One method is to find tried and true methods and follow them. One of the more successful consulting companies is McKinsey& Company – they offer a wide range of consulting and have been doing it for many years. They follow a system and following a system gets results. The system is outline in the book The McKinsey Mind written by Ethan M. Rasiel and Paul N. Friga published by McGraw-Hill, NY, 2002.

Interpreting the Results

You have done the analysis – what does it mean?

Understanding the Data – it is a whole lot easier to gather data than to think.

Yogi Berra famously remarked – if you come to a fork in the road, take it.

At this point, you have reached a fork in the road – does the data prove or disprove your hypothesis?

Follow the 80/20 rule – for example 80% of sales come from 20% of your clients.

When you see an 80/20 in action, you look at the opportunities it implies.

Do not make the facts fit your solution. – always ask what is the so what?

What do the facts tell you?

Make sure the solution fits your client. Know your client, know the business’s strengths, weaknesses and capabilities – what management can and cannot do.

Presenting Your Ideas

When it comes to presentation, McKinsey consultants learn that a good presentation must convey ideas to the audience in the clearest, most convincing way possible. To ensure that your presentation meets this goal, you need to give it structure that the audience can easily grasp and follow.

Be Structured – take the audience down the path of your logic in a clear, easy-to-follow steps

The elevator test – know your solution that it can be explained clearly and precisely to your client in a 30-second elevator ride.

Keep it simple – one message per chart. Use charts as a means of getting your message across, not as an art project. The more complex a chart, the less effective it is a conveying information.

Stripped of its essence, presentation is selling. Make no mistake, presentation matters. A poor presentation can make a good idea tough for an audience to grasp.

A well-written presentation in service to a good idea can be a powerful instrument of change. The ability to present ideas in a flowing, logical structure allows it to communicate the full impact of these ideas to clients.

Buy-in

A presentation is only a tool, it is not an end to itself. A great presentation is useless if the audience does nothing with it. The solution

Pre-wire everything – before the dog and pony show, walk the relevant decision makers in your organization through your findings before the presentation. This does 2 things” it avoids surprises and you can tailor your presentation to your audience.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many other things to learn from the book but whether you use the McKinsey method or another method it is important to use a method. Each of us want more assets under administration, but once you gain them, how do you make decisions of whether to do nothing – hold and collect dividends; take profits and reinvest or sell the losers? You need a method or homework which leads to decisions.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.