The three questions to ask potential consultants about your project

So, you’re looking for a good professional services team to address a specific need in your business. While you have your project brief in hand, finding the right group of people who really understand your industry and challenges is proving more difficult. It’s time to ask some broader questions.

As you approach potential collaborators, it’s essential to weigh up the following considerations:

First, have you considered all your options?

Not every consulting firm will be able to respond well to your needs. If you are considering engaging a professional services provider, it’s key to have a conversation with multiple providers. Find out what is best for your business, whether it be from a cultural, pricing, or capability point of view.

Does your project need a tailored response?

If yours is a unique technical or organisational problem, it’s vital that the response doesn’t involve solution-selling or recycling those same pieces of work. The professional services firm you select must understand each business will have its own specific needs – and be able to articulate that well before your engagement. Their Experts must work with your business to determine what the need is, if it’s ongoing and how they will work to achieve the solution that best suits your needs.

Are their Experts happy where they are?

This seems like an odd question to ask. It’s no secret that Australia has always had a shortage when it comes to technology talent. So it’s important that the firm you select considers the needs of their industry experts and has incentives in place to retain their talent. This is our biggest differentiator when we sit down with clients to tell our story: our Expert-focus. It is why 460degrees is the world’s first Expert Management Agency.

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At 460 degrees, we focus on our people – or Experts as we call them internally – to sell professional services to our customers. We don’t promote 460degrees to our clients; we promote our Experts. We give these Experts a platform to build their own brand and we help promote them and their brand. This enables us not only to attract the best consultants, but also enables us to retain them.

We believe this is a major differentiator in the professional services world – and potentially a huge benefit to our clients.

The following three questions will help you weed out what your business needs, what best fits the specific requirements of your project, and how they intend to proceed:

1. Do you align with our own business culture? In your approach, can you help you achieve the culture we’re aiming for?
2. How will you help us achieve our project objective? Can you clearly articulate what we need – and what the outcomes will be?
3. Will we get value for money from your Expert response? How do we track this as the engagement progresses?

After moving from recruitment to professional services in 2020, I am pleased to bring my interest in technology (particularly the software engineering and DevOps space) to my role. As a 460degrees Promoter, I love sitting down with businesses like yours and one of our Experts to find out what issues businesses are facing, what they’re trying to achieve, and what help they need.

If you’re thinking of contracting a new provider, contact me at [email protected]. By all means come armed with these questions and more! Our Professional Services team is more than happy to have a chat about the issues your business is facing, and how 460degrees can assist you to efficiently resolve it.