Consulting tips for new consultants hitting the ground

Today’s post is on practical tips to being successful as a new consultant.
Here’s a tactical list for getting off to a fast start on a new project. Follow the 11 steps below and you’ll be a consulting specialist in no time:

1. Set up Google Alerts for your client and its competitors
This is an absolute must. Google Alerts feed you the latest online information (collected primarily from news sites and blogs) related to keywords that you specify. Setup these alerts for your client and its top 3 competitors. This will help you stay current on client and industry developments, which will come in handy through the project. Many people are too pre-occupied to do this regularly, and it’s a quick win for new consultants to add value.If you don’t know your client’s key competitors, use tools like Yahoo! Finance.

2. Know basic financial data for your client
I can’t tell you the number of times basic questions like “What’s Client X’s total annual revenue?” have come up in internal discussions. You want to be the one that can provide an accurate answer, as opposed to “Oh, I think it’s something like $10-20 billion…let me check.”
Some key numbers include:
-Market cap
-Overall revenue
-Gross profit
-Margins (profit and operating)
Memorizing them doesn’t take long. It will come in handy.

3. Familiarize yourself with the client CEO and senior management
There are many stories of newbie consultants having a casual conversation with an employee in the company cafeteria, only to realize a week later that it was an Executive VP. Don’t let this happen to you. You can find most executive profiles on the client website. Read them thoroughly and become familiar with the faces. Not only will it prevent foul-ups like the above, it will also help you understand and manage client relationships.

4. Familiarize yourself with the competitors
This shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Simply have a grasp on the following:
-Who are the top 5-10 competitors
-Relative sizes (eg, number of employees, overall revenues)
-Key products/services (especially what differentiates each competitor from the client)
-General grasp of their strengths and weaknesses

Good ways to get a quick handle on this include:
-Internal firm research reports (if available)
-Analyst reports (eg, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, etc)
-Yahoo! Finance
-Hoover’s

Periodically review this information to make sure you’re fresh. While it’s important to know this info, it’s even more important that you don’t confuse one competitor with another. Don’t ignore the small, innovative guys. The best way to identify them is to scour Google and Techcrunch for your client’s name and industry-related keywords. Staying current on innovative practices is one way to be a thought leader

5. Store the contact information for all people on your team, especially partners
Available through your firm intranet/database. Program the following into your Blackberry for all involved parties, from interns to senior partners:

-Cellphone number
-Office number (if available)
-Email address
-Secretary email and direct line (if applicable)

Some of you may think this is overdoing it. But on every 2-month project, there will be at least 2 times where a client meeting is about to start, the partner can’t be found, and no one has immediate laptop access. This is when having all those numbers programmed into your phone comes in very handy. It’s especially likely when you have multiple partners, visiting “experts”, and rotating teams.

6. Thoroughly review previous client-related work
Most consulting firms have internal “knowledge libraries” that store information about past projects and the firm’s latest thinking. When you’re starting a project, you should mine that library for information related to your client, its competitors, and even functionally similar projects (eg, if this is your first cost-reduction case, you’ll find plenty of introductory material on running a cost-reduction project including examples of analyses, suggest output, etc).
Pay very close attention to the work that’s been done before - this will help your team avoid re-creating the wheel (which can happen surprisingly often). You should also review the “sales documents” that led to the project, including the project proposal and preliminary research 

7. Know a few good places for team events and dinners
As the newbie consultant, the responsibility of planning team events (such as dinners, team-bonding activities, etc) will fall on you. Take the opportunity to demonstrate your diligence and attention to detail. It helps if you have an idea - particularly in unfamiliar cities - of the fun/popular things to do. Ask your friends and do internet research. The more familiar you are, the better prepared you’ll be.
While a poorly planned team dinner at the city steakhouse won’t kill your performance review, people will notice. It’s not your fault that the food wasn’t amazing, but it is your fault that the taxis arrived late, you didn’t invite the partners, and forgot to make the reservation.

8. Build a knowledge hub of client/project-related documents
Sometimes this will already be started by your manager/teammates. If not, take the lead and create a shared hub for project-related documents. Things to put in it:
-Annual reports and 10-Ks
-Analyst reports for client and competitors
-Documents and presentations from previous client-related work
-Primers on the industry and function
This will be an invaluable resource. Organize it well. Continually update as the project progresses with new reports, presentations, and so forth.

9. Pack extra supplies
The Scout Motto is “Be Prepared”. If the previous 8 tips haven’t taught you the value of contingency planning, this one should put you over the top.
Be reasonable - no one’s asking you to bring 4 laptops. But have backups of small, necessary equipment that less prepared teammates may forget. Examples include: power cords, ethernet cables, USB drives, mice. It’s not fun stepping into your new team room on a Monday morning, and realizing that you have no power cord. Rookie mistake.

