Combined, Gordon Perchthold and Jenny Sutton have spent more than 50 years in the management consulting profession. The two former Deloitte consultants formed the RFP Company in 2006. Its goal was to help businesses—from the other side of the table this time—select all types of vendors, including consulting firms. And, "after seeing clients make the same mistakes over and over again, we thought we'd put our thoughts down on paper for anyone who was even considering hiring a consulting firm," Sutton says. So they did: In 2010, the duo released Extract Value from Consultants: How to Hire, Control and Fire Them . Consulting magazine sat down with Perchthold and Sutton to discuss the book, the consulting market and their upcoming presentation—What Clients Want—to be delivered at the Consulting Summit in Chicago on May 5.
Consulting: You say you wrote the book because you were tired of seeing clients making the same mistakes over and over. What are those mistakes?
Perchthold: We had seen that a number of times in our consulting days—I was with Accenture; we were both with Deloitte—that projects had no chance of success from the get go. The RFP wasn't written clearly, the stakeholders of the company hadn't bought in, the internal management team wasn't aligned with the goals, the clients had the wrong set of consultants at the table, etc. And often, companies weren't spending the necessary time to address their long-term, strategic needs. Too often, they were just reacting to a short-term need.
Sutton: More often than not, clients are buying services for the wrong reasons. When we began the RFP Company, what we found interesting was how other consulting firms interacted with clients. That really got us thinking about clients and how they really don't understand what goes on behind the scenes at a consulting firm. Clients go through the formal RFP process, but most of the time, they don't have a good idea of what services they are buying or even why.
Consulting: In the book, you talk a lot about how clients give up control too easily. How do you suggest clients maintain control?
Sutton: The client has to be in the driver's seat. We work with clients and tell them that every single thing you do has to send a message to the consultants that you are in control of this entire process—the contract, the people, who calls the meetings… all of it. Often, consultants give up that control without ever realizing they've given it up. Clients should be involved in every aspect of a project.
Consulting: So, why do some projects fail?
Sutton: Companies need to get smarter about every role that's being proposed. They should be looking at every member of the consulting team as if they were an internal hire. What role is this person going to fill, and do they have the experience to fill it? Do not relinquish that role to the consulting firm who can then withdraw people from the project and replace them with substitutes of their choice.
If you look at the proposal and see a lot of "subject matter experts", you need to nail down how these people are adding value. Look at every role: Who is filling it? How long does it need to be filled? How quickly can I transfer that role to my own internal person? Consultants are there to provide expert advice, not resource augmentation. Too often, the project ends up operating adjunct to the organization as opposed to working as an integral part of the organization.
Consulting: In your experience, how have firms reacted when clients push back?
Sutton: The big firms are absolutely against it. I don't think there's any question about that. They don't like any control to be given up because then their sales process becomes a lot more unpredictable once they've given up control.
Consulting: In the book, you talk a lot about how the selling process has changed over the years…
Sutton: The consulting industry has become incredibly sophisticated in its sales processes. It's flipped completely—it seems that clients are no longer going to consultants with problems. The consulting firms are coming to clients and almost inventing problems to solve and sell.
Perchthold: The nature of the services has changed. What happened during re-engineering,
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