Consultants: Overhyped or Indispensable?

Krissy Manzano: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Talent GTM podcast. I’m your host, Chrissy Manzano. And today we’re talking to a former coworker, but also a friend of mine, Franklin Williams. So excited to have you on the podcast today, Franklin. Just a little bit of background on him. So he was a marketing consultant founder.

Krissy Manzano: He’s a serial sales leader. He is your management revenue consulting and leadership guru rev ops specialist. I mean, what can’t you do right? And he’s currently running business operations at Thermo Fisher scientific. Franklin and I met, at a consultancy. And so I got to see him do all of these things in action, but Franklin, it’s so great to have you on the podcast today.

Krissy Manzano: Welcome.

Franklin Williams: Thanks, and you know, if you’re thinking about what I can’t do, I cannot do a headstand anymore. So you take what you can do and you run with it, and everything else you just push to the side.

Krissy Manzano: I also cannot do a cartwheel anymore, even without injuring myself. So there’s a lot

Franklin Williams: There was a time in

Krissy Manzano: you can’t do as you get older.

Franklin Williams: That’s right.

Krissy Manzano: So, well, glad to have you on the podcast today. I’m really excited about this topic. So today we’re talking about consultants, right?

Krissy Manzano: Are they overhyped or are they indispensable? And, you know, I remember being at a company like in a sales role and We were at a trade show and I remember them going, Oh, those people, they’re just consultants. Like, ignore them. They’re the worst. Like, they won’t do anything. They’ll just come and, like, talk to you and literally just keep talking and not share.

Krissy Manzano: And so it was funny because that was my first, this was really early on in my career, and that was kind of my first Like introduction to consultants. So I always had that view until, I ended up working with scaled while I was at another company and then came to work with them part time while we started Blueprint, and, and also got to meet you, Franklin.

Krissy Manzano: And so, which was a totally different experience, but also very niche, right, for, for modern sales is what they do. So, was really eyeopening in that level, but do you, do you miss being a consultant or what’s kind of, your high level view on the consultancy world.

Franklin Williams: Sometimes, and it’s actually funny because you just said, that your view came from, from early selling. I think most people’s view on consultants is the office space view, right? You get that viewpoint of they’re here to come in, kind of bumble around your business and then fire a couple of people, high five, say profit and walk out the door.

Franklin Williams: And you know, it’s just kind of like what people think it is. And then thinking about my early career, I spent the first five or six years of my career at Cisco systems. We always had those sales trainer consultants who came in, they did like a Myers Briggs test or something like that, they told you this is who you are, this is how you sell, you did a couple of like disruptive, you can’t see my hands but I just put air quotes around disruptive, activities to make you a little uncomfortable and then they would leave.

Franklin Williams: And not a lot really changed, you found out that like 300, 000 was spent and everyone’s frustrated. and I’m sure between the next, between the two of us over the next, however long we talk, we’ll, we’ll dig into this a little bit. I feel like it really depends on how you use them.

Franklin Williams: And I’ll just start this by saying, right, it’s a partnership. It’s a management partnership. It’s an activity partnership, and it’s a desire to change what a consultant won’t do is come in and change your business on their own. They’re not going to come in and be like, Hey, you’re, you’re functioning at 9000%.

Franklin Williams: What, what they will do is come in and be like, Here’s how you change. Are you willing to go through this journey with us? But I mean you’ve seen tons of companies. How do they typically react when they get somebody on board and starting to drive that, that activity and that mindset?

Krissy Manzano: I mean, we, like, as far as like the change goes.

Franklin Williams: Change and, and even just owning the fact that they have an external person there to tell them you’re awesome or you’re not.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. I it’s, this is my experience. And I have a question after this, but I have found that the, some of the worst leaders that are awful to their employees and they have a consultant come in. If you try to befriend them, which is not really my style. I mean, I want to build a relationship. They don’t respect you, but if you stand up to them and challenge them on things to do differently, they’ll still be really not friendly, but they’ll respect you a little bit more.

Krissy Manzano: If you push back and challenge them, those are, that’s my limited experience. Now here’s the problem. Like. It’s easy for a consultant or easier for a consultant to do that, because if it becomes like really toxic, like I can leave, I don’t want that to happen, but I can leave. Right. So they get all excited, probably for the wrong reasons by someone challenging them.

Krissy Manzano: But the problem is it’s not always sustainable because no one else in the organization is going to do that for fear of getting fired. And they don’t always embrace like the, the change. Right. But that’s, that’s my initial view of, of when you come in and try to impact change. But I also think it’s really important to set expectations of what you can and can’t do.

Krissy Manzano: And sometimes just like with, with any role, right. You can get a lot of yes people. Okay, great. We’ll do that. Like, yes, we can, we can hit those goals and it’s just, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. Did that answer your question?

Franklin Williams: Yeah. Well, well, I guess this brings up a second thing, right? And I’ve seen this a lot. I’m curious if you have too. It’s almost easier for people to buy in from a consultant’s analysis and feedback than an internal person. Right? Like I remember as a consultant, I would drive change. People would just do it as an internal person, even though I’ve been there for like three weeks and done the same analysis, they’re like, no, no, no, your internal can’t do that.

