Tips That Make You A Great Consultant — Valuable Feedback
I had received a lot of feedback from sharing my articles Tips That Will Make You A Great Consultant 1, Tips That Will Make You A Great Consultant 2, and Tips That Will Make You A Great Consultant 3.
Some feedback were given by senior partners from consulting companies. I found their feedback is very valuable. So I would love to write another article to share with you what I have learned from them.
Here is the recap of the 9 practical tips in my previous articles.
Tip 1 Keep the To-do List in Excel
Tip 2 Document Down Any Agreements Established between Clients and You
Tip 3 Say These Two Things When You are Uncertain
Tip 4 Know Clients’ Business First Before Agreeing on the Requirement
Tip 5 Always Ask, Clarify, and Communicate
Tip 6 Have Passion
Tip 7 Keep 8 Hours Strict, Work More Efficiently
Tip 8 Learn to Release Stress in a Healthy Way
Tip 9 Prioritize Your Tasks, Analyze, and Re-prioritize
On top of the 9 tips, I have gotten these extremely helpful and practical tips from senior partners and consultants. These tips are easily forgotten. However, they are actually very significant tips that we are supposed to know and expected to follow.
Listen
This skill is so important so that a lot of sales training programs and schools put it as the Top One practice. The top complaint from clients is also the sellers/consultants don’t listen to them but start talking immediately and non-stop, according to one of the leaders from a well-known sales school. You may think, you are listening to your clients all the time. What’s so special about it? Listening is different from hearing. Hearing is simply receiving sounds using your ears. Listening, however, requires your consciousness, concentration and brain to process the information received and to gain an understanding. So, you are hearing doesn’t mean you are listening. All the time, your clients simply want to be understood, not simply be heard. This is why you come into the picture. You listen to their problems, demonstrate empathy, and understand them from their point of view. The rewards from doing this is immediate, i.e., you are connected with your clients and the relationship is built.
Know Email Etiquette
This isn’t so critical in my eyes until I recently made a mistake. I accidentally pressed some buttons and sent out an unfinished email. The worse part is the recipient is the most problematic customer. And a lot of people are copied. And my unfriendly tone in the draft hasn’t been polished. What I have learned from this mistake is to remove all the recipients when I draft my emails. And thanks to my colleagues for sharing with me some other useful email etiquette. One important rule is to write in the recipients’ language. It means if you are writing to clients, you need to write in their way and make sure they can understand. There are a lot to say about email etiquette. You can find tons of training materials, books and articles about it. And this is not something you can master overnight. So pay attention to your emails, and consciously make efforts to learn when you write emails every day. Gradually, you will get this skill well.
Organize Your Bookmarks
When I was still a student, I have already kept bookmarks on my browser so I can easily access some websites that requires often visit. After I started working, the amount of frequent-visited websites is increasing exponential. I need to visit my company’s website for HR or Admin Issues. I need to visit project management related websites to retrieve project information. I also visit websites for filing taxes, online banking, insurances, etc. I am glad I created folders to stored all these websites. Often it happens that my consultant colleagues ask me, “Hey, Annie, where to retrieve our payroll now?” or “Annie, where is the new medical claim location?” Because I organized the bookmarks, I don’t need to spend time looking for the websites. It looks as a small action but it saves me a lot of time in some cases.
So once again, I hope you find these tips helpful. Thank those people who gave me valuable feedback.
Welcome any thoughts.
