The Art of Consultancy: A Powerful Toolkit to Becoming a Top Consultant

Whether you are just starting out, considering or already working as a consultant this book is essential reading, enabling you to understand the needs of your client and to get the result they want.

There are more factors to consider in order to be a successful management consultant than simply subject matter knowledge. Problem solving and solution delivery have to be accomplished in usually tight project timescales while keeping clients happy. This book, based on the experience of training thousands of consultants, provides insights into the key processes of selling and delivering consulting services, together with the essential underpinning tools and techniques, and the commercial imperatives for running a successful consulting practice.

This book contains the tools, tactics, secrets and attributes to develop and become a successful management consultant. The contents include chapters on the key processes such as:

• The business of consultancy
• Marketing and selling consultancy projects
• Overview of the delivery process
• Entry, Contracting, Diagnosis, Intervention and Closure

And the essential underpinning skills such as:

• Analytical tools and techniques
• Reporting and Influencing clients
• Designing, delivering training sessions and workshops
• The practice environment

'This is the practical approach I wish I had come across much earlier in my career. Calvert provides a strong guiding framework for delivering consultancy projects from beginning to end. His writing makes consulting easily accessible for anyone who wishes to deliver their particular expertise into a client organisation.' Cynthia Pexton-Shaw, Elevation Learning

'A book that gets to multiple editions is clearly a classic of its sector. Calvert’s is in its seventh and will probably go on to many more. It achieves a threefold feat: of being useful to the expert and to the recently qualified and to the student. Even those of us who have spent decades in this profession need a consultancy bible to refer to. Calvert shows how to be rigorous and systematic, but the book is packed with practical advice from one who is both an academic expert and a senior practising consultant. This is both The Art and The Science of Consultancy.' Ian Watson – Immediate Past Chair ICMCI

'This book explains in plain English the role and daily challenges of life as a management consultant, and has been an excellent source of reference in building our business. Calvert presents a practitioners view covering the requisite soft skills as well as the mechanics of solving the client’s business problems.' Martyn Evans, Consulting Director, Altus

Calvert has a degree from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences, and a Diploma in Management Studies. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Consulting (IC) of which he was President in 2004. In 2008 Calvert was appointed the first President of the Richmond Group, of which he is a former Chairman, and he is a Past Master of the City of London based Worshipful Company of Management Consultants, of which he was a founding member. 

Calvert has been a UK Trustee on the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes, of which was a Vice Chairman, chairing the Professional Standards Committee, which oversees global standards in management consultancy. As well as visiting professor and lecturer at Cass Business School in City University.  He founded Elevation Learning in 1989, which specialises in consultant development and has trained hundreds of consultants around the world.  He is the author of several books on management consultancy.