Wendy Johnson started out as an M&A consultant at Accenture, and she got to IBM ten years ago. Now, she is the Vice President at PagerDuty.

In this episode, Wendy talks about the reasons you work with a consultant and not just with someone internally. She emphasize the idea of looking at pricing not as a project but as a process that needs tweaking as you go along and not overhauling.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Discover the reasons how companies benefit from hiring external consultants
• Find out the advantages and disadvantages of hiring external vs. internal consultants.
• Find out how to hire and work with an excellent consultant to avoid wasting money, time, and effort.

“Structure your data and your dashboards in a way to inform all your decisions and such that all of the decisions you make in pricing could be data-driven.” - Wendy Johnson

Topics Covered:

01:39 - Why is it relevant to talk now about a topic on consultants

02:15 - Getting consultants versus hiring them

04:52 - Making the most of a consultant’s engagement with the company

06:04 - Engaging consultants and the value they contribute to the company

07:25 - Driving force behind onboarding a consultant

08:11 - Observation on how consultants work

09:03 - Consultants hiring their own excellent talents

11:00 - Why hire a pricing leader in your company before hiring a consultant

12:34 - What you can do to get other executives involved in getting a consultant

13:12 - One good thing to think about getting data analysts to get involved with consultants

13:58 - Way of knowing for a successful engagement

15:32 - Disagreeable actions consultants do and how to avoid them

17:18 - Thoughts on hiring second consultants and pricing

19:21 - Her pricing advice that could greatly impact one’s business

20:28 - Important KPIs she looks at in her dashboard

Key Takeaways:

“I found that the best way to use consultants and the best way to enter into those relationships is to have a structured engagement with a very finite piece of work or finite task. I think a lot of times the project is too broad. And you end up when that engagement ends, not being left with enough to actually use the work they've done.” - Wendy Johnson

“I think we have to be thoughtful when we engage the consultant not only thinking about the piece of work that they want us to deliver but including what it's going to look like after they leave, like what tools are they leaving for us to use, to reassess.” - Wendy Johnson

“There's been a scenario where we knew we just did not have enough feet on the ground doing a huge transformation. You don't necessarily want to hire a lot of talent, because that capacity need is temporary. So, then you figure out how to fill that temporarily, with consultants, or there's a specific skill set that you know and that's temporary as well.” - Wendy Johnson

“I think if we have an answer to our question at the end of the engagement, and then if we have a way to continue doing that work, we're not stuck with that, that’s success.” - Wendy Johnson

“Pricing shouldn't always be project work. You should build a framework, and there should be some consistent cadence and how you measure performance and you should be tweaking more than overhauling.” - Wendy Johnson

Connect with Wendy Johnson:  

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendykimjohnson/

Connect with Mark Stiving: 

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/