Franklin Williams: Nope.

Krissy Manzano: Mm hmm. Yeah.

Franklin Williams: Why is that? Have you seen that?

Krissy Manzano: Oh, a hundred percent. I don’t know that there’s like a blanket answer here, but I do think it’s funny. Like normally we don’t trust strangers. Like in anything that we do, we’re just like crueler to them. Like if we’re in traffic or whatever, right? Like, we’re just, we’re not nice to people we don’t know, or we’re not as nice.

Krissy Manzano: Right. But when it comes to consultants, it’s like, that’s the one, like if you’ve actually hired them, it’s like the one person you’ll like trust over other people a little bit faster sometimes. Right. Which can be really beneficial or really harmful for your business if you don’t have the right person.

Krissy Manzano: Right. So that’s my view. What do you think?

Franklin Williams: No, I, I think you, you’ve hit on the right point, which is that it’s either really good or really bad. But if you don’t hit on exactly the right person, we assume because we’re paying you, you’re an expert. That doesn’t mean that you are. And, and ironically, what I’ve seen a lot. are people who have done a thing advising on that thing, whether they’ve done it well or not, and because their career has grown in it, which is not necessarily causation in turn or at least caused by their skills and activities more so correlated to because you could just get lucky over and over and over again, right? You could have some really easy accounts that have made your career and a really great staff and a really quickly growing industry that you did well at, but well is relative to, expectations. So if expectations across your career are consistently low or you’re in a, in a dated industry, your feedback can be good, but that doesn’t mean you’re actually driving change.

Franklin Williams: It just means you’re driving stability versus someone who’s quick and fast and aggressive. But yeah, if you don’t necessarily know If you’re not necessarily the expert. Right, you’re ending up with someone who’s just kind of telling you what you could have done internally had you listened versus finding that real expert who also knows how to drive change I think the biggest thing and I know you and I have talked about this a lot is our, or our change management frameworks, right?

Franklin Williams: Being able to take what you’ve done, not just as a performer, but as a consultant and use those strategies to make sticky change across an organization.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. So we’re kind of answering this question, but I want to ask it. to be more specific. Why do you, what do you think are some of, and I know there’s not a blanket statement here either, but like what do you think are some of the main driving forces of why people hire consultants in the first place?

Franklin Williams: Oh man. I think there’s a lot of reasons, right? I, I, and, and there’s, I’d actually put it down to three or four. The first one being that people. don’t necessarily trust their own people. And I know that that sounds terrible, but it’s okay, right? It’s not like doom and gloom. I don’t trust you so much as I want to validate that what we’re saying internally is accurate.

Franklin Williams: And that’s okay, right? It’s important to validate or to say, I’m not sure we’ve done this the same for a long time, especially 10, 20 years. They’ve only known what they’ve seen internal. And you need someone to come validate that you’re making the right change because change is expensive, both in churn and in systems, tools, behavior, and potential loss in bookings or revenue if it’s requiring you to shrink or grow your staff at a breakneck rate.

Franklin Williams: People want to feel like they’re ahead of the curve and the one thing that a good consultant brings is an up to date understanding of modern best practices. And then three, right, and I think for me number three is the biggest one, not knowing how to change. And it’s not not knowing what you need to do so much as not knowing how to make it stick.

Franklin Williams: I think what a good consultant does really well is understand how to drive stickiness across an org and adoption, because to me, consulting is sales, right? You’re out there and you’re getting people to buy into what you’re saying. And I see your head nodding and hear you saying that. I’m, I want to hear your feedback and thoughts on this also.

Krissy Manzano: Well, I think it, I was saying, I, I was agreeing with you, but also thinking that’s why you can, It’s so you can tell the difference between really good ones and bad ones. It’s just like a really good salesperson or really bad salesperson, right? It just rubs you the wrong way so intensely. But you, you have to challenge people.

Krissy Manzano: It’s like, it’s not just building relationships. Like you’ve got to challenge people. You’ve got to be a great listener. You have to discover and qualify. Like my biggest pet peeve is when consultants come in. And they instantly change stuff to me. That is the biggest red flag that you’ve got the worst consultant out there.

Krissy Manzano: And I know we’ll get to that later, but like, they’ve been there for two seconds, their goal, just like any salesperson get a discovery call is to listen and observe and understand, right. People that are immediately making changes are trying to get favor and put themselves in front of the business, which never ends well at the end of the day.

Franklin Williams: You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of when you go out and you hire that first VP of sales who tries to get a few quick wins by like push, push, push, let’s close a few deals, but they don’t actually. You know, have a new strategy or an updated approach for your team,

Krissy Manzano: right.

Franklin Williams: which I, I remember going into an account with you a couple of years ago and, we had a VP of sales who was, and I’m wondering if you remember this, right?

Franklin Williams: But they had hired this VP of sales in a family run construction business and they couldn’t figure out why they had breakneck wins in like the first two years. And then all of a sudden, once their pipeline dried up, from, from prior pipeline and deals being worked, they were like, well, we don’t know why deals aren’t closing.

