Consultant Fees - What is a Consultant Worth?

Randy

Super Moderator
#51
nielsmx said:
"This is a sore subject for me, as I was grossly overcharged by a consultant and was essentially held hostage and had no choice to pay her outrageous sums."

Why do you pay outrageous sums if you are not satisfied? Insist on a satisfaction guarantee: no pay if you are not happy with the consultant's results at the end of a day. If the consultant is afraid you won't be happy, beware! As long as clients are paying outrageous sums for underperfoming consultants, the monkey story will perpetuate.
It may be because most organizations would rather have an outsider try to help them than listen to their own internal resources who may have many solutions at their fingertips.

"What! Listen to our employees? Never happen.":mg:

I myself always enjoyed getting paid to tell someone the time and to use their watch to do it.:D
 
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JaneB

#52
IEGeek said:
This is a sore subject for me, as I was grossly overcharged by a consultant and was essentially held hostage and had no choice to pay her outrageous sums.
No choice? Why?

There are good, ordinary & bad consultants like anything else: & I've had to fix up some of the plain awful work of the latter. I've also met people in the business world who've engaged consultants without ever checking them out first, nor having any kind of written agreement about who would do what & when & how much, not managed the engagement at all, and then have complained big time when it goes wrong & blame the consultant.

I've also been the subject of unpleasant comments from people while working: invariably by employees, & usually seeming jealous. They seem to focus solely on the fees, come up with a daily/hourly/whatever amount, & then compare to their salary, ignoring typical on-costs to the employer, & benefits. Consultants dont - we take the business risk of running our own business, pay all own insurance, running costs, etc. & don't get paid for holidays, sick pay, and so on. I'm not complaining: it's my choice, & I prefer to run my own business than work for someone else. And I also accept there will be down periods, periods of little/no work perhaps, and all the other things, like spending my weekends so the tax office can get theirs - don't get me started :tg:

I think there's a place for both employees & consultants. There are various times when it suits an organisation to get a consultant: eg, they need the resource, & don't want to be left with an employee.

I put my money where my mouth is - ie, I tell my clients that if they are not satisfied with my services, then I won't charge them. I think yes, we have to be prepared to stand by our services.

I ask every client: did I deliver value for your money? All have said yes bar one: she used the guarantee as a convenient way to take my work & not pay (but I know she subsequently used it). I'd still rather keep the guarantee and let her own karma catch up with her.

And yes - I've offered a choice between a fee, or a share of expected savings, improvements... every time, the customer takes the fee.
 
#53
Recently started consulting with a few clients. Does anyone utilize a scorecard or other means of evaluation that the client can use to formally address performance of a consultant? Looking for suggestions or examples. Being new to the consulting end of the business I am looking for all possible ways to improve and deliver customer satisfaction to the highest level attainable. Thank you in advance
 

Helmut Jilling

Auditor / Consultant
#54
Recently started consulting with a few clients. Does anyone utilize a scorecard or other means of evaluation that the client can use to formally address performance of a consultant? Looking for suggestions or examples. Being new to the consulting end of the business I am looking for all possible ways to improve and deliver customer satisfaction to the highest level attainable. Thank you in advance

well, a scorecard would be nice, but often clients are not that well developed. So, I put together the means to measure some key metrics, and use that as a guage.
 

Helmut Jilling

Auditor / Consultant
#56
CAn you be more specific or show an example? Any help would be great.
Companies that hire consultants do not always have well developed metrics, so that is a good place to start. With your help, they should develop good process measures.

So, if you work with them, and their scrap rates go down, or productivity improves as a result of the work you are doing with them, then you can deduce that your training and consulting efforts are having a positive effect.

A specific scorecard that measures your performance would be nice, but probably not practical.
 
N

nielsmx

#57
There can be two situations:
1. You are already hired.
Then visit the highest relevant executive, walk into his/her room and ask how they will measure your results. This is a good start in case the executive has and idea, to set some metric. If the executive has no idea, it's also a good start: now you can suggest some metric to measure your results.

2. You are not yet hired.
Here is a potential problem if you don't have a lot experience about the performance you can promise. Several years ago I didn't dare, but nowadays, I work according to a no-cure-co-pay clause: if at the end of a coaching day I don't see big smiles on the faces, I cannot send an invoice. Because I always see the big smiles, I now dare to say this.
Also, I calculate with the people I coach what 1 day savings of what they are doing would bring: the cost of the saved day, plus the extra revenues because of being one day earlier on the market (the latter usually being much more than the former). Because a few days of my time usually shortens the activity I'm coaching with around 30%, we can quickly calculate whether my cost is too much, or (as in most cases) negligible.

Niels Malotaux, Project Coach
 

Statistical Steven

Statistician
Staff member
Super Moderator
#58
I am glad to see so many consultants that have time to assess their performance. I use a very crude method myself. If the client continues to use my services, I am doing a good job, otherwise I am not meeting their expectations. I have found that very few clients are "honest" when you ask for feedback while you are engaged on a contract, and once you are no longer doing work for them, will not tell you why they no longer use your services.

The standard answer I get is right now we do not have work for you....how can you get clients to tell you the real reason they no longer engage you for work?
 

Helmut Jilling

Auditor / Consultant
#59
I am glad to see so many consultants that have time to assess their performance. I use a very crude method myself. If the client continues to use my services, I am doing a good job, otherwise I am not meeting their expectations. I have found that very few clients are "honest" when you ask for feedback while you are engaged on a contract, and once you are no longer doing work for them, will not tell you why they no longer use your services.

The standard answer I get is right now we do not have work for you....how can you get clients to tell you the real reason they no longer engage you for work?
I don't know who you are referring to that is spending so much time assessing their performance, but the metrics I mentioned are primary performance metrics the company should be using anyway. We just make that one of the first orders of business to put in place. Then, there is something to measure to. After all, I am there to make them better and make them profitable.
 
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