Effective training in the management consulting industry is not something that is easy to find. When I was starting out as a management consultant I immediately encountered this issue: a lack of effective training in management consulting. A lack of effective training internally within large consulting firms, and a lack of effective training externally.

So when I had a chance to start my own business it became clear to me that the business I had to start was a business related to training for management consultants. I wanted to develop powerful training for the management consulting industry that I was searching for when I was starting out as a young consultant, but could not find.

I then embarked on a journey of working with top partners from major consulting firms to help develop what I believe, and many of our clients and competitors agree, the most powerful consulting skills training library in the world: StrategyTraining.com.

Strategy Training for the Management Consulting Industry

Over the last over 11 years of building out our training library for management consultants, we developed numerous strategy studies, both the video explanations and the editable slides. This is an overview of one such study to give you a sense of the type of training we offer to our clients and customers.

We teach from first-principles only. While you will see frameworks and processes, we teach you how to develop them and why we developed them. This means our training is more detailed and longer to ensure you understand why we do what we do on a real study.

Our flagship training programs and courses recreate McKinsey, BCG, et al. studies, or what some major consulting firms call consulting projects, to great detail. Every meeting, workshop, analysis and interaction from a typical consulting project is captured in highly realistic videos. Our aim is to help you learn the skills of the major consulting firms, as taught by ex-partners of the major consulting firms.

Our programs and courses are streamed in >150 countries 24/7 and considered to be top training resources within management consulting industry, as well as by companies outside of consulting and governments in all 7 continents. We have built the largest strategy training and consulting skills training library.

Each study teaches the core problem solving skills, using first-principles analyses, though they tackle different problems. They listed in order of difficulty and it is advisable to start with the M&A consulting study since it was designed to teach the core consulting skills it is assumed you will already possess to make the most of some of our other, more advanced programs and courses.

1. Mergers & Acquisitions Strategy Study.
2. Market Entry Strategy Study.
3. Corporate Strategy & Transformation Program.

A complete management consulting training library

This is just a small list of our programs. We have many more in a variety of formats covering a wide range of business issues. Our audio only versions are among our most popular along with the 21Day Programs to obtain measurable results in 21 days.

Each study is supported by detailed consulting skills training videos, toolkits and templates explaining every step of the analyses and every skill used by the consulting team, including all the material produced in the study. You will be able to learn what we did, adapt it for your clients and deploy our tools. This can significantly help you in development of deliverables for your clients.

Consultants, aspiring consultants, MBA students, executives and internal consultants can use these detailed management consulting industry guides and tools to become outstanding management consultants.

We have created the most sophisticated and elaborate management consulting skills training program. Based on feedback from many consulting industry professionals, our clients, the material is more detailed and useful than even that available at McKinsey, BCG, Bain and other major consulting firms. The development of our training resources is focused on positioning our clients so that after carefully working through our various training materials, programs and courses, a client can be in a position to be able to walk into any strategy assignment and complete the study accurately and with confidence.

Below is an overview of a typical foundational program. You should start here.

What you will learn from our consulting training

Study / stream management

• Role of an engagement manager
• Checklist for new managers
• Setting up a study
• Setting up the governance structure
• Making teams effective / efficient
• How to select teams
• Managing work streams
• Building analyses plans and timelines from hypotheses
• Managing the study senior partner
• Development of study charters
• Preparing timelines
• Preparing the project logic
• Conducting a pre-study expectations exchange with a manager / associate
• Managing client alignment meetings
• Preparing CEO-ready updates
• Delivering CEO presentations
• Providing feedback to consultants
• Coaching poorly performing consultants

People / change management

• Culture difference assessment
• Management skills assessments
• Development of a change-management program

Process / change methodologies

• Culture Surveys
• Economic product clustering
• Capacity / capability gap identification
• Migration Maps
• Issue mapping

Analytic methodologies

• Basic Activity Based Costing
• Basic NPV Calculation
• Strategy / Risk Assessment

Economic modeling

• Options / scenario analyses
• Role of the business case leader
• Principles and assumptions
• Benefits tracking
• Top-down financial analyses
• Model drivers and levers
• Model architecture
• Model descriptions
• Top down / bottom up analyses

Operational audits

• Product identification analyses
• Technical compatibility auditing

Foundational analytic skills

• Communicating with CEOs
• Conducting targeted strategy interventions
• What makes a strategy consultant different
• Setting the scope of the study
• Handling CEO disagreements
• From hypotheses to storyboards
• Storyboarding
• Creating perfect slides
• Planning / conducting / presenting focus interviews
• Presenting data
• Developing hypotheses in studies
• Applying MECE in studies
• Development of decision trees in studies
• Using PASSAC to develop hypotheses
• Effective meeting management
• Communicating with clients
• Managing clients
• Pre-presenting to clients
• Providing stream status updates
• Importance of good design / formatting
• Validating a study
• Communicating within team

Staffing

• Staffing:1 Principal 20% time
• 1 Director 10% time
• 1 EM 100% time
• 3 Associates 100% time
• Sector: Electricity Sector
• Region: North America
• Function: Corporate Strategy
• Typical fees : ~$1.9MM Value-based fees which exceeds time and materials fees by ~ 30%

Below we also answer typical questions we get from clients who are just starting to develop their management consulting skills.

What does a management consultant trainee do?

New management consultants, which are often referred to as interns or business analysts (the entry level in management consulting) usually do the most basic parts of analysis, excel work, putting together powerpoint presentations, printing out decks for client presentations, helping more senior consultants develop proposals to win new work.

What do you learn in management consulting?

Some of the core consulting skills you will need to acquire to be a successful consultant include:
– Problem solving skills.
– Interpersonal and communications skills, which include both oral and written communication.
– Analytical skills.
– The ability to work as part of a team and be a reliable team member.
– The ability to navigate challenging situations, and cope with pressure.

What training do you need to be a management consultant?

You will need to have a bachelor’s degree, ideally graduating with very high grades. It does help to have an MBA or another graduate degree and experience of working for major organizations in industries which the firm you are interested in serves.

What is the difference between training and consulting?

This question is common for clients and customers who are planning to start offering consulting services, and considering offering other services such as coaching and training. You can think of consulting as advising clients what to do. Coaching involves working with clients and guiding clients to help them get results they would not be able to accomplish without the coach or would not be able to accomplish as fast. Training teaching a skills so clients know what to do. Training is often done via courses which allows for a lower fee for a customer and less time commitment from the side of service/product provider.

What do management consultants do?

A management consultant works with clients, usually senior employees from clients’ side, to help assess the company, identify problems, identify solutions and help implement solutions. Some consultants only advise and others are also involved in implementation. Management consultants often work in teams. Organizations that require consulting services usually hire a consulting company that is responsible for running the consulting project, and employing and training consultants.