Franklin Williams: You specifically had uncovered, well, yeah, it’s because you didn’t actually build a strategy. You just kind of sat here and said, okay, cool. Like you should be doing more. Let’s do more of the same. And churn, staff churn from pressure just leads to lack of [00:13:20] bookings.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. No, no, totally. I think it’s those types of things. People just really underestimate how important it is. Right. And this, this view of like, I’ve got to get the winds in quickly is often done in a way that’s not strategic or, or helpful and ends up creating a lot of confusion across the board, but going into maybe, you know, when we look back at like where we were, which was like a modern sales consultancy, what, what do you think has changed in this, the world of consultancy and fractional leadership? Right. Cause that’s also kind of tied into it. Right.

Franklin Williams: So, so it’s really interesting, right? But I think through where we are, I feel like there’s this crazy world where people are afraid of modern sales. You know, and we still live in that phase two and three sales where people are still trying to sell product. And in a lot of our startup landscape, aggressive mid market landscape and some enterprise landscape, we’re seeing that pivot, to a post challenger world even. But we’re still stuck kind of in this, in this space of product feature functionality discount. And that mindset of being a consultant is still broken. I think the value of fractional leadership is that you can drive change and pivot aggressively, quickly, but you know, I think the thing that, that always catches me off guard, well, there’s two big things, right?

Franklin Williams: One, you can very easily, like, like we mentioned earlier, just get a person who wants to be a consultant, but has no skills in, in actually change or anything. And then secondly, you have to be cognizant that there’s no risk for this person. They’re coming on board and they’re saying, Hey, We’re going to make change. It’s going to hurt, but we’re going to do it. And sometimes they drive in directions that you don’t necessarily want to go. I mean, I know we saw this happen a lot. And I mean, what’s interesting you’re, you’re sitting here in charge of a recruitment firm. Where, where do you see value in just straight up going to hiring someone out of the gate and skipping that whole, fractional component?

Krissy Manzano: I think if you have the, it’s less, well, you’ve got to have the funds for it and you’ve got to have the time for it. So do you have the time for this person to come in and properly that for 30 days and also give them time to make fixes? Right? If you’re like, I need this person to change everything and in, in five weeks, right?

Krissy Manzano: One, it’s not a good method and you’re going to put a leader in charge. It’s going to destroy your culture. If for whoever is willing to do that, right? And I’m not saying that you go slow. If you’re in a dire situation, right? But I think there’s a, there’s a lot of benefit. Like right now I have a client that are hiring salespeople, right?

Krissy Manzano: And they, they need a sales leader, but they don’t have the money for a sales leader and they honestly don’t like have, they’re not fully ready for like a full time person. So fractional is perfect. Right. Because it allows them to have someone who they hired the right person who will care and can help manage that sales team.

Krissy Manzano: Right. And give them that feedback that it versus just being a yes, man, and get them to a place where they can sustain or get start doing really well while they work to bring on someone full time and transition. Right. I think sometimes, the movie because of the investment of a sales leader, whoever that leader is, people want an immediate return.

Krissy Manzano: And that’s not how investments work, right? Like in any other industry, any other scenario, like when you go and you invest in the stock market or whatever, no one is like, Hey, in 30 days, unless you’re a day trader, maybe. I expect to have a full return on my investment. Like, no, that’s not how that works, especially the bigger the investment.

Krissy Manzano: And it’s the same thing when you are paying people a lot of money. Right. And you kind of have to be honest with yourself of not that the consultant, again, it’s going to be able to change everything upside down, but I think it takes the pressure off that the company hiring of what they do and don’t expect.

Krissy Manzano: So what are you, what do you think?

Franklin Williams: Yeah. Well, well, I, I actually want to ask, right, what, what do you, do you really think that companies are trying to get their consultants to like flip the script over, like, like over its head? Because I you hear it a lot, but I feel like it’s part of the job of your consultant to push back and tell them that your company is not going to change overnight and almost like as a company, weed out people who think they can do that.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Here’s, this is going a little bit off topic, but here’s, here’s the challenge that we, we face. And I do think that this is changing slowly, painfully. We have a society, a business society that is run predominantly by men. And a lot of them have, are not leaders at all. They’re in leadership positions and they’re not leaders.

Krissy Manzano: And it’s this between investors and founders or execs. And it’s this continual push and pull of, I want immediate results, immediate action, and it doesn’t matter how you get there. And it never works out well, the whole let’s lay everybody off, then we need to hire again. Like, I mean, there’s a side where recruiting is a part of this too.

Krissy Manzano: Right. But like, it’s the, the understanding of how you get to change and what that looks like I think we’ve got to like. weed out a lot of these former execs and hopefully get like a new generation in here that’s realizes like mental health matters, how people feel matter. And that is a part of changing your business, right?

Krissy Manzano: Like, and a good consultant will also kind of highlight those things, right? I think people, it’s no different than the, 50 calls a day. And that makes me feel better. If we’re not closing business, even though everyone knows that that doesn’t necessarily drive business forward. Maybe it’s an important metric for S and B.

Krissy Manzano: But, I, I guess when you look at how things are changing with consultancy, like there’s more opportunity for fractional leadership to come in that I think will help with folks that are not there in leadership roles, but they’re not leaders at a company to kind of simmer their expectations a little bit and also have people that aren’t afraid to say no to them.

