Top 5 Questions Clients of Consulting Firms Should Ask Themselves

Are you hiring the right consulting firm for the job?

1. When did you last conduct a comprehensive market analysis of the providers available to you and their strengths and weaknesses? If you’ve been hiring firms for the same work over time, have you examined the opportunity to spread this work across more-specialized providers?

2. Have you aggregated spending on consultants across your company to identify both the absolute amount and patterns involving individual firms?

3. Do your providers make transparent the analyses that underpin their recommendations? Do you have an opportunity to standardize any of these analyses into hard assets that you can maintain?

4. Do you involve staff members with experience in the professional services industry in developing proposals and managing subsequent engagements?

5. Do you have a robust, outcomes-based system for assessing the quality of the work providers perform for you? Do your assessments drive decisions about future hiring?