Theme: 'Client value for money from assignments & being an even  more successful consultant'

Date: Thursday 9th October 2009

Venue: The Cheshire Cheese, 5 Little Essex Street, London WC2R 3LD

Contact: Ron Cruikshank - cruickshankra@hotmail.com

We were delighted to hold the fourth meeting of 2009 where we had two speakers.

DO CLIENTS GET VALUE FOR MONEY FROM CONSULTANCY AND INTERIM MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENTS? The Master, Ian Daniell, shared his approach.

He explained his main interest is in developing the interim management business but the distinction between interim assignments and the work carried out by independent consultants is often semantic. Even a recent MCA paper talks about the results achieved by consultants working within organizations to bring about change, transition and innovation.

So the two related and similar business services both suffer from the same problems in the clients eyes:

1.     They look very expensive and most clients have little idea as to what return on investment to expect.

2.     How does the client know that the legacy of their work will be properly embedded to bring about lasting change?

So he is trying a different tack of going to individuals and asking them if they have any case studies or follow-up material which could be worked up into models, such as Proir Fishmann, or lead to a methodology for doing this. If such an approach could be agreed everyone could use it to evaluate their own performances and to improve their value propositions to prospective clients.

"HOW TO BE AN EVEN MORE SUCCESSFUL INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT"

Richard Stewart provided valuable insights into the state of the management consultancy market and how independent consultants can work successfully with management consultancy firms. Richard is an ex-management consultant and is the founder of Mindbench (www.mindbench.com), a firm which specialises in quality recruitment and resourcing for the management consultancy sector. Richard used his rich knowledge of how consulting firms operate and approaches to business development to provide practical advice on how independent consultants can get more of the type of work that they enjoy most, and achieve higher billing rates. He also discussed the sectors of the market and types of consulting projects which are most in demand.