see Chapter 2). All good sales and marketing starts by focusing on what clients want, rather than what you would like to sell. This lesson ...