Krissy Manzano: Right. Which will actually help a lot of orgs in the long run.

Franklin Williams: Yeah, I think that’s fair. And you did touch on something that’s a little off topic, but important, right? There is a level of, especially in selling and business management, male dominance, which can be challenging. And we’ve actually seen, I think it was Gartner that put out this report years ago that female CEOs tend to be more compassionate through change.

Franklin Williams: Think about their people, think about their staffs as they go through that change and creates a bit of a softer, shift in a good way, right? It helps their people

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, 100%.

Franklin Williams: And the biggest challenge that we have when you go through challenging decisions like layoffs, major cuts, is losing your historical knowledge and built talent.

Franklin Williams: Right? So one of my biggest frustrations is when you lay people off, businesses that say, well, we’re just gonna cut one person from every team. Like, well, what if you have teams that can’t afford to cut people? What if you have whole redundant teams? And I know that that requires effort, but that’s the sort of decision that, that I think can be really critical.

Franklin Williams: And you know, if we want to bring this back to consultants, offering that advice upstream as a partner, right? Make the right decision, make it thoughtfully and aggressively. And then also having consultants that are comfortable saying that as that partner, that external hypothetically unbiased partner, driving that advice.

Franklin Williams: So, yeah, I mean, if we pivot away from this a little bit, though thinking about hiring a consultant, how do you kind of work your way through the BS, right? There’s so much noise in the world. How do you think about that?

Krissy Manzano: Yes. Yeah. So I’m actually helping someone do that right now. I think, again, it’s if you, whether you were in sales or not, this is a sales role. Even if you’re a marketing consultants or whatever. Right? So are they going to do proper discovery? Right? Are they going to get on the phone and really understand all the challenges and also make sure that you share what outcomes you want delivered and getting all that and, and listening, right?

Krissy Manzano: I think there’s that first, it might even be a couple conversations of like, which it shouldn’t be. Right? Like so fast to where the next step is a proposal. I mean, it doesn’t need to be long, right? But like a thorough call an hour or two even if they’re separate to really understand what’s going on with the business at a high level, right?

Krissy Manzano: And so you can, so then the consulting can come back with a, what I would expect a proposal that outlines what they are going to do, the time that they are going to do it and the outcomes that they’re going to achieve. Yeah. By doing these things, here are the outcomes so everyone can be aligned, right? That’s important because it helps with scope creep on the consultant side.

Krissy Manzano: It makes sure everyone is aligned and also ensures that, because any good consultant, part of their process should be, Hey, before I come in and do anything, I’m going to do discovery for two weeks or three weeks. I’m just going to, and I’m going to talk to a ton of people at your organization and what we have agreed on in the proposal could change based on what I find out.

Franklin Williams: Yeah.

Krissy Manzano: Because if you said we have all this business and I need help getting to X number, but come to find out, I talked to all these people and like, no, we don’t have that. They want that to happen, but that’s not what we have. So someone that’s already again, not to hold them.

Krissy Manzano: They’re not trying to make themselves not accountable. Right. But saying like, we want to make sure that the scope is still accurate after this discovery, to achieve these outcomes. Right. And so that’s something to me of seeing if it’s a good consultant, right? I’ve, when I’ve interviewed them before, when we interviewed scaled at my old company, right, they were so, they did exactly that, right?

Krissy Manzano: Deb Bierman was actually the consultant at the time. And then I remember one of Chuck’s former consultants that he had worked with a long time ago or through, he knew through someone had come in and he sat us down in a room and he mansplained me, for 45 minutes and none of it made any sense, by the way, just kept talking, separate from having moments of being condescending.

Krissy Manzano: And, he did not get the job, but that, that’s to me at a high level, how you look to hire that consultant on top of understanding their experience, but then see how they actually go through the process and what they’re sharing with you. You should feel valuable insights from the moment you start having those conversations, not just after you sign them.

Krissy Manzano: Anything you would add or change?

Franklin Williams: Well, just, just an anecdote, right? It’s funny that you say this because it goes with, given the concept that it’s that a consultant is a salesperson, right? Hook, line and sinker. You’re a salesperson. You’re responsible for growing your presence within a business, but you’re also responsible for delivery and discovery, et cetera.

Franklin Williams: Then we had a salesperson for a company I won’t speak of basically try and mansplain to one of my staff, one of my female staff, my own business. And you know, when they kept telling us, oh, we have all these internal customers to your business. Look, I’m not signing with a company that’s basically put down my people.

Franklin Williams: And I think something that both sales people and consultants need to understand is that more and more leadership members, especially your decision makers, which in enterprises are directors to VPs, and in mid market to startups can typically be VPs to the C suite. Right? You need to make sure that you use a reasonable tone and engage everyone in the [00:26:40] room.

Franklin Williams: Because at the end of the day, I don’t care who else you’re involved with. If you make my people feel small, you’re not getting the job. But yeah, I hear you, right? Part of what I think is important as well is that people both do discovery and come with a plan that they actually execute. I don’t want to project manage my consultant.

