What the heck is a consultant anyway???

Yes there is a lot of confusion and myths
around what a consultant is.

I'm one because people pay me for my knowledge,
not to implement it.

People around here call themselves consultants
when they implement SEO, web design, and all sorts of
other services. However they aren't paid for their knowledge
separate.

Would someone be willing to pay for what you know but don't buy your
SEO or what ever main service you offer?
If not, then you aren't. The true test is whether
you get paid for it.

I've asked this question myself! I guess you could be several of them. You could call yourself a service provider since you're providing a service, and you could say you're a salesman because you're trying to sell your service.

But a contractor usually works under supervision, whereas a consultant does their own thing because the hiring business needs help because they don't have the knowledge. They're consulting.

Consultants can offer only knowledge or both knowledge and implementation. I don't think there's any strict terms. It could be, for example, "strategy consulting" (e.g. McKinsey) vs. "operations consulting" (e.g. Deloitte). Deloitte does implementation whereas McKinsey often only identifies & recommends.

What the heck is a consultant anyway???

I could be, Consultant is a euphemism for unemployed.

A very interesting post and some great points by everyone. I am asked frequently to define what I am by business owners and I will be using many of the points in this post as they are well stated.

Some things that are specifically interesting to me.

1. I do get paid for advice so I consider myself a consultant. When possible I advise clients on how to do things themselves such as Facebook posting etc...

2. Over a decade I have built a streamlined service delivery system to be able to provide when needed the elements that most business owners end up not wanting to do themselves. The advantages of using me as a provider is that I am the quarterback that sits at the top and makes sure all the individual services play nicely with each other so I end up being both a consultant and service provider at the same time. Of course this could present a conflict since as a consultant I may recommend Facebook ads, seo, new web sites etc.. all carrying a price tag and all putting money in my pocket. To make things as fair as possible I offer great leverage for a buck due to my systems and outsourcing and I refuse to sell anything that I feel would not profit the business owner but I still get how this can be a tricky situation.

3. I found this very interesting! " Consultants can essentially get paid well by clients who really don't need them." Here is my take on this. 99% of my clients come to me AFTER some sort of disaster or failure seeking my guidance. Often it is as simple as they had no idea how hard it would be to market their offer and they are going to zero fast. At other times its things like huge losses in ranks and therefore leads or new competitors doing it better than them on the marketing front etc....

In most cases had they been paying me when it SEEMED they did not need me the disaster would of never of occurred. In fact I think it would be fair to say for everyone that has chimed in on this thread so far that if you were retained by a company to keep an eye out and handle some areas that their increased profits and insurance against pulling a major screw up would easily have paid for themselves.

As an example 99% of companies do not use a great copy guy yet they communicate constantly and those communications have certain rates of conversion that could easily be increased if every bit of copy first had to be vetted by someone with a clue.

Same goes with web site conversions. Sure I visit with business owners that are making good money via their site. They are not in trouble. But in just a few minutes I pretty much always find ways to increase conversions such that my fee to keep an eye on things would easily be covered.

Anyway great thread and I look forward to others opinions.

I feel there is a big difference in Consulting and Fulfillment. When I charge for consulting, that is when I am meeting with the business owner or their marketing department and they are doing all the work. I am mainly consulting them on what to do.
Fulfillment is more when I manage and handle the data entry and content on the account. I was doing more consulting in 2013.

Hey. Hey guys I have a joke

A tourist walks into a pet shop in Silicon Valley, and is browsing around the cages on display.

While he's there, another customer walks in and says to the shopkeeper, "I'll have a C monkey, please". The shopkeeper nods, goes over to a cage at the side of the shop and takes out a monkey. He fits a collar and leash and hands it to the customer, saying "That'll be $5000". The customer pays and walks out with his monkey. Startled, the tourist goes over to the shopkeeper. "That was a very expensive monkey - most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did it cost so much?" "Ah, that monkey can program in C - very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money". The tourist looks at the monkeys in that cage. "That one's even more expensive - $10,000 dollars! What does it do?". "Oh, that one's a C++ monkey; it can manage object oriented programming, Visual C++, even some Java, all the really useful stuff". The tourist looks around for a little longer and sees a third monkey in a cage on its own. The price tag around its neck says $50,000. He gasps to the shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"

"Well, I don't know if it does anything, but it says it's a consultant."