10. Proofread all client-ready documents
Do this even if you’re not asked. The day/night before a client meeting, review the final version of the documents carefully. You’re looking for small mistakes like mispellings, syntax errors, and misaligned charts. Do a quick sanity check on the analyses. Partners and clients can become unreasonably focused on typos and other nits. You want the discussion to be about the synthesis, not the syntax.

11. Build a strong working relationship with the team assistant
At the beginning of each engagement, introduce yourself to the team assistant. This person is absolutely critical to a high-performing team. Not only do they coordinate the frenetic schedules of all parties involved, they often help on things like proofreading and basic research.
As the new consultant on the team, you may interface with them frequently. Earning their respect is important to getting things done promptly. After all, team assistants have busy calendars too. You want your requests to have top-priority
Source: Internet Compilation

Cheers,
Spacedpractice.com

Five concepts that can be applied to any retail organization

Copy the Best Retailers

An RPM study of leading specialty retailers reveals five concepts that can be applied to any retail

proposition:

1. Simplify your product range e.g. Vodafone stores.

Have you noticed that the Vodafone shops are amongst the busiest retailers in shopping malls? Obviously this is because the cell-phone is the “must have” accessory of this decade, but take a look at how few products these stores have on display! Even counting all of their accessories there would be fewer than 300 SKUs in a typical store. It just goes to show that as long as you figure out what customers need – you don’t have to stock everything. Just stock one product that will satisfy each customer’s needs, keep it always in stock, and sell them what you’ve got! This makes the shopping experience so much easier because staff can quickly help customers make a decision.

2. Bundle your consulting service with every product e.g. The Athlete’s Foot.

This retailer really knows what it is “famous for”. They have perfected the art of bundling their FitPrint®

consultancy service with every pair of shoes they sell. This “free” consultation means that they can charge top dollar (sometimes $100 more than the discounters) for their products. Sure, they don’t have the same customer volumes as Rebel or Smith’s – but they make up for this by making more profit per customer.

3. Use a dedicated checkout operator e.g. Harvey Norman.

It doesn’t make sense to have your top sales consultants stuck behind the counter processing sales at peak times. It’s not smart to have expert sales staff fumbling behind the till while untrained assistants give customer advice! Surely the checkout job can be done more efficiently by someone who is the “expert” at this role?

4. Sell more combos e.g. Subway.

Fast food franchises have figured out a way to sell three things to their customers – create a combo! Other stores should copy this model in their high volume categories. Ask your staff this simple question “If you have XYZ problem what three products would you use?” You will quickly find that there are common combos that should be easy to sell because your staff already believe in them. The secret is to pre-build the combos so that they can be purchased quickly and easily.

5. Make your store customer friendly e.g. Apple.

If you’re lucky enough to have visited any of the Apple stores worldwide you will know that the Apple experience is different from almost any other retailer. Not only do they greet you with a high-paid (US$20 an hour) staff member at the door, but their team of Apple Geniuses WANT to solve your problems and answer questions. Their staff are passionate and engaged, and they encourage you to USE all of their cool products - not just look at them in a locked display. While you might never catch up to Apple in terms of re-defining the way retailing is done, the more you can copy these best-practices, the more likely you will be able to retain a profitable niche as a specialty retailer. It is critically important to create an instore experience that DIFFERENTIATES your store from the self-service aisles at the supermarket. Any specialty retailer that tries to compete head-on with the mass discounters will soon find that they can’t win on price or volume against these Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) experts.

Source: rpmretail.com

Cheers,

Spacedpractice.com

How to measure your Retail Store performance

Four Important Retail Performance Parameters to check if your Store is profitable

1. Customer Transactions
2. Stock Transactions
3. Space Transactions
4. Employee Transactions

Customer Transactions

A - Customer conversion ratio
Retailers ability to turn potential customer into a buyer
= No of transactions / Customer traffic x 100

B - Return to Net Sales

Indication of customer satisfaction by showing value of returned goods and allowances as %age of net sales

= Total Returns and allowances / Net Sales x 100

C - Transaction per hour

Keep track of number of transactions they carry on per hour/day/week or season

= Number of Transactions / Number of Hours

D - Sales per transaction

Measure to give rupee value of average sale

= Net Sales / No of transactions

E - Hourly customer traffic

Tracks total customer traffic/ hour/day/week. Can apply to each dept or entire store.