Franklin Williams: And what I would encourage people to do once you hire your consultant is think as much about their operating state as you did before you hired them, right? It’s easy to sell something once you get really engaged, churn begins to creep up, in terms of opportunity to churn and change begins to creep up.

Franklin Williams: Make sure your consultants are managing through that. Right? Proactive project management proactive program management and then make sure as the buyer that they’re not trying to expand or to your point do the other side of scope creep which is where the consultant starts to do more and more and more without your buy in and then you know highlights to you unprompted, well now you got to fix all these other things too.

Franklin Williams: All right that that does happen. I’ve watched 50, 000 engagements end up at 300 grand because they kept extending their reach and finding things that needed, that didn’t need to be fixed, that they broke and determined needed solving. But yeah, I mean, I think the big thing, and you’ve said this already, right, is understand the outcome you’re going for and make sure that the consultants in alignment with you there, I think you said it better than, than I just did.

Krissy Manzano: No, for sure. And I mean, look, I think right now everyone wants to be a consultant like, and I, and There is my consultant friends will be like, it’s awful and I get it like, cause everyone is wanting to be an expert. But I also think there’s like, fractional work is on the rise that we are in this transitional moment in the workforce and the old, structure of work of the workforce, not just like how things have always been is fighting it. They are trying to still push people back in office five days a week. They want to remove the flexibility and then they still think they can lay people off without a moment’s notice because their investor got scared for two seconds, right?

Krissy Manzano: And didn’t even think about that. And then they hire again. And we are no longer at a place and this does, I’ll, I’ll spend this back into the consulting, but we’re not at a place where employers hold the ultimate card anymore. We just aren’t. And the longer that companies take to figure that out, the more painful it’s going to be.

Krissy Manzano: I mean, it is going to be brutal and people don’t like change. Human beings don’t like change, but you, so it’s, I think hiring consultants or fractional leadership is more important than ever right now because of. The scrutiny of Who you hire and who’s full time, but also needing that opinion and expertise immediately.

Krissy Manzano: But also you got to be careful who you hire. And it’s not, but I say all this because it’s not necessarily all the new people you need to be worried about. It’s just now it’s like a little bit overcrowding. Like the ones that have been doing this for a while are also sometimes not adept to the change that’s coming.

Krissy Manzano: So you’ve, you’re going to have to. Make sure that you really are thoughtful in who you hire and how you hire them. Yes, like the, the ones to make sure all my consultant friends, feel I am backing them. If you just like got into this yesterday, You probably should be thoughtful if that’s the person that you want to hire.

Krissy Manzano: It doesn’t mean they can’t do great work. There can be a lot of benefits, right? But like, do they have the experience, the leadership experience and things to do that. But also just because someone’s been in business for 20 years doesn’t actually mean that they’re good either. They can be one of those consultants that are the reason that consultants can have a bad name sometimes, right?

Krissy Manzano: Or be looked at as like they rack up the bill, and don’t do anything, right? And you know, you, you see those things, but I guess kind of shifting to when you do make that good hire, right? That the good consultants, what, what are the benefits that you see, and, and, and the challenges that consultants can bring.

Franklin Williams: Yeah. I mean, some of the real benefits, right, are that you get that unbiased view. You get that perspective of here’s what’s here. Here’s what things actually look like. You also can extend your viewpoint beyond your own business, right? One of the big things that we’ve found is that the average consultant, if they’re good, will service in their lifetime 150 to 200 companies.

Franklin Williams: They have a viewpoint of the patterns of what changes across an industry and they’re up to date. One of the biggest challenges that I’ve had going internal is that things are changing around me. And I can’t see what’s changing without a lot of added work, whereas I used to just see it as part of the job.

Krissy Manzano: Right?

Franklin Williams: So you lose that pattern recognition a little bit that you can get from that kind of partner. But the challenge is understanding what’s really good. You don’t know behind the scenes. Does the partner have a relationship with a vendor? You don’t know, if they’re just selling you more to sell you more.

Franklin Williams: So it’s a blend of right, being able to get the newest, the best and external unbiased view while also recognizing it’s going to be hard. You know, it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a little bit hard, but again, that’s okay. It’s just a question of, are you willing to go through those challenges in order to, to get the right person to influence your business at the right time?

Franklin Williams: And, and frankly, I think what it comes down to more than anything else is looking beyond the consultancy and looking at the consultant that you’ll be paired with a piece of advice I give anybody is do not let a consultancy tell you we don’t let you talk to our consultants. Make sure that you’re very tied off with your project lead.

Franklin Williams: I don’t really care who’s beneath them because they’re leading the show, but, but, but tie out with your, with your lead consultant or PM or whoever on a project. I mean, do you have anything you want to add to that? I feel like there’s so much in there.

Krissy Manzano: No, I, I think that’s a, I think that is a great call out because I think larger consultancies can, that they will sell you really, really well and they’ll show you all this stuff and they, and they will do a great job at it and then you get paired with someone who cannot deliver, what they just said or does not agree with it, right?

Krissy Manzano: Like, no, no, no. So you need to be talking to the person you’re going to be paired with. Yeah. And because it’s absolutely critical because you’re not getting the company, you’re not getting the consultancy, you’re getting the consultant. And this is services, right? So it’s not a, that is their product, but it works very different than a tangible product does, right?

