Proven Consulting Process: 4 Steps To Successful Projects

Do you have a reliable consulting process? In this post, you’ll learn how to develop a consulting process that makes your projects smooth, successful, stress-free — and create greater results for your clients.

If your current consulting process feels messy or disorganized, you’ll learn how to deliver your consulting services with more structure and confidence.

Three Benefits Of Having A Consulting Process

First, this 4-step consulting process makes your life easier. Why? Because it makes it easier for you to…

• Organize how you deliver projects
• Make a list of the tasks you must complete
• Determine who is responsible for what
• Start to delegate aspects of the project

With a repeatable consulting process, you’ll have a lot more clarity during projects. You’ll know when to do what, and when. You’ll work through each project in a logical progression.

Second, the more you develop and run your process, you’ll discover ways to make it more efficient. It opens up the opportunity for you to scale your consulting business by scaling your delivery methods.

EXAMPLE: Instead of offering a customized consulting service for each client, you create a productized discovery offer that predictably and reliably creates your client’s desired result. Using a step-by-step consulting process allows you to run your business in a more efficient, profitable manner.

The third reason is that clients like to see that you have a process. It’s a powerful method for building trust. They want to know you’re not doing things “off the seat of your pants.” If they know you’re using a process that has delivered the results they want, they’ll feel much less risk investing in your services.

The hardest part of having a consulting process isn’t designing it. It’s following it when a client is in a hurry and wants you to skip straight to implementation.

Now, let’s dive into the four steps of the consulting process.

Step 1. Assess/Discovery

Step one is what we call “Assess.” In this phase, you are assessing the client’s situation and current condition. This is also commonly referred to as a discovery offer.

This first step helps you understand…

• What is going on in your client’s organization
• What opportunities there are
• What threat/problems exist
• What can be done to improve their condition

This step gives you clarity on how to progress through the rest of the consulting process. The outcome — the deliverable from this — is that you are going to put together a high-level plan. This plan includes your recommendations. Your clients love this because they get a sense of where things are at and how best to move forward.

NOTE: Use meaningful questions to go deeper into the client’s situation. Use this step to identify the underlying problems and potential opportunities.

When you sell this phase as a stand-alone project — a “discovery offer” — there are major benefits for both you and the client.

You’re NOT saying: “Hey, this is going to be a $100,000 project. We’re going together into it right away, and we’ll figure things out as we start the engagement.” Instead, in this step, you’re saying: “Here’s what I see, and here are the next steps.”

Unlike the former, the latter statement is all about assessment. Assessing the client’s situation gives you clarity which helps you prepare recommendations for the client. From there, you adjust the rest of your service delivery based on your assessment. This step ensures that the rest of the process is more efficient, effective, and creates better results.

Remember: each part of this consulting process can be sold individually. EXAMPLE: Let’s say your buyer comes in. They start with you at step 1: the assessment phase. If for some reason they decide they don’t want to move on to step 2, that’s okay.

Give them that choice. Most clients will want to continue working with you through the remaining steps. They won’t get all the benefits and their desired result unless they go through every stage of the process.

But giving them that ability to say, “Hey, let’s take a break,” or “I don’t want to move forward,” helps with risk reversal. They have a lot less hesitation because they feel like they have much more control over the process. And they can, because they get to choose whether or not to move forward.

Step 2. Plan

The second phase of the consulting process here is what we call “Plan.” You might be saying, “You just said plan in the 1st step. What’s the difference?” The difference is that the second step is a much more detailed plan.

Instead of a high-level plan, think strategic recommendations. Think step-by-step. In “Assess” you’re giving high-level recommendations and a high-level plan of what should come next. In “Plan” you say, “Okay. We’ve done the initial assessment. Here’s what we know we need to do. Here’s what has to happen for this project to succeed.”

EXAMPLE: Let’s say you’re a marketing consultant who works with accounting firms looking to get more clients.

In step 1, you assessed their marketing materials: their website, content, paid advertising, and social media. You provided them with a high-level assessment of what is wrong with their marketing and the opportunity for improvement. In step 2, you will provide them with a specific, detailed, and tactical plan for how you’ll improve their marketing materials.

