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Moving from an on-demand, catalogue-of-programs provider to a consulting partnership can sometimes feel like reversing the Queen Mary...using oars. The forces of history and perception make the task slow going. How can you change the organization's perception of your department, gain internal customer trust in your staff's consulting skills, and become a strategic partner to the business?

Here are four suggestions from the field of external consulting that are applicable internally to get customer perception moving in the right direction.

1. You've Got to Believe.
There is much talk today about transforming "from the inside out." In changing focus, such transformation is a critical first step. Instead of looking outward, and determining how many meetings you must attend to "pitch" your department's new focus, begin with an examination of your department's perception of self. Might department performance be contributing to the retention of their old identity? Does your team view themselves as consultants? Does the department visualize itself as a consulting firm which just happens to work exclusively for Company X?

Conduct a team assessment. What level of experience and skill does your team have right now. What's missing? What skills need honing or out-right development? Does your team have the consulting skills they need for their new role? What type of interventions can they offer customers when their questions to clients surface deeper or wider concerns?

In gathering this data, encourage your team to look beyond what they've done recently. What experience and contacts did they bring when joining the organization? Consultants don't always have the answer or the skills to help a client solve every business problem, but effective consultants can direct the client to resources and contacts who can help in a particular area.

Building a skills/experience/contacts matrix helps determine bench strength, uncover development needs, and bolster team confidence. Grounding in full team skill/experience will come through when the consultants begin building relationships with their customers. Clients want consultants who are comfortable in their role and confident in what they, or their team, can offer.

2. Identify Your Client Base
It's tempting to say "we serve the entire organization," but is that true? Can your team effectively work with the entire organization? Does it want to?

Identifying and targeting clients who have been satisfied customers in the past, lays a solid foundation for your business. As a team, step back and determine:

1. who uses your services most;
2. what areas would you like to partner with, and finally,
3. what areas will be the "toughest nuts to crack."

Unless business need points you in a different direction, build your "changing focus" plan around the first two categories. Your frequent and/or satisfied customer(s), will be most open to hearing about and using your new services. Discussing the team's new focus with them will give your team insight into the types of questions clients ask, and practice in answering them in a more comfortable environment.

Satisfied clients can also help spread the word. For example:

SUPERVISOR A: "Tim, you had Training do a workshop for you recently. Who should I call about setting up some time management training for new supervisors?"

SUPERVISOR B: "Training's working differently now. They came out last week and talked about their new focus and I put them to the test. I thought my staff needed more training in using those project report forms. When I put this to the consultant, her questions convinced me to discuss the issue at our staff meeting. Turns out, everyone knows how to use the forms, it's work flow that's getting in the way. Never thought of that. Saved me a good half-day of productivity. Give Bonnie at x2332 a call, you may find there's more to your time management dilemma than a class can offer."

Nothing builds confidence and credibility like client endorsements and that's when you broaden your plan to target those departments you have yet to work with, but want to include in your new client base.

3. Build Relationships
When all the layers are peeled away, relationships get business and get business done. Building relationships means getting out there and having face-to-face conversations with desired clients, even if you've been with the company since day one. Just as you want internal clients to see you differently, so you need to gain a deeper and different understanding of them and their business concerns.

What are their goals for the year? What do they see as their strengths? What obstacles do they anticipate? Do they have a Plan B? Asking questions focused on the client's needs can begin changing the client's perception of your team and what it can offer. See yourself as a farmer, planting seeds in the client's mind while harvesting bushels of information that will help you plant more seeds later. Focus on what your team can offer only at the conclusion of the meeting, and always discuss it within the context of the client's concerns and interests.

Clients call (and begin to trust) consultants who are honest, speak their language, deliver within time and budget constraints, and leave them more capable than before the consultant came.

Let's look at each of these relationship builders individually.

Honesty: If your team can't do the project (due to time, budget, skills, values, etc.), say so and introduce the client to resources who can. You still serve the customer by offering an alternative resource. They will come to you again, even if their initial need was met by another. Clients do not come back if you say you can meet their need and then don't.

Speak their language: Remember when you hurt your back and your doctor went on about how blah-blah ligament attached to the blah-blah muscle which caused--? All you wanted to know was how to make the pain stop.

It may be fun tossing about jargon at professional meetings or to confound a know-it-all brother-in-law at the holidays, but clients want information they can understand. They're not usually interested in (and may be put off by) explanations peppered with "fish-bone diagrams" or "the Six Box Model." Save it. Build client confidence by building the partnering relationship, getting the job done, and increasing the capability of the client.

Budget and time constraints: Stay within them. It helps to have a written agreement outlining who will do what and who will supply what in order to stay within constraints. The moment it looks like any constraint is in jeopardy...remember honesty. Let the client know ASAP and work together on a solution.

Leave the client more skilled than when you arrived: Yes, your department wants more work from this client in the future; but do you want the same work over and over? Fostering client dependence is doing the client and your team a disservice. If you partner on an intervention they cannot maintain without you, who owns it? If it falls apart when you leave, will the client see working with you as a success?

4. Consider Externals Partners, Not Adversaries
It's true that managers often consider the ideas/interventions of external consultants more readily than those of equally capable internal consultants. Maybe it goes back to Freud's theory of valuing what has to be paid for. In any case, external consultants are not the enemy. Reframe those thoughts! If your team goal is to become "vendor of choice," learn from the externals, partner with them.

Building relationships with those external consultants...go for coffee/lunch, pick their brain about the kinds of work they do. Offer your insights, as their internal colleagues. You each have information and insight important to the success of the other and, most importantly, to the client. It's not far-fetched to imagine the external suggesting a partnership with you to the client...if they see the value. The exchange of ideas, the synergies, the networking works to everyone's advantage.

When I was an internal consultant, it was my responsibility to contract with external consultants for stand-up program delivery that our consulting projects no longer allowed us time to do. When I began my independent practice, these consultants were invaluable sources for ideas, encouragement, and referrals.

One final suggestion: it's often tempting to change the department's name first. Resist. If you change your name, yet provide the same services, customer perception will be difficult to change. They will see it as a name change and nothing more. And why should they; that's all it is.

If you were an external consulting firm, would you publish your name, send out business cards, and open for business without knowing your business focus, where your strengths were, what you had to do to build bench strength? Announce your department's new name the day you are ready for business as a new business.

Perception is a tough change. Build from the inside out; believe in, prepared for, and commit to the change. Your team's confidence in their skills and commitment to the change will shine through in those face-to-face "marketing" meetings. Your team's confidence and competence will encourage internal clients to look in-house before automatically going "outside."

Copyright © 2000 JWillin Consulting Ltd.

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