Krissy Manzano: All products are not equal at a consultancy. And so you want to make sure that you’re paired with someone that’s going to be the right fit for you. And that you all are aligned on kind of how you’re going to operate, right? I think that’s a great tip for people looking to hire is to not just talk to the consultancy, but to talk to the consultant that they’re going to work with before they sign.

Franklin Williams: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, one of the other things I’d also tell people Right. Very clearly think about the model that they’re going to execute against. Is it a fixed fee? Is it TNM? Is it how are you going about this? Be very deliberate and very clear around expectations and make sure you review your contract.

Franklin Williams: A lot of contracts are boilerplate. Look at that because sometimes it can work in your favor or against, right? TNM is great because you can basically pay for what you’re getting. But there’s an incentive through TNM for someone to deliver slowly or find more. On the other hand, fixed fee is wonderful because you pay what you pay.

Franklin Williams: It’ll always cost you a little more and you’ll often get pushback if things go sideways that we need more money, which defeats the purpose of fixed fee. So think about the model that works for you. It’s absolutely critical to maximize your, what you need and against what you can afford.

Franklin Williams: But also recognize that some companies will only do one of those models. And that’s okay. That just means they’re not right for you.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Right. Well, and I think to add on that, there, someone can be an excellent consultant for one company and a horrible one for yours. There are folks that have worked at really large corporations and they moved up. They were there most of their career. They crushed it there and they’re going to be great for similar organizations where they understand that red tape, the bureaucracy, all those things.

Krissy Manzano: They’re probably not going to be the best consultant for a startup. That and I’m not saying that people that come from large orgs can’t be impactful at startups. It’s definitely not what I’m saying, but it’s one example of something that I’ve seen. And I’m sure you’ve seen right where this you see folks.

Krissy Manzano: I’m like, Oh, I’ve worked with like all these large companies. I might you want to know what their background is, right? And it’s not about industry matching. There are some elements where industry matters, but I will tell you 99 percent of the time it doesn’t. I know that’s not what people like to hear and they don’t believe it, but having done this enough from being an operator to a consultant to a recruiter, I can tell you industry is like, it’s all about their skills and behaviors.

Krissy Manzano: And there’s tons of studies and data to back that up. Tons of them, whether people want to look at them or not. But so people can get caught up in like the industry that someone comes in or right. But you’ve really got to look at the background and go, Hey, like what are my outcomes here? I want to, and I’m using another sales outcome, but like I want to drive, I want to be able to change my GTM strategy or I want to get better.

Krissy Manzano: I want to improve my SEO and do these things right. Does someone have the skills and behaviors? That would tie into the experience because consultancy experience does matter, more to drive those results for you, right? And when you look at it from that, and you’re going to remove the whole, picture that they’ve painted of look where I look, I used to work at Apple or Google or wherever, right?

Krissy Manzano: And it’s really impressive, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to tie into the outcomes that you need, right? So

Franklin Williams: That’s right.

Krissy Manzano: Any, any additional, like thoughts on, on good tips or advice there?

Franklin Williams: I mean, I think some of those are, what you highlighted is really a lot of it, right? I think some of the other things, right, to keep in mind, it’s not for everyone.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah.

Franklin Williams: Right? It’s not for everyone both to engage in and to do. And as we mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, discovery is everything. I, I think my biggest thing is just to come back and hit on the fact that it’s as much sales as it is advisory.

Franklin Williams: And that goes both for a consultant and someone in a consulting accepting role, right? If you’re in that role, they want to sell you more. Consulting is a land and expand business. You get in, you pivot, you grow. You find something new, you pivot, you grow, and then you begin to expand across an org. That’s how consulting businesses thrive.

Franklin Williams: They basically become an inseparable partner. So through that, you’ll just find them doing discovery all day long. Oh, tell us more about this. Right? So, be cognizant as a consultant, you need to be learning constantly every day and expanding. And as a, as a firm hiring a consultant, Be aware that consultants are metriced on discovery and growth, right?

Franklin Williams: So they’re asking for more, which is as much to deliver more as it is to scale.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah.

Franklin Williams: And it’s, it’s two sided. I know people know this, but I know that people often forget as a, as a procurer of consulting services, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t remember that they’re here.

Franklin Williams: So yeah, I mean, I think those are the big things for me I’d, I’d, I’d ask you, what are your thoughts on given that you’ve asked a specific question, what are your thoughts on, on false positives? Right? I feel that’s like, that’s a thing that we don’t talk about a lot. And by that, I mean, things that someone says is a thing that But it’s not really what they’re [00:40:00] highlighting it as, but it becomes a major component of the narrative that’s being created with about a customer.

Krissy Manzano: You’re talking about the consultant highlighting the false positives?

Franklin Williams: Right. So if I’m a customer, right, I often hear, Oh, this is a huge issue. And oftentimes things are, are an issue or aren’t an issue. And we’re highlighting them as a big issue because we want to solve something, even if it’s not relevant for us. It’s kind of the inverse of, It’s almost like the inverse of being able to go out and say, right?