= Customer Traffic / Number of hours

Stock Transactions

A - Inventory Turnover

Number of times stock is sold and replaced in a period of time

= Net Sales / Average retail value of Inventory

B - % Inventory carrying costs

Track % age of net sales represented by fixed inventory cost

= Inventory carrying cost / net sales x 100

C - Gross Margin return on Inventory

Margin on sales with original cost value of merchandise to yield a return on merchandise investment

= Gross Margin / Average value on inventory at retail price

D - Markdown Goods percentage
if ratio increases retailer need to look at merchandising practices and pricing. Markdowns are symptoms of poor buying, advertising, store layout

= Net Sales at Markdowns / Total net sales x 100

E - Shrinkage to Net Sales
To determine % of net sale lost due to shrinkage

= Actual Inventory –Book inventory / Net Sales x 100

Space Transactions

A - Occupancy cost/ Square foot selling space

Measure of comparing performance of units at different locations

= Occupancy Cost / Square feet of selling space

B - Gross Margin return on Floor space (GMROF)

Gross profit per linear foot of shelf space which is annual gross profit divided by the total linear footage devoted to the product category.

= Gross Margin / Total linear footage devoted to a product category or entire store

C - Sales per square foot

Total sales value in rupee for every square feet of retail space

= Net Sales / Square feet of selling space

D - Stock per square foot

Use of space involving different product lines or compares performance of different departments or stores sing common standard

= Net Stock / Square feet of selling space

Employee Transactions

A - Net Sales per full time employee

= Net Sales / Total full time employee

B - Customers served per full time employee

= No of customers served / Total no of full time employees

C - Labor productivity

= Total labor costs / Net Sales

D - Gross Margin per full time employee

= Gross margin / Total full time employees

E - Supplier/ Quantity or value purchased per buyer

= Total suppliers / quantity or value purchased / Total buyers

Source: (PGDRM) Symbiosis,SIBM

Industry Watch

Consumer goods cos notch up unexpected sales 
Economic Times

"This year, festive period sales have been a complete surprise. After many many months, we are seeing a real stability in demand," said the country's largest retailer Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani.....

Insight of the Week
Big Retailers Still Struggle in India
BusinessWeek
Most Indians continue to find big retail stores more interesting as cultural phenomena than as places to do their actual shopping......

Management Quote of the Week
General Joe Stilwell - "Keep smiling. The higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see of his backside".

Humor of the Week
Man discovered COLORS and invented PAINT;
woman discovered PAINT and invented MAKEUP.

Man discovered the WORD and invented CONVERSATION;
woman discovered CONVERSATION and invented GOSSIP.

Man discovered AGRICULTURE and invented FOOD;
woman discovered FOOD and invented DIET.

Man discovered FRIENDSHIP and invented LOVE;
woman discovered LOVE and invented LOVE TRIANGLES.

Man discovered TRADING and invented MONEY;
woman discovered MONEY and invented SHOPPING.

Thats it!!! Thereafter man has discovered and invented a lot of things... While women are still STUCK with shopping.............. . !!!

Cheers
http://www.spacedpractice.com/

SpacedPractice.com

Welcome to SpacedPractice.com

SpacedPractice.com is a genuine effort to share resources and the most updated information to all professionals of the Retail and Management Consulting industry looking for continuos knowledge sharing and collaboration on updated industry trends.

Why did I chose to name my website as spacedpractice.com ?

Improvement in performance occurs more quickly in greater depth and lasts for a longer time if the decay or extinction curve is longer if new approaches are introduced in relatively short periods with ample provision for rest periods that if continuous or massed practice periods are employed. Hence SpacedPractice.com will not overload its readers with truckloads of information but will try to keep introducing its readers to new approaches in short periods of time with generous provision for rest periods.

Spaced Practice.com intends to be a knowledge and networking portal in the following verticals apart from helpful tips and interesting business cases. Members can look forward to reaching this webspace to understand on the below subject matters.

A- Retail Industry

 - Emerging Trends in the Retail

 - Retail Marketing Strategy

 - Planning and Forecasting

 - Procurement and Inventory Management

 - IT Integration for the Retail Industry

 - Retail Operations

 - Supply Chain design and framework

 - Retail Performance Measurement and Industry metrics

B - Management Consulting

 - Consulting styles and approach

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 - Phases of the Consulting Process

 - Consulting in Marketing, Finance, HR, IT, SME's and Public Sector

 - Starting a consulting firm

C - Project Management

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SpacedPractice.com welcomes all readers to post their comments and interact on the artilces published in this weblog. So stay tuned and enjoy blogging with SpacedPractice.com.

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SpacedPractice.com