For customer experience experts, consulting can feel like the call of the wild. A way to put all your experience into use and reap all the rewards. It also offers a way to see true recognition of your efforts. To feel free of office bureaucracy and to speak your own mind.
The call of consulting can come at many stages of a career. Perhaps when you’ve outgrown your early businesses. When there’s a shakeup in the market or your career, or an opportunity that’s too good to miss. However, it beckons to you, CX consulting is a broad horizon of open territory to stake your claim.
The long road to consulting
Consulting at its core, is the condor’s-eye view of a market, a business, its problems, and knowing how to deliver a solution. That business may be focused on tourism, digital services, retail or other areas, and the problem could be rooted in operational, data, or people-based issues.
Whatever the industry, consulting is understanding the needs of workers, management and leaders. Knowing how to talk them around the problems, identify issues and derive a solution that will work for that business. The hard yards come from sharing that vision, delivering tools and training people to implement it, and ensuring the solution becomes embedded in their core practices.
And if you can do all that while large consultancies tout their superpowered services, more experienced CX gurus try to muscle in, and you are at the mercy of tight budgets, leadership whims and inter-departmental grudge matches, congratulations are in order.
There are many ways to enter the consulting world, but all require experience, confidence and planning. Guidance can come from your business circles, or in the form of a Udemy course. Joining a consulting network like Graphite will help you find customers, and riffing off the big consultant brands or successful independents can help you find your own style and identity.
Identify your weaknesses and missing skills
When starting down the consulting route, one of the first things you should identify is the areas in which your skillset is lacking. Talking to your colleagues, partners and clients, is a great way to get some honest feedback about what you do well (which you should know). And what you’re weak at or missing, this is a common blind spot in many professionals.
Recognise where you need to improve and make a concerted effort to learn more about those areas, get better at engaging and fill in blanks that you typically leave unresolved.
Key to addressing these deficiencies (or nascent skills, if you prefer) on your early consultations is the bravery to admit that you are not a consultant rockstar with all the answers. Explain to your corporate hosts where your strengths lie and who/where you might need to ask for advice.
Focus on marketing and networking
Key to any successful consulting business is being confident in marketing both yourself and your experiences in written, video and during professional and social events. Many consultants have reached the heights thanks to their communication skills over any particular industry or consulting knowledge that many professionals share.
Practice speaking and greeting at small events, go to meetups for local business, and any places you are likely to meet prospective clients. Get used to reading the room, identifying contacts who can introduce you to useful people, and others who
Tales from a consulting pro
James O’Connor recently stepped into the world of consulting, and offers some of his insights. “The key point is that I didn’t look for consulting — it came to me. I deliberately took a sabbatical last summer to spend time with my young daughters and while my wife was off from studying for her midwifery MA.”
I’ve been fortunate to work with amazing people and clients in large corporations for 25 years while at companies like Bain and Forrester. And I was keen for a new kind of adventure that met my wider ambitions.”
Consultants are never too young to learn
“I also signed up for some excellent formal coaching. This coaching was based on finding my ‘flow state’ and identifying the ‘zone of genius.’ Instead of just jumping into what looked best from my recent experience.” O’Connor continues.
“While researching and speaking to a wide variety of people I trust and value, I heard a recurring theme about their perception of me. From this theme, there was also an encouraging number of them who had interesting ways I could get involved in supporting them.I was in a fortunate position of being torn between some compelling options.”
A consulting network is vital
“What also became clear is that they seemed OK with me exploring a variety of exciting work for various people I was keen to support and we could debunk the idea of me having to be a full time employee.
For me, this works wonderfully well, as I got to support several projects, with the people I’d like to work alongside, in areas I’m passionate about and where I’m learning more than I would by performing a role for a single company. I also really enjoy the variety and flex.”
It has become clear the speed of learning and variety of projects means I become more useful for others as they benefit from fresh ways of addressing pressing challenges. This is where I have found more of my flow state in supporting others achieve their own goals. I’m getting great feedback from the people I support. It feels good.
“I’m now working on a way to better apply this in a more sustainable way and with other people I trust, respect and who have the same core values as I do.
It’s easy to fall into being a solution looking for a problem. I found it really helped to identify your ‘why’, then the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ followed.”
The never-ending road of consulting
The upshot of James’ experience and talking to many consultants is that it’s a rewarding vocation for many, especially those who are fortunate enough to possess sought-after specialisms, that they enjoy sharing with others, and are confident enough to strike out alone. We’ll have more experts chiming in with their view of the consulting landscape in the coming months, and if you have an experience you want to share, get in touch.