Here is what your consultant would love to tell you about making him or her successful working on your behalf:

1. Please Do Your Homework before I Come In

Too many owners and managers hire a consultant and then stop thinking. They present a list of general problems and expect expert to conjure dramatic results. This approach almost always ends in frustration and many, many billable hours.

Instead, you have to take initiative and stay involved. Discuss your needs, problems, and parameters in candid terms from start. Set a budget or schedule upfront for each project a consultant tackles. Save your skepticism (or your staff’s) for interview process; once you’ve chosen a consultant, give him or her benefit of everything you know and access to all important information.

One of biggest costs in hiring outside expertise is bringing consultant up to speed on your company’s operations. If you can prepare reports and numbers internally, you can help consultant stay away from data gathering and other basic reporting functions; keep consultant focused on analysis. You can tabulate numbers yourself; you’ve hired expert to help you move forward from there. When you hire consultants, keep in mind that their most important skill should be critical analysis and problem solving.

Another point to consider is that many consultants have a steep sort of half life as to enthusiasm for a project. They are consultants because they like variety. In other words, their best thoughts and greatest creativity come early in their relationships with clients. Being prepared from start allows you to take full advantage of short attention spans.

2. Please let me stay focused on what I came in for and keep distractions and new requests to a minimum if you want me to stay within your original budget (or expand budget).

A consultant’s expertise is so welcome in certain environments that they number of projects multiplies beyond hiring manager’s original intent, but often with their knowledge. The original project may be just tip of iceberg of problems within a company, some of which are best solved by a consultant but many of which are best hired within company after working with consultant to develop a plan.

It is an American dream to own a business. But sadly, according to U.S. Department of Commerce, only 1 in 5 businesses is still in business 5 years after it opens.

A business needs a great business plan, but it doesn’t give management enough information to have a successful, profitable business. You dramatically increase your chance of success with a game plan. According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey, over half of fastest growing firms not only have business plans, but also have separate game plans to keep them focused on what must be done day to day.

A business plan gets you in game. A game plan keeps you in game. To use sports analogy, it’s easy to see how you are going to win game in from locker room. Most businesses don’t have a working plan that takes into account what actually happens on field once play starts.

A business plan is a sales brochure and a game plan is an instruction manual. You send a business plan to potential investors and others to excite them about business. A business plan is about strategy. You create a business plan at a management meeting. A game plan is about tactics and is created by and for people on front lines. A game plan talks openly about good, bad, and ugly in business and is used by people in business to make decisions every day. It talks about what to do in a crisis.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

The CEO takes a look at his balance sheet and decides that his company has too much of its cash tied up in inventory, so he gets his managers together and creates a new corporate objective for year - to reduce inventory by 25%. If they do that they will all be entitled to a bonus. The managers aren’t stupid – they know only way to reduce inventory is to sell what they can and not replace it. So they put on a special promotion for their hottest selling items, they reduce inventory of those to almost nothing, and they get their bonus. But what has really happened here. The CEO’s company is now left with inventory of items that weren’t selling, and they don’t have adequate inventory of their best selling items. The CEO didn’t really lead, employees cared more about their bonuses than doing what was right for company, and there wasn’t a plan of action that was tied into a meaningful company objective.

A game plan focuses on these things: creating big goals that matter, giving individual employees responsibility to carry out their portion of those goals, creating a budget and a reward system that supports goals, and tools to allow employees to measure their own progress.

Steps in Game Plan Process