THE BUTTONS:

Cause (Why?): Press this button to determine the reason for the client’s statement.

Sample questions include: Why have you made this statement? What are the main causes? Who are the main protagonists?

Impact (So what): Press this button to determine what impact the client’s statement has on their business.

Sample questions include: Where does this scenario play out? How does it affect your business? Who will gain/lose from this situation?

Clarify (zoom in): Use this button to clarify any points the client has already made or any perspectives you have started to formulate in your mind.

Sample questions include: What does your statement actually mean? So what I think you mean is..? If I understand you correctly…? Could you just clarify this for me…?

Context (zoom out): Use this button to get a better understanding of the bigger picture.

Sample questions include: What is the bigger picture? Is this endemic to your culture?

Finally…

OK (“I understand”): You press this button when you are ready to offer the client your recommendations or point of view.

PLEASE NOTE: You SHOULD NOT push this button before you have considered all of the other directional buttons of enquiry.

A WORKED EXAMPLE:

Consider the following client statement given to a consultant:

“Marketing don’t speak to sales teams”

In this scenario, this is how a consultant might use the remote control to undertake an effective enquiry:

Cause (Why?): Why are they not speaking? What are the main causes?

Context (zoom out): Are there other teams that don’t speak? Is this a ‘cultural’ tenet?

Impact (So what?): Where does this play out? How does this affect your business?

Clarify (zoom in): Could you give me some specific examples where this happens? In what way do they not speak?

TROUBLESHOOTING – THE REMOTE IS NOT WORKING:

You may discover that the remote control might not work as effectively as you hoped, and your consultants continue to rush to “I understand” too quickly.

In our experience, if the remote control is not being used correctly, it is usually for one of these reasons:

At an individual consultant level:

1. Your consultants are in a rush to offer a solution: time pressure means they want to shut down the conversation quickly and therefore stop listening.

2. Your consultants have a need to impress: by speaking rather than trying to understand the consultant thinks she is more likely to impress than when the reverse is true.

3. Your consultants believe listening is a sign of weakness: they might think that listening is passive and represents a sign of weakness.

4. Your consultants lack the confidence to ask questions: they choose to back away from an enquiry strategy in case it gives the impression of a ‘lack of knowledge’.

5. Your consultants are nervous that asking questions will have a negative effect: they worry that by asking questions they might come across as accusatory, hostile, aggressive, patronising or overly interrogative.

At a firm-wide level:

We have also found that on occasion an effective enquiry strategy is not followed due to problems systemic to the consulting firm, and not as a result of problems at an individual level.

In this scenario, the consulting firm’s culture does not encourage curiosity, imagination, critical thinking or creativity among their consultants in critical conversations. This could arise for several reasons but two are perhaps more commonly found than others:

1. The firm’s predominant performance metrics: If performance is measured by ‘activity levels’ then consultants are not encouraged to take their time in critical conversations as they need to get back to their chargeable activities.

2. The firm has a list of fixed ‘solutions’: If there is little flexibility in what can be offered to clients, then consultants will rush to end the conversation because they already know what they’re going to suggest to the client before the conversation has even begun!

PLEASE NOTE: In all of these situations above, the only way to correct the situation is to encourage your consultants to learn, practise, develop and refine the skills needed to undertake an effective enquiry strategy and provide them with effective training on how to use the ‘remote control’ during critical client conversations.

FOR ALL OTHER ENQUIRIES PLEASE CONTACT THE MANUFACTURER:

Should you have any further questions on how to use the Enquiry Strategy Remote Control in your professional services firm, please contact the manufacturer – The Openside Group – directly on: +44 (0)1829 770977 or email contact@openside.group

In conclusion:

Many consultants are still too quick to rush to “I understand” when offered a perspective by clients and prospective clients.

As outlined previously, this presumption of understanding, and the rushed, generic recommendations it triggers, can have a negative effect on the client relationship and performance of the firm as a whole.

That’s why in the top performing consulting firms they train their people to take a step back, adopt a curious mindset, admit “actually I don’t understand yet” and then undertake an effective enquiry strategy.

This effective enquiry strategy allows their consultants to get a better understanding of what the client statement represents and crucially, help the client gain clarity of the situation through detailed, insightful questioning.

Only once this enquiry strategy has been undertaken has the consultant earned the right to deliver her point of view or recommendation based on a mutual understanding of the situation.

For those firms within which undertaking an effective enquiry strategy is not commonplace among their consultants, we have created the ‘Enquiry Strategy Remote Control’.

We hope you find it useful.