I have debated over the consultant thing as well....

For me it was a consultant vs. a coach.

I go with consultant, although I am changing that as well... due to the fact that every body and their brother is now a "consultant". I will still provide consulting services, just under a different title.

Anyway, I thought a consultant was someone who advises and implements, and a coach was just someone who advises. A coach tells you what to do, and a consultant tells you and then does it with you.... Thoughts?

Its the same conundrum as always.

For me, at least, consultants, advisors, and any new age titles that come about...the rules are always changing, as they might possibly should.

Ambiguity is a key ingredient and ever present part of seductive prowess.

The vanilla bland square peg person lacks long term appeal, so the people that understand how to shift when it matters seem to maintain the allure and esteem of those that "don't get it."

Its something I hear underlying talks from all the folks that seem to be at the top...the gurus.

There is power in being elusive, but not evasive.

I tend to think of this stuff in terms of those 3D pictures that you stare at for a bit to see the hidden image (you know what I'm talking about)...

Its hard to explain it, but for some...it just...clicks.

That's my stance on this anyway.

Everyone else shared some great stuff....hope mine was at least a helpful perspective.

Regards

Los

A consultant shows the client what to do, then doesn't take the responsibility when it fails as it's always 'you didn't implement it as I told you to' escape line

eg HR consultant advises a business how to quell some of its staff turnover and behavioural issues , all goes well then one staff members kicks up a bigger fuss of a kind that hasn't been covered in the consulting advice and ..... well who's fault/responsibility is that? The consultant would say if they'd followed my advices that scenario would never have occurred, the business would say we were following advices but the advice did not cover such a scenario.

If the same business has the 'consultant' actually working for them as in delivering the HR service on an on going basis , then that HR consultant has to deal with the issue and sort it out.

"First, the consultant must his clients' interests ahead of the firm's interests. If a McKinsey consultant thinks a study is not in the interests of a client - a waste of money, or a misguided investigation - he must tell the client so. Second, he must adhere to the highest standards of truthfulness, integrity, and trustworthiness. Third, he must keep to himself the client's private and proprietary information. Fourth, he must maintain an independent position and tell the client the truth as he sees it. And fifth, he must provide only services that have real value."

(1-5) The same could be said to define a "coach", but a coach IS NOT a consultant

Many consultants in verticals are just information hubs. They have a basic skill set then learn various tips/tricks/strategies from clients, then spread the information to the rest of the vertical.

IT consultants are more implementation oriented. A couple friends of mine do ecommerce strategy for high 6 figures for medium to large companies.

Bigger companies w/ budgets use them as mostly for CYA reasons. Hey i hired XXX consultants and they said do this! The employee will take credit for successes and blame consultants for failure.

My experience with McKinsey was a large multibillion customer hired them to squeeze suppliers. Everything reduced to an SKU and a price in a spreadsheet. No consideration of quality, service level, sales support, marketing. (my category was food which is more subjective and less substitutable. In SKU rationalization, I plugged one of my products in every SKU description they had in my category. It was an idiotic wasted expensive exercise for them and for me. It was a CYA 'sounds good' idea but a waste.

Another experience is kind of a cool biz idea for someone in a vertical niche. Do surveys of a vertical/industry. Do marketing announcing an informational survey to your target participants/customers where they can benchmark against others in their business. Participants get a discount on a the finished survey. They end up selling for several hundred$$ to a couple grand. there is a ton of good information in these.

I think I'll develop and sell a "Survey Bux" program. Holy Camoly! Little 'ol Me! who once scored 4 touchdowns in a single John Madden football game 30 years ago!

Act now and I'll send you a floppy disk with details....wait...there's more....I'll even throw in a CD!

I am curious why does what you put in bold make you assume that the client doesn't need the consultant?

Sometimes companies do things right and succeed. But they do not know how they created that success and need to hire someone to come in and tell them how they created that success and how to repeat it.

So just because they are successful doesn't mean they don't need you and what you have to offer.

I remember one warrior mentioned that he targeted some local companies who were ranked number 1 in Google. His pitch to them was that he could improve their success so they dominated not just number 1 but also 2, 3, and 4th positions.