What do 400+ clients have to say about consultants?

We’ve spent the last three months finding out what senior executives think about consulting, both the industry in broad terms and the specific firms they work with.

Almost all were from the private sector and the vast majority were from multinational organisations with a turnover in excess of €500 million a year (what we term “big consulting”). Although spread across Germany, the UK, France, Benelux, Scandinavia, Italy, Spain and Dubai and representing different parts of the organisation (strategy and operations, finance, HR and IT), their views on the most important themes were very consistent.

The good news for consulting firms is that most are comfortable with the level of consulting they’re using at present. A small number expect to use consultants much less, but that’s largely because an immediate need (integrating a new acquisition, for example) has now passed. Very few expect to cut back on their use of consultants simply to save money; indeed, a significant minority believe that the balance of internal to external resources is likely to change in the future, with the number of permanent roles whittled down and a greater reliance on short-term, outside support.

The bad news is that most clients think that the biggest barrier to consultants’ success is consultants themselves. “I’m 100% convinced that consulting firms could win a lot more work,” said one person we spoke to, “if they just take the trouble to ask the right questions and find out more about our business. Some of them ask some very stupid questions.” The point really came home to us when we asked people what their advice to consultants would be. Ours was a neutral question: our interviewees could have talked about different, better skills (they didn’t) or about lower fee rates (they didn’t – many think prices are high but most think they’re justifiably so). Instead, almost every single person we spoke to talked about the way consulting firms sell their services; roughly half simply said, “listen”.

That this is a familiar complaint doesn’t make it any less important. At its root is the perception that consultants think it’s acceptable to bring pre-cooked ideas that just need a couple of minutes in the conceptual microwave to make them palatable. “Why would we be interested in an idea or approach which the consulting firm will take to everyone else?” asked one very typical client. “If we and our competitors are all getting and following the same advice, then no one gains an advantage.” “We like consultants who have taken the time to really understand our business,” was another, equally common, observation. “We want consultants to bring us workable propositions which will help take our – not everyone’s – business forward.”

It turns out that clients are far more ambitious about consulting than consultants are.

For more information about our client research programme, please contact alice.noyelle@sourceforconsulting.com.