As organisations strive to address their clients’ critical business issues, technical professionals play an important role in creating and implementing solutions for external and internal clients.
While they are experts in their area, very often technical professionals like commercial teams, HR, Project, IT, Procurement Managers, Marketing, Sales tend to rely purely on their technical expertise when interacting and managing Stakeholders, both internal or external. As a result, challenges arise when trying to gain the acceptance of proposed solutions by the decision makers!
Many technical professionals are not equipped to handle the business side of a project, they need to integrate their technical skills into a consultative approach.
TOP 5 Practices to develop a Consultative Mindset:
Below are the 5 best practices that TTM Group recommends to grow your consultative mindset enabling you to differentiate yourself as a Professional Consultant from a Normal Service Provider:
- It is A Process! Not a One Time Event!
Having a consultative mindset gets the professional to understand that it is not an event – it’s a process. Instead of solely focusing on short-term wins, fulfilling requests that bring temporary client happiness, professional consultants take a more long-term, strategic approach. Driving behavior and performance change requires constant reinforcement with lots of passion, determination, accountability for the way consultants engage with the various types of stakeholders in the organisation
- Identify, design & Generate Value
Understanding the dynamics in the Decision-Making Unit is crucial to identify & fill the gaps towards creating a unified approach and vision in dealing with Stakeholders and their requirements. A professional consultant knows how to advocate solutions and coach their clients in ways that will deliver business value beyond that of a technically correct solution and steer the projects the way that build and create a sustainable value for the clients/stakeholders!
- Talk their language not your language
A professional consultant realizes that creating Productive Relationships accelerates the Trust-Curve with the various types of the Decision makers. However, in order to deliver the best customer experience, consultants need to understand all aspects of the individual and cultural expectations, thinking preferences, and needs which must be addressed to develop appropriate solutions.
- Focusing on accountability and creative problem solving
Having a consultative mindset means the professional needs to develop a set of tools and techniques, enabling him/her to conduct effective and creative problem-solving behaviors. This allows the professional to influence stakeholders to effectively adopt new ideas, be innovative thinkers and become sharp and capable, decision makers.
- Show Empathy and Understanding
During the post-COVID-19 era customers are experiencing deep levels of uncertainty, businesses are eager to move forward in a post-pandemic world. But so much has changed that many people cannot simply return back to business as usual. A professional consultant knows how to make sense of this complexity for their clients, offers genuine empathy and develops a deeper interpersonal relationship with the client, which is built on trust & credibility that help clients emerge stronger and return to growth.
Final thoughts
After more than a year with a global pandemic, it seems that here is light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to COVID-19. Yet, the crisis is far from over. As organisations strive to address their clients’/stakeholders’ critical business issues, professionals play a critical role in creating and implementing solutions for external and internal clients. The Consultative Mindset approach is designed to put you in a position of being a trusted business advisor to your clients vs. merely being their vendor. This innovative methodology focuses on Behaviours’ development of technical professionals to think, act, behave and communicate as Professional consultants. This entails a variety of topics, ranging from the way they approach the clients, their needs/issues diagnosis, and influencing their perception of reality! When they are able to do this, the technical professional becomes a real source of competitive advantage!
