Summary of the reasons to hire a consultant and the value gained when those reasons are compounded.

1. WHY HIRE A CONSULTANT?
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2. Consultants are inherently accountable. Consultants
are generally paid for specific work in a specified
timeframe under a verbal or written agreement.
Consultants want your recommendation and follow-
on work, making them very motivated for your
cause.
Full-time employees are often less motivated to get
the job done.
ACCOUNTABILITY & MOTIVATION
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3. You hire a consultant that has already done the kind
of work you need completed, so there is little or no
training necessary.
Consultants not only tend to have direct experience
in many markets, industries or circumstances, but
they also tend to be the most adaptable and quick-
learning resources that you can hire.
PRIOR EXPERIENCE
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4. Consultants allow you to “try before you buy.”
Often you can engage a consultant on a small
project before contracting them for larger projects
or even long-term engagement. This reduces your
financial risk in spending for a consultant who does
not meet your needs, and it also enables you to
quickly develop your project.
TRY BEFORE YOU BUY
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5. Many consultants will work with a flexible level of
commitment, working hourly, on a project basis, or
under a long-term agreement. This flexibility allows
you to appropriately plan your budget and keeps you
from overspending on full-time employee overhead
or worse yet, having to lay off full-time employees.
WORK AS NEEDED
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6. Consultants may allow you to accomplish efforts
without exposing your intellectual property or
strategy.
Consultants can perform work, subject to
regulations and business ethics, under their own
organization name, keeping your company goals
confidential.
ANONYMITY
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7. Consultants can leverage, but are not limited by,
your company’s culture or business processes.
Consultants leverage the insight and knowledge
gained from other experiences to create the solution
or plan that will offer the highest return for your
organization.
BROAD-BASED CREATIVITY
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8. Consultants are cost-effective. Full-time employees require
a significant overhead expense in addition to their salary to
cover health benefits, 401k matching, vacation and sick
time, computer and other physical resources and more.
Consultants incur none of these expenses.
Consultants are generally hired for a specific budgeted
amount meaning that there is no waste. Full-time
employees, on the other hand, are a constant expense
(directly and in overhead) regardless of their work output.
COST-EFFECTIVENESS
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9. Some tasks, because they occur so infrequently, call
for special skills that cannot be learned quickly or
easily by full-time employees. This is the
foundational value of a consultant, allowing your
company to gain the consultant’s expertise without
having to make a full-time hire.
GAIN EXPERTISE
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10. Many projects and strategies within an organization have
proponents and detractors whose objectives may be biased
by personal goals, office politics or business practice
preferences. A consultant may be able to find a "win-win"
solution and can often be accepted by various parties as an
objective mediator in these differences of opinion.
A consultant can look at the situation completely objectively
without regard for any internal preferences.
OBJECTIVITY
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11. The expert status of a professional consultant adds
credibility to their work and interactions. Companies
can leverage this credibility when using a consultant
to represent them to other companies or industry
organizations as well as internally, rallying the staff
around goals and processes that are developed
under the consultant’s expertise.
CREDIBILITY
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12. Companies, especially start ups and small companies
with limited budget and staff, can hire a consultant
who has many skills from years of varying
experiences and who has a network of colleagues
and resources through which more skills can be
accessed. It would be difficult or impossible to hire
enough full- or part-time staff, and to keep them
fruitfully engaged, as opposed to hiring a quality
consultant with a variety of skills.
SKILL VARIETY
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13. The best value in hiring a consultant, perhaps even the
necessity to hire a consultant, exists when multiples of these
reasons apply to your company’s needs.
This multiple value proposition is shown in the next slide for
technology consulting scenario examples covering
1. Due diligence on a company for potential investors
2. A technology-driven start up
3. A growth company struggling to keep up with their own
success in a burgeoning market
COMPOUNDED BENEFITS
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14. COMPOUNDED BENEFITS
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Investor Due Diligence Start Up Growth Company

15. Consultants can be valuable assets to any company and fill a
much needed void in the hiring landscape for available, cost-
efficient expertise.
Consultants are often considered for only one aspect of the
value that they bring to a company but consultant value is
greatly compounded when the many benefits that consulting
offers are considered.
The concerns that are generally raised about consultants are
really the same concerns that must be faced when making any
hire, full-time or part-time, and all concerns have mitigation
strategies to enable positive outcomes.
CONCLUSION
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16. Read the blog and download the article at
www.jordanridge.com
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