Franklin Williams: Well, we’ve identified these key things you have to be aware of in a customer saying, no, no, no, no, no. But, but it’s really an issue. For us, for the customer, though, if you get false positives, it’s a huge issue. It’s not a huge issue. You know, it’s not, but it’s pushed so hard. You almost begin to believe it is.

Krissy Manzano: I mean, this goes back to hiring, honestly, like if you were hiring the wrong consultant, you’re going to be in a, sorry, a really shitty situation the whole time until you’re done with him. in like, if, if your thought is I’m going to hire them and then like I don’t want to hire somebody and have to be worried about if they’re actually being honest and truthful the whole time.

Krissy Manzano: Like that is counterintuitive and it doesn’t help anybody. One of the biggest benefits of hiring a consultant or it’s like they are going to be straightforward with you and highlight what needs to happen, even if it means like, of course, they want to look at opportunities to grow. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Krissy Manzano: And people shouldn’t be scared about that. Right? Good consultants will say, Hey, I’m going to solve this. Here are other things that you could solve that are beneficial. If you want, I’ll help you with them. If you don’t, I don’t have to, right. I would love to help you with them, especially if I’ve gained your trust.

Krissy Manzano: Those are good things. Like that’s actually a benefit. Because consultants are going to be the right ones. We’ll be honest with you in a way your employees never will. I don’t care about your open door policy. I don’t care how approachable you feel you are. At the end of the day, from what we have seen just over the past few years, but just what the workforce has done in the past in general, or the, I should say the employer and not the workforce is a, when people get feedback, they are retaliated against.

Krissy Manzano: Right. Or it’s just dismissed and it’s not reviewed. Whereas a consultant, no one can touch them. They can tell you your baby stinks and it’s ugly. And the worst thing that you can do is decide you don’t want to work with them anymore. You can’t do anything else to them really at the end of the day, right?

Krissy Manzano: And so the, I think people are a little bit more open to believe, but when it comes to like the false positives and the pushing, it, my view on that is like, I don’t even want to go down that rabbit hole because if I’m hiring someone that’s doing that, like, and you see that, like, then I’m done. Right. If I, if I found that happening, but I also am not looking to hire someone to manage that.

Krissy Manzano: That’s, I think sometimes people look at hiring as like, okay, I did this now I want to, and then they want to like be interviewing them while they’re there. Right. Whether it’s a consultant or employee, it’s like, that is such a waste of time. And so counter. Right. Versus doing the work on the front end. So you don’t have to worry about that.

Krissy Manzano: What are your thoughts?

Franklin Williams: No, I think that’s exactly right. Right. You, it’s almost like people will pick the consultant and then there’s kind of like agree, agree, agree the whole way instead of actual. And then, and then once you’re on board, be like, well, tell me about you, help me get your process and your thought process.

Franklin Williams: It’s like you hired somebody. You would never hire somebody without a thoughtful, large interview process. Why are you letting someone make heavy, heavy, adjustments to your business?

Krissy Manzano: Right.

Franklin Williams: Really thinking through it and understanding who they are. So, so, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with you, right? It’s, I think it’s a big one.

Franklin Williams: Get to know your people before you hire them because ultimately they’re your people.

Krissy Manzano: I mean, you would never go to a doctor and be like, I don’t feel good. Give me medicine. They’d be like, well, what do you not feel good about? Like, what is this, right? And I think sometimes, again, these are a lot of people we have in leadership roles that are not leaders. And they just want to take action.

Krissy Manzano: Whether that’s… Oh, the economy is hurting. I’m afraid of our cashflow. Let’s cut 30 people tomorrow. Right. That it’s this very like whiplash action. Action makes me feel like I’m doing something when in fact, if you were doing anything, you were normally making the problem worse. Right. And you don’t get to cut corners with problems.

Krissy Manzano: You could try, but it doesn’t ever work out well in the long run. Those are things that I think when it comes to, to hiring folks, I think there’s a lot of benefits to consultants, right? Like, are they over, are they overhyped? Or are they indispensable? I think it depends on who you get.

Krissy Manzano: I think some are going to be indispensable for your organization and you should you may not need them forever. That’s the great thing about fractional. You don’t need them forever, but you can always come back to them as things arise, right? For, the projects that you have. What, what’s Are I know we talked about some things that we should and shouldn’t do as buyers with the consultants, but what are kind of your key thoughts on consulting in general?

Krissy Manzano: If if folks are looking to go into consulting, or what makes a good consultant, essentially kind of talking to that side of the audience?

Franklin Williams: Yeah. So, so I think the big things, right, are you do have to have experience in the industry you’re consulting in. Number one. Two, you need to understand change management and, and frankly, leadership behavioral skills, right? You need to understand that change narrative. Three, you have to have a learning personality and you have to be okay with confrontation.

Krissy Manzano: Yes.

Franklin Williams: Four, you need good project management skills. If I have another consultant who can’t manage a project, I’m going to lose it. it’s such a terrible way to, to, to partner with someone. And then five, you’re running a mini business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a consulting manager or just a consultant.

