Getting The Most From Your Consulting Dollars – Cost Effectiveness: Part 1

In the prior post we introduced the topic of Getting The Most From Your Consulting Dollars. We’ll now begin covering the typical realities too many firms experience when engaging consultants – and more importantly, how to ensure your firm gets the most from your consulting dollars.

Recently, a member of my team was meeting with a colleague of his from one of the large “brand name” consulting firms. You’ve likely heard of them…

During their dialog my guy was sharing our “model for success”, which includes:

• Engaging highly skilled resources with well over 10 to 15 years of real world scars of experience
• Keeping our team members happy by paying VERY well and offering a flexible work model (compatible with client requirements)
• Charging our clients below market rate
• Taking slim margins

Almost vehemently, this “brand name” consultant responded with:

“No, you have it all wrong. You need to be hiring people straight out of college and charging the highest rate the market will bear.”

This “brand name” consultant is obviously stuck in the typical “big company” model whereby they must keep costs low (via less costly / less skilled resources) while charging their clients the highest rate possible to cover overhead (i.e., multiple layers of management, posh offices in Boston, NYC, etc.).

As one of our readers (who has served many years as a senior executive in charge of Finance, Accounting and IT) stated after reading our prior post on this topic…

Some “leaders” prefer to tell their CEO’s or Board Members that they’ve retained a big name consulting firm to do this or that, thinking it gives them some kind of credibility that things will be “expertly” done.

My experience tells me that this is not always true. I’ve spent years undoing the stupid and very expensive things that some of these high priced firms left behind…

~ Anonymous

A good question would be: How much of the overhead / cost factor [of the brand name firms] actually provides “value” to their client, considering the experience level of the resource(s) provided?

In contrast, a better question is: How are you [Customer Centricity] able to offer highly skilled and experienced resources at such a cost-effective price?

It is quite simple. We have built a model with virtually no overhead.

A further benefit is that our approach results in very little team member attrition. That is, consultants rarely leave the team because they so enjoy working within our model. Subsequently, our clients experience consistency in the resources we provide to them.

We’ve operated this way for over 14 years, serving dozens of highly satisfied clients as evidenced by our list of customers.

In closing, the reality is that it is possible to pay the same (even more) for inexperienced resources from many firms than one could “invest” in highly skilled and experienced resources from Customer Centricity. And, to be fair, from “some” other non-typical firms as well.

Something to consider when engaging your next contract / consulting resource…