Eight Effective Ways to Communicate Your Consulting Results to Clients
by James A. Alexander, Ed.D. and Mark Hordes, Partners/Alexander Consulting

Overlapping strategies, redundant task force objectives, increased costs, and long implementation times have left many executives suspicious about the true results that service improvements can achieve. The challenge today is to integrate, maintain, and zero in on programs that demonstrate results -- and then communicate the benefits of each program to clients. If you don’t, you risk your efforts being discontinued, inappropriately merged, or segmented away to remote locations of the organization.

Many successful efforts are discontinued due to key managers failing to analyze, plan, and communicate results effectively. Service delivery improvement efforts need the right publicity — tailored to pre-determined objectives and themes, and prepared and presented to appropriate audiences.

Planning your approach

Before deciding on a communications approach, set time aside to you’re your communication assault. Ask yourself these critical questions:

What is the anticipated outcome of the presentation? Depending on your audience, your goals could be to:

• Communicate information about the program with other departments.
  
• Justify staff involvement and time investment.
  
• Build a “critical mass” of support for the program.
  
• Establish the program as an ongoing, formal process within the company.

Why present this information? Your purpose in presenting program details may be to:

• Inform or instruct.
  
• Promote or “sell” productivity and quality.
  
• Attract interest and set the stage for further action.
  
• Inspire or initiate action.
  
• Evaluate, interpret, or clarify.
  
• Gather ideas and explore alternatives.

Which principal factors most interest my audience? With most support projects, you’ll typically find organizations most concerned about:

• Reducing the cost of services.
  
• Improving quality and delivery.
  
• Shortening schedules to support the customer base.
  
• Increasing performance of consulting.
  
• Improving effectiveness of marketing.
  
• Enhancing quality of work life.
  
• Increasing participation in client decisions.
  
• Improving service flow.
  
• Developing and tracking service measures.
  
• Enhancing individual and group ability to execute.

Your answers to these questions should point you in the right direction but it’s also important for you to develop your own list of questions and tailor your message to the unique factors and priorities of your environment.

Eight approaches

After your planning is complete and you’ve analyzed the program’s results, consider these eight communication approaches.

1. Total evaluation approach (TEA). The TEA approach is the most complete and detailed method of communicating the results of your consulting efforts. It’s generally used at the completion of a project or at the end of a specific phase of a project. A total evaluation typically includes combinations of the other approaches mentioned later. There are typically seven sections in the TEA approach:

• The summary.
  
• All background information.
  
• A description of the evaluation process.
  
• A list of results.
  
• A discussion of the results.
  
• The cost/benefit analysis.
  
• A complete set of conclusions and recommendations.

2. The descriptive approach. This approach is most effective when you have to present a proposal for a new undertaking based on the success of a previous effort. Prepare answers to questions about the program such as: “What is it?”, “What does it do?”, and “How does it do it?”

3. The critical-events approach. This approach focuses on the tasks and processes that affected the program. The emphasis in this approach is on answering such questions as “What happened?”, “Why did it happen?”, and “So what?” A critical-events approach is most effective when some dramatic improvement occurred as a result of a services improvement effort.

4. The status approach. This approach highlights what was planned, what was accomplished, and what will happen next. It presents a program update. This is most useful in sustaining momentum, documenting past successes, and getting buy-in for a program’s continuation.

5. The analytical-scientific approach. This approach is best when management has identified a specific problem. Your purpose in using this approach is to communicate how the productivity improvement program is addressing or has overcome that problem.

6. The needs-satisfaction approach. If a particular method for service improvement has been selected over another, a needs-satisfaction approach can demonstrate why that method was chosen. Using this approach, you acknowledge the validity of other methods, and show that you took a comprehensive, thoughtful look at the possible solutions.

7. The reflective approach. This approach is simply the old adage, “Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; then explain what you’ve told them.” It’s a general, catch-all approach you can adapt for any audience. It can take the form of a report or an update.

8. The human interest/affective approach. This approach leverages testimonials from people who have experienced the services improvement process. Both first- and third-person accounts of changes and results can be effective.

End results
Success alone should be enough to breed more success but in today’s challenging environment and executive skepticism, you need an effective communication strategy and approach to make sure your program’s success and effort is acknowledged and understood. That communication can be the difference between the life and death of your service improvement program.

Jim Alexander and Mark Hordes are partners with Alexander Consulting, LLP, a management consultancy that creates and implements strategies for professional services organizations. They also are authors of the new book S-Business: Reinventing the Services Organization. Contact them at 239-283-7400, ac@alexanderconsultingsbiz.com, or visit www.alexanderconsultingsbiz.com.

S-Business: Reinventing the Services Organization
By James A. Alexander and Mark W. Hordes

S-Business: Reinventing the Services Organization offers a focused, cohesive, and comprehensive approach through which decision makers in product, professional services, and support services organizations can embrace services as a strategic weapon.

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