Getting the Right Professional Advisors

I’ve had too many years in business for my own good, and during that time I’ve seen many professionals engaged in many different situations. These can range from the usual accountants and lawyers, through IT people, sales, PR consultants, marketing advisers, and general business consultants. In fact, you name the business function and there are experts willing to help, normally for a price.

That’s the best way of putting it. An alternative view is that regardless of discipline, there are many failed practitioners acting as consultants and ready to fleece you. That’s the problem. The consultancy you receive is mostly as good as the individual consultant involved. They have a limited repertoire of clients. So it’s hard to get a range of recommendations, and this is always the best way to choose individuals. It’s certainly harder than with say, a physical device or software package that might have hundreds of thousands of users.

Used right, consultants can save you a fortune, both in pure financial terms and time. I can think of a very recent example of where a ten minute conversation with a lawyer, that would probably have cost £50, would have saved several thousand pounds and a lot of hassle.

On the other hand, used incorrectly, consultants can burn through huge amounts of money. They also get the benefit and experience that you may need for your own staff, then sell that to your competitors. They can also de-motivate staff who may feel that all of the interesting stuff gets done by these outside guys.

I am a great believer in using consultants, but I also think that there can be huge down-sides too. Here’s my quick checklist for using them in a sensible way:

• Do you have the expertise in house? If you do, then do your utmost to use it
• Do the external guys already have the experience you need? If they don’t, try not to be the one that educates them at your expense
• Is the function or knowledge core to your business? If it is, even if you use consultants, you need to have a plan to transfer that expertise in-house
• Are there good reasons for keeping the function outside? For instance, a PR company may maintain better contacts with journalists due to their range of clients, a creative agency may get better results when many creative types work together
• Is it cheaper to use outsiders? If you are small, having a legally trained expert in house might be comforting, but paying them to work day in and day out when you only occasionally need the expertise may work out much more expensive.

My final thought is this. The management of expertise is important. In fact, in a modern economy it’s critical. Developing the skill set to know when to go outside (and and when not to), and how to manage and use that expertise to best advantage, is one of the key skills you need to acquire.