Franklin Williams: You are running a business. So you need to be comfortable both managing your project, managing the customer, managing their payment schedule, managing whether they’ve done these things, having executive level discussions, working with all of your various teams doing things to get them over the board.

Franklin Williams: And then six, which is the biggest one to me, understand, are you good at this? Is this something that you have the skillset for? Don’t try and be a consultant if you don’t have the skillset to be a consultant. You’re wasting everyone’s time, including your own, and you’re going to damage your reputation.

Franklin Williams: And that happens a lot. And what am I missing here?

Krissy Manzano: I mean. I don’t, you have to, I don’t think if you don’t understand the, the fundamentals of sales, I know this is probably gonna be a little controversial. You’re probably not going to be a very good consultant, even if you are marketing it or whatever, because you have to understand that discovery. Like those are like, it’s so funny to me.

Krissy Manzano: So many people who hate sales are actually really good at it. As far as the, because it’s people don’t always understand sales can still kind of have this old car salesman view. I think that’s definitely changing. You see universities having sales majors and sales professions and whatnot.

Krissy Manzano: But so I think that’s changing, but sales is no matter what profession you do, it is some of the basic foundational elements of it are key in everything that you do. And if someone isn’t good at some of those things, you’ll. You’ll drown as a consultant and the project management is a huge is a huge piece of that, right?

Krissy Manzano: Like, in staying on top of, of those things. And I think that’s where, again, like really vetting the consultant that you’re working with, because you’re, you are buying the person at the end of the day, you’re buying their experience, their expertise. So that’s why you need to know, like what they’re really capable of and, and dig in, because when you do that correctly.

Krissy Manzano: It’s really like it will, it will positively impact and change your business and they can do stuff a lot quicker because they don’t have to worry about the politics the same way that someone internally does, right? They don’t have to worry about pissing someone off. Even in my business, we do. I mean, I, I say all the time, like recruiting is actually a form of consulting.

Krissy Manzano: And I, and it’s, I think it’s starting, I mean, it’s going to take a while, but I think it’s starting to people are customers are trying to understand that where it’s like helpful versus just find and hire find me people. It’s so much more than that, but it’s, I remember this was a while ago, but talking to a client and talking to trying to understand what they’re looking for and talking to some members on their team.

Krissy Manzano: And I was able instantly to figure out some folks that were toxic. And we were able to call that out from the front end. Like, Hey, these individuals are incredibly toxic. I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. And if you want to get this outcome in hiring, this isn’t, this can’t be here. It can’t happen.

Krissy Manzano: Right. And it was a really good conversation. But if I was coming in as an internal recruiter to help them hire. Do you think I would say that? Hell no. Right? I would have a target on my back. I mean, that would just wouldn’t work. But I can do that as an advisor, as a partner, because if I want to get that outcome, and that’s my, the only reason I’m here is for that outcome, then I have to get to conclusions quickly.

Krissy Manzano: The right conclusions, of course, but conclusions quickly and share those conclusions. Now, there’s a way to do that appropriately, right? But I think that’s where, like, hiring the right folks and so many people that have great experience are now looking to be consultants, which is a really great thing.

Krissy Manzano: Like, I never wanted to be consultant. You probably didn’t either. And it just so happened questions speak on your half, but I didn’t and. Thank you. It just so happened to come that way, but like it’s more people can do that more than they could before because of technology and access to experience that we’ve never had.

Krissy Manzano: And so I think that’s it. It can really I think it’s going to be part of the future. We’re just going to. We’ll need more fractional help than we realize. Even like VA’s virtual assistants or you just see it in a lot of different ways and the companies that are embracing that now and taking that, they are good.

Krissy Manzano: They are so ahead of the curve that folks don’t even realize that. So

Franklin Williams: Yeah. If I were going to give one big takeaway, it would be consulting is not a job to take because you need a job. It’s a job to take because you love what you do. You understand process, you like the hustle and you want to work with multiple clients. And as a buyer of consulting services, right? That your consultants and understand them and their value.

Franklin Williams: At the end of the day, there’s a lot to be gleaned from being a consultant or from, from, sorry, from hiring a consultant. But you need to understand what you’re getting out of it and drive accountability from what you’re expecting.

Krissy Manzano: Yep, totally. Well, look, I know we’re at the end of our time here, but I hope. Our listeners found, I mean, I know, I know I, I did, and I love talking about this stuff. Some valuable nuggets here, right? Of the best ways to kind of look to, to hire a consultant and go through that process, what they can do for your business, how they can harm your business if you’re not careful.

Krissy Manzano: And then also just for folks looking to get into consultancy, right? Like what that looks like. But if, if anyone ever has any questions, Franklin and I are available. So just nominated you for that, Franklin. So you’re not busy enough. So I thought I’d allow people.

Franklin Williams: Always happy to talk to people, right?

Krissy Manzano: Well, thanks so much for joining us today on this episode.

Krissy Manzano: It’s been great to chat with you, about something that brought us together as coworkers and sharing some expertise here that I think I know that I’ve always valued, your opinion and experience. And I, I have no doubt that others from this episode, are getting a little sliver of that and do as well.

Krissy Manzano: But. Thanks for joining us and until next time, we’ll see you later. Bye.