"This is the practical approach I wish I had come across much earlier in my career." Cynthia Pexton-Shaw Whether you are just starting out, considering or already working as a consultant this book is essential reading, enabling you to understand the needs of your client and to get the result they want.

Guide for professional management consultants showing how to develop skills and attributes for client-centric consulting.

“WE ARE ALL CONSULTANTS one way or another—most people just haven’t realized that yet. Anyone providing knowledgeable advice or services to others, independently of their profession, is a consultant. There are certain characteristics that we must all nurture to become better at establishing a relationship with our clients to serve them successfully.” From knowing yourself and developing common sense, to negotiating skills, client care, a professional presence, and leadership, this book covers it all. Regardless of your industry or years of experience, this book will help your career. It focuses on the consultant in you, and is aimed at generating ways to grow based on your specific circumstances, location, and culture. With hundreds of tips, checklists, and self-evaluation tools to drive the self-learning home, this book will help readers find motivation and inspiration within themselves, while maintaining a business-centric perspective. This approach will entice the reader to explore new ideas and guidelines that will improve their professional performance as consultants, while adhering to the culture of their clients and developing a solution focused perspective.

A practical guide for providing exceptional client service Most advertising and marketing people would claim great client service is an elusive, ephemeral pursuit, not easily characterized by a precise skill set or inventory of responsibilities; this book and its author argue otherwise, claiming there are definable, actionable methods to the role, and provide guidance designed to achieve more effective work. Written by one of the industry's most knowledgeable client services executives, the book begins with a definition, then follows a path from an initial new business win to beginning, building, losing, then regaining trust with clients. It is a powerful source of counsel for those new to the business, for industry veterans who want to refresh or validate what they know, and for anyone in the middle of the journey to get better at what they do.

Are you a customer success or support executive curious about adapting industry best practices to your organization? Are you a newly-promoted customer success or support manager with plenty of ideas, but not much management experience? Or are you an executive with no hands-on experience with customer success, but wanting to learn more about how to decrease churn and improve revenue expansion from existing customers? The Art of Support is a practical guide for managers and executives that answers your questions. In it, you will find: - Best practices for customer success and support, from designing customer lifecycle journeys, to managing day-to-day activities, to measuring results. - Nuanced recommendations to build or improve your organization. - Dozens of practical tools you can use right away such as customer scorecards, sample support portfolios, hiring checklists, decision trees for selecting support models, job ladders, and budget templates.

Productive learning occurs when educators work together to create new visions, analyze important issues, and evaluate outcomes. This book explores how educators can effectively engage in peer problem solving, focusing on three aspects of the process: (1) models for consulting with colleagues in problem solving; (2) communication skills necessary for consulting; and (3) how to collaborate with colleagues with differing interpersonal styles. Within these three main areas, the essential skills that educators need for working together, such as trust building, listening, facilitating, collaborating, questioning, communication, and peer problem solving are illustrated through interactive strategies designed to empower educators to become proactive, rather than reactive with conflict. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of consulting. Chapter 2 describes a comprehensive problem-solving process. Chapter 3 explores strengths and limitations of three interactive approaches for consulting: facilitative, collaborative, and authoritative. Chapters 4 and 5 review communication skills. Chapters 6 and 7 describe the wide range of interpersonal styles. Chapter 8 explains how we can work effectively with people who have different interpersonal styles. Chapter 9 and 10 examine issues that make consulting with peers successful and those that make it challenging. Four appendices contain self-evaluations. Contains 41 references and an extensive list of resources. (JBJ)

In the bestselling tradition of Liar's Poker comes a devastatingly accurate and darkly hilarious behind-the-scenes look at the wonderful world of management consulting. Once upon a time in Corporate America there was a group of men and women who were paid huge fees to tell organizations what they were doing wrong and how to improve themselves. These men and women promised everything and delivered nothing, said they were experts when they were not, sometimes ruined careers, and at best, only wasted time, energy, and huge sums of money. They called themselves Management Consultants…. Welcome to the world of Martin Kihn, a former standup comic and Emmy® Award-nominated television writer who decided to “go straight” and earn his MBA at a prestigious Ivy League university. In HOUSE OF LIES, he brazenly chronicles his first two years as a newly-minted management consultant: featuring his struggles with erroneous advice, absurd arrogance, and bloody power struggles. Hey, it’s all in a day’s work— and it pays really well!