Many companies have the obsession to find the perfect consultant, the perfect freelancer. They are seeking the holy grail of consulting for one main reason : consultants are so expensive that they have to be sure to hire the best for their business.

As I stare at my co-mates sharing my office, as I observe them practicing as freelancers, I know - as a neutral observer - what is working and what isn't. What let them pass for perfect consultants for their clients and what makes them stand as morons.

I can now set up a list of the best attitudes and behaviors that will transform you into the perfect consultant. Here is the main "good habits" I observed.

1. Never position yourself as a consultant

Your clients do want a consultant to do the dirty job they can't do themselves, but in fact they hate consultants. They don't want someone snobbish or proud as they think consultants are. Consultants usually have a bad reputation in firms that hire them because almost everyone find that they behave like "the guys with the truth".

If you sell yourself as a normal freelancer and not a consultant, and tell people about what you do - and not what you know - you will gain respect instead of hatred.

2. Be clear with your fees

Another mistake many consultants plunge into is to be unclear concerning their fees. As they charge the time passed, they usually send a bill that is not in many cases do not concorde with what was sold in the beginning of the mission. Especially because no-one ever managed to follow a planning.

Selling all your services during your mission as a package with a fixed rate is a good way to make no surprise in the end. You will stand out of the crowd of consultants. Yet you won't earn a lot with your first mission, but you will soon get a second at an honest and lucrative rate.

3. Never try to be a leader within the organization

Usually consultants try to get the leadership within the companies that hire them. They want to be the center of attention while they think they make things changing, they revolutionize the whole stuff.

It's completely wrong. They just move air around the fan. The real change always come from the ones who sign the checks.

So be a good consultant, pay attention to your masters.

4. Don't make diagrams, speak

You don't need diagrams and patterns on powerpoint to express your opinion. Your clients think that your compulsive attachment to diagrams is a way to charge more time and help you stand for an high level intellectual, which means in the end useless and expensive to them.

If you have an idea, a thought you need to share, just share it with your main client. You don't have to write down a document every time you find something. Documents spend time, and are truly never read by the people who count.

5. Don't dress yourself as an undertaker

Even if you are here to bury the firm.

You don't have to frighten people, it's counterproductive.

Don't make them laugh neither. But remember your are not here to win a fashion contest at the French Riviera.

6. Produce results

Mostly consultants are criticized for producing a lot of bla-bla and a lot of theories, ideas and recommendations and very few results. So force yourself to leave a concrete track that could be measured.

Do something, share the everyday life of the employees of the firm for which you are doing consulting. It pays more for everybody than putting white gloves to shake hands with the workers in the factory.



With all these attitudes, you may not become the perfect consultant, but you will surely stand out of the crowd. Whereas all your concurrents usually leave a bad image of the profession, with their "morgue" and non-acting but advising habits, you would be the good boy that people like and want to see again.

And that should be your main objective.