Questions to develop metrics may include the following 10 inquiries: 1. How will you know we’ve accomplished your intent? 2. How, specifically, will the operation be different when we’re done? 3. How will you measure this? 4. What indicators will you use to assess our progress? 5. Who or what will report on our results (against the objectives)? 6.

“How do you know it shouldn’t have been 34 percent?”

The buyer is our client, not the organization. A client is a human being, not an inanimate entity.

A consultant is someone who improves the client’s condition by providing skills, behaviors, content, advice, experiences, and other factors unique to that individual over a designated time. The consultant is a peer of the buyer and creates assignment parameters in consultation and agreement with the buyer. The consultant provides intellectual

Emotional support cannot be virtual, and it’s the most important support in any consulting practice, whether nascent or mature.

Value can sometimes be the same as objectives; for example, profit is both an objective and of high value. But profit has significant and varied impact: more investment in research and development (R&D), larger investor dividends, more favorable repute with Wall Street, building a reserve fund, and so forth.

There are always business outcomes, never deliverables or inputs. They describe a component of an improved client condition. Hence, these cannot be inputs, because a training program or a focus group does not improve the client’s condition, per se; it merely costs money!

You derive objectives from the buyer by asking intelligent questions, and not stopping until you have plumbed all available responses. Here are 10 examples of questions: 1. What is the ideal outcome you’d like to experience? 2. What results are you trying to accomplish? 3. What better product/service/customer condition are you seeking? 4. Why are

However, if you demonstrate to your client that the real underpinnings of the issue need to be addressed, you can broaden the project, best delight the client, and, not surprisingly, charge the highest fee.