During “Plan,” you get into developing the specific, strategic, step-by-step plan of what’s going to happen during the next step: the implementation.

Step 3. Implementation

Next is what we call “Implementation” or “Implement.” This is where you implement the strategic recommendations from step 2. Continuing with our example. In this step, you’ll implement the plan to improve your client’s marketing.

EXAMPLE:

• Adjusting their positioning
• Improving their SEO
• Re-designing their marketing materials

Depending on how you structure your service offer, you may or may not be the person doing the implementation. If you’re like most consultants, you’ll be guiding or advising the team responsible for implementation.

However, you don’t just implement a project and then you’re finished forever. There are always going to be ways to refine, improve, and optimize the client’s situation. That’s what the next phase, “Optimization,” is all about.

Step 4. Optimization

The final phase is one that many consultants don’t think about. It’s the “Optimization” phase, and it’s powerful. If you’re trying to improve something (like a client’s business), you don’t just do a single improvement and think that you’re done. There are always ways to refine, improve, and optimize. That’s what this step is about.

By now in the consulting process, you’ve implemented your plan. Now that you’ve implemented it, you’ll get some feedback and data. You’ll learn what levels of success you’ve created and what can be improved further.

There’s still going to be more work to do if you want to continue improving your client’s condition — or if you want to maintain that level of improvement. That’s when you’ll begin optimization.

In this step, the output is ongoing implementation. You’ll deliver services like:

• Ongoing coaching
• Training
• Mentorship
• Working with or leading teams

There’s a lot of different ways that you can deliver value to your clients during optimization. It’s usually ongoing or for a set period of time. Retainer agreements are perfect for this phase.

During the optimization phase, you may find that you’re going back again and working on the early parts of the process. That’s OK. As long as you’re continually providing value to your client, they’ll continually invest in your services.

How To Keep Your Client Confident During The Project

The four steps tell you what to do. They don\u{2019}t tell you how to keep the client comfortable while you do it, and that is where a lot of good work goes unrecognised.

A consultant we worked with in Australia had a strong relationship with one of their largest clients, and still worried the client could not see the real value being delivered. The work was fine. The communication around it was not.

The fix was a one-page update, brought to every meeting, split into three parts.

The past. What you have accomplished since you last spoke. Steps taken, work implemented, results achieved. List it plainly, including what has not gone well. The client invested in you and needs to see progress to keep believing that was the right call.

The present. What you are working on right now and what you expect it to produce. A client wants to know their money is at work today, not only that it was useful last month.

The future. What you see coming next. Which opportunities you have spotted, what else could be improved, where the work could go. This is the part most consultants skip, and it is the one that matters most.

The future section does something the other two cannot. It gets the client expecting to continue, because you have already named the next problem worth solving. That is how a project becomes a retainer without anyone having to pitch.

The consultant in Australia used this on their next meeting. The client was happy with the progress, sent referrals for new business, and the engagement continued well beyond its original scope.

Imperfect Action: Plan Your Consulting Process

We’ve gone over the four steps of the consulting process that you’ll use to deliver value to your clients:

• Assess
• Plan
• Implement
• Optimize

There are variations to the process. Some consultants might have five or six steps. But these 4 steps give you a solid foundation on which to build.

Now it’s your turn. Using these 4 steps, map the consulting process for your consulting business:

• How will you assess the client’s situation?
• What will your plan look like to help them reach their goals?
• How will you go about implementing your plan?
• Once the project is done, how can you optimize and continually improve the client’s results?

By answering these questions, you’ll build your solid consulting process — and create better results for your clients. What’s your current consulting process look like? Where do you feel you could make the most improvements?

Your first version will be rough. That’s fine. A process you actually follow beats a polished one you abandon after two projects. What matters is that you can describe it to a buyer before they’ve paid you anything, because that’s the part they’re buying.

If you need help and want some coaching on how to apply this in your consulting business, then book a Growth Session with our team to learn more about our Clarity Coaching Program.