Consulting Skills

Course Specifications

Course number: 088996
Course length: 0.5 day(s)

Course Description

Course Objective: You will develop the necessary skills to be a successful consultant, by learning from the best: industry expert Elaine Beich. You will explore the basics of consulting and how it may affect your work and your organization. In addition, you will examine the ethics of consulting, marketing your consulting business, and how to interact with clients and other consultants.

Target Student: This course is intended for business professionals starting out in any branch of the consulting field.

Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for this course.

Hardware Requirements

At least 512 MB of RAM
A Pentium® III with 500 MHz (or better), Macintosh® Intel-based, or PowerPC G4 (or better) processor
A monitor capable of 1024 x 768 screen resolution and 32-bit color display

Software Requirements

Each computer requires the following software:

Microsoft® Windows Vista®, Windows® XP (Professional or Home Edition), Windows® 2000, Windows® 7, or Apple® MacOS® X10.4 (or higher)
Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7 (or higher), Mozilla® Firefox® 2 (or higher), or Apple® Safari ® 2 (or higher), with pop-up blocking turned off
Adobe® Flash® Player 8 (current version recommended)

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

identify what consulting is and recent industry trends that you can use to your advantage as you work in the consulting field.
examine the importance of establishing and maintaining healthy client relationships, including how to conduct a successful first meeting with a client, and then how to continue to build that relationship into a partnership. You will delve even further into the topic of client relationships by identifying how to continuously improve your client relationships and how to manage those relationships after contracts end. Knowing how to expand your market will help you acquire new clients and build your customer base.

Course Content

Lesson 1: The Basics: Topic 1A: Consulting Basics; Topic 1B: Develop Skills for Success; Topic 1C: Be Aware of Business Trends

Lesson 2: Marketing, Building, and Expanding: Topic 2A: Market Yourself; Topic 2B: Foster Healthy Client Relationships; Topic 2C: Expand Your Market; Topic 2D: The Ethics of Consulting; Topic 2E: Exude Professionalism