In a previous edition of this blog, I introduced the “Consulting Value Chain” (CVC) - the sequence of activities that underpin the end-to-end consulting engagement.

I call it the Consulting Value Chain because we must add value at every stage, to develop credibility and trust with customers, design our solution and services and prove alignment with the customer’s business objectives, in order to sell and deliver the transformation the customer is seeking.

Most IT tech pros work in the “Delivery” and “Manage” stages of the CVC.  So, demonstrating understanding the whole CVC and being proficient in all of the activities will greatly improve your personal value proposition with IT services employers (and even in other industries because the core pillars of customer collaboration, business acumen and solution sales are highly transferrable), because this is how IT services companies make money.

In future posts I’ll be focusing on the next activity in the CVC; breaking it down, explaining what it is, how it works and why it’s so valuable.

If you want to learn these skills and develop proficiency, you can join the next cohort in my transformation programme, AscendPro.

ENGAGE: discovery of context, objectives and requirements

When we engage with a new customer, or engage with an existing customer in a new opportunity, we should always undertake discovery activities.

We need to understand the customer’s business context, their objectives and challenges. We need to do this because without that information we’re working in the dark.

Our understanding will be incomplete and we’ll substitute fact with guesswork or assumptions. Worse, customers will notice that we haven’t asked or discovered key information and that will damage our credibility and their trust.

Our approach here is to enquire, identify and document what we need to know. Sounds obvious, but consider if this is actually happening in a systematic and methodical way in your organisation. I’m guessing not because as IT pros we tend to overlook the boring business stuff in favour of finding solutions to problems.

Particularly when we think we already know the customer and their context.

Here’s what I mean by “context”:

➡️ the customer’s business context – industry, services and solutions, customers, competitors, challenges.

➡️ the customer’s business objectives – most importantly, “why”; why is the customer seeking transformation, plus, of course, “what” is the desired transformation?

➡️ the customer’s strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats.

Much of this is continually evolving and changing and that’s why it’s essential we enquire and discover even when we feel we already know the answers.

We have a range of tools and methods available to conduct discovery, including:

➡️ Research: news, financial results, website, commercial tools like Crunchbase and LinkedIn.

➡️ SWOT: a simple assessment of the customer’s strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats.

➡️ Questionnaire: a list of standard questions that we can build, maintain and use to consistently ask the right questions.

➡️ Interview: an important way to discover and validate information, combined with the above.

➡️ Listening: sounds obvious, right? Of course we listen! But actually, most of us listen in order to reply, rather than listening to understand.

May be this sounds like a “best practice” way of doing things; something we’d do in exceptional circumstances rather than routinely.

And that’s correct. It is best practice and yet, I suggest, rarely undertaken at all, never mind routinely and systematically.

If you’ve never learned how to do this kind of discovery, it might seem complex and time consuming. But actually, when you have learned a process and are familiar with the tools, it can be done quickly and efficiently.

Effective discovery at the Engage stage (and beyond) will help you build credibility and develop trust with the customer.

Now consider this: imagine having learned these skills and techniques and being able to demonstrate proficiency to an IT services company (current or new).

How do you think that would affect their perception of you? And how do you think you’d compare against others who haven’t learned these high-value skills?

To learn these skills and the rest of the Consulting Value Chain, join my transformation programme designed specifically to help IT pros like you get better jobs, pay and security.