Types of consulting
In order to understand in advance what exactly the result will be achieved after contacting a consultant, it is necessary to have an idea of what kind of consulting you need at the moment and accordingly build a dialog.
Basically consulting by methodology is categorized into:
- Expert consulting;
- Training consulting;
- Process consulting.
Let’s take a closer look.
Expert consulting
Expert consulting is consulting in which the client provides the necessary conditions and data for the work, and the consultant, acting as an espert, conducts a diagnosis and makes recommendations to correct or optimize the existing situation.
Examples of expert consulting:
- The client asks a question (for example, about which plugin is best to use for SEO in WordPress CMS), the consultant answers verbally or in writing;
- The client identifies the problem (for example, such that the site fell out of the search engine index), the consultant asks for a list of necessary additional data and accesses, then conducts diagnostics and provides a report with recommendations for solutions.
Expert consulting refers to cases when the problem is of a general nature and is not related to the narrow specific framework of the company itself, i.e. there is no need for a deep dive into its business processes.
Training consulting
Training consulting is consulting where diagnostics and recommendations are made in parallel with training of the client or his employees.
For example, it might look like this:
- The client company needs to keep track of conversions made through the website. The consultant, together with the company representatives who will be responsible for this field of activity in the future, installs the necessary tracking systems, counters, and sets tracking goals on the client’s live website. After installing the counters and setting the tracking settings, the consultant trains the client on the example of real tasks to collect statistics, compile reports, understand conversion funnels, and so on.
- The client needs to set up the management of contextual advertising campaigns in-house. The consultant together with the client creates accounts in contextual advertising systems, explains the difference between search advertising and advertising on thematic sites, teaches on a live example of the customer’s site to create, configure and evaluate the quality and return from advertisements and campaigns, explains what factors can be used to optimize advertising and save money.
- The client company, which had previously conducted an audit of its advertising campaigns, found out that the problem of low conversions lies in the usability of landing pages. The client would like to improve the usability of the existing pages and in the future to be able to perform this operation in-house. The consultant and the client’s representatives conduct A/B testing, at the same time teaching the tools for conducting tests, the principles of A/B testing with a focus on pitfalls, and post-test analysis.
Training consulting is suitable for those clients who would like to get at their disposal some quite specific expertise, while not feeling the desire to spend time on courses that teach insufficient, or a wider range of tasks.
Process consulting
Process consulting is consulting performed as support for the implementation of changes in the existing processes of the company, or the formation of new processes, methods and tools.
Project consaling
Project consulting is a development of process consulting, or an independent type of consulting, which involves the consultant working with the client and his staff to solve a specific problem, defined in time and objectives.
Example:
- The client company, having studied the market situation, comes to the conclusion that it would like to increase the number of repeat sales, the rate of which is significantly inferior to that of its competitors.
The consultant participates in meetings, conducts interviews and in the process of further organizational diagnostics, among other things, finds out that email mailing to customer addresses is of a general nature and does not arouse proper interest. Personalized emails are sent only manually and, of course, not to the entire very large base of existing customers, although the employees have the desire and ideas for letters, but do not have the technical knowledge to automate the process.
Another problem that has opened up, exacerbating the first one, is that top management is biased against employees and believes that they are simply too lazy to do the required amount of work.
In the course of negotiations with the top management, the consultant explains lucidly with proof presentation base – why employees are physically unable to perform the required amount of work and after brainstorming a decision is made that the most profitable option for this company is the implementation of marketing automation system.
At this point, the process approach moves to the project approach: the consultant, working with the client’s representatives, implements the marketing automation system into the company’s work, in particular, setting up conditions for automatic personalized email newsletters that respond to triggers of user interaction both with the site and with the company’s employees.
Employees are relieved of monotonous work and their time is reallocated to more intelligent and interesting tasks, the number of repeat sales increases, and customer satisfaction increases due to a more personalized approach.
Do you still have questions and are not sure if you need counseling? Don’t hesitate to ask!
