“Well,” I asked Mark Robinson, “what about dress? Can you trust a consultant in a three-piece suit more than one who looks like a refugee from a university computer center?”
“It’s really irrelevant,” he said, “I’d look more at things like Can the guy focus on the relevant features of my business? Does he seem to understand what my business is about? This is one of the things that probably isn’t even related to the number of years in micros or computers or what not.” Robinson suggests asking yourself, “Does he quickly grasp the nature of my relationships with my suppliers, my clients, my promotion methods? Is he focusing on the technical solutions rather than my needs first? Does he even consider a question like whether I need a computer at all? Does he try to look at the highest-priority needs that I have in terms of the effect on my bottom line? Does he really have a grasp on why I might have a computer—to move into new things and serve my customers better, to replace existing functions, and so on? Does he know general things like that? If he doesn’t have that sort of perspective, if he isn’t even able to back off as to whether I should have a computer, I may be getting a slightly different type of salesman, someone who is committed to a computer solution, for instance, and isn’t really looking at it from my viewpoint. He is not totally professional.” You might still use such a person, but you’d better consider his limitations and biases.
I asked about “pure” consultants versus those selling software or hardware.
“Most consultants,” said Robinson, “have found that small businessmen’s budgets for pure consulting and their appreciation of it aren’t high enough so they make enough money. So they’ve got to sell software and hardware. And also purity means that a consultant is spread too thin. He’s not able to specialize and know enough about a particular package to be competent in it. So either he has a superficial view of these packages, or else he’s a partisan.” While working as a full-time consultant, Robinson hoped to maintain his purity. “I found myself dealing with a lot of invoices of fairly small amounts,” he said, “and most of my support came from contract programming.”
What with the line so thin between salesman and consultant, you should politely but persistently ask about business connections that could sway their judgment.
Obviously, too, you’ll want a consultant’s résumé if he or she has one. He should. One way or another you’re after the normal personnel-office answers—his schooling (anything that could help him understand your business?), his previous jobs (one computer consultant ran a nightclub once—perhaps not such a bad background for an expert dealing with small businesses), maybe even if he has an arrest record (a perfectly suitable question if he’s setting up an accounting system or doing security consulting). Be polite but aggressive. By not shying away from the basics, you’ll be reminding him who’s in charge—the client. Don’t forget the why. Why is he in “consulting”? It isn’t a euphemism for unemployment, presumably. Also, why is he working with micros rather than mainframes? Attitude matters as much as brains and skill. Ideally, your consultant will be comfortable with the flora and fauna outside the antiseptic computer rooms. While he’s auditioning, see if that’s true of him.
How do you tell? Introduce him to your people, not just your executives. Encourage them to ask questions. If the consultant condescends toward a secretary or clerk now, he may very well do so toward you later. And if he rubs your people the wrong way, they may resent him in the future and take it out on the computerization project.
Well, there’s a caveat here. Maybe the specs for the job are so clear-cut that your consultant can work in a little corner away from the rest of the world. With personal computing, that’s not going to happen as much as with mainframes.
In winding up the interview, ask about the future. Will the consultant be around in the future to do work or answer questions? He won’t be? You still might use him. But police him very carefully to make certain he’s following standardized procedures that another consultant can pick up on. You don’t want your business to go down the tubes when your software man goes off to find his karma atop Mt. Fuji.
Satisfied? Then move on to references—which, if you’re a small, budget-minded business, you might want checked before a full-fledged audition.