In conversation with a staff person at a local Boston-based nonprofit, we were talking about wanting to hire a consultant. Her initial reaction was strongly negative, based on a past experience she’d had. But when we started talking things over, it became clear that hiring a consultant might make her life considerably easier, and finally move forward a long-standing under-resourced project (their Salesforce.com implementation) forward. So here are a few reasons why it could make sense to hire someone:

• Buffer – the consultant can have those tough conversations and ask the probing questions that sometimes it’s not so easy to ask, especially to senior staff ( and maybe even your boss!).
• Facilitator/Project Manager – any good consultant worth his or her salt will have a system to manage deadlines and deliverables. They can also push things forward by saying “if I don’t have your information by next Tuesday, then we’ll move forward without your input.” That can be a powerful motivator to get people moving!
• Detective – the scope of a project can sometimes be like a mystery novel: you get clues to what people want, but the “body” isn’t lying in the cellar waiting for you to find it (sorry for the mixed metaphor). They can play that detective role, sniffing out what you want the system to do and why.
• Coach – very often the consultant will have more knowledge of the system than you, so try to think of them as a coach rather than “high priestess” or “guru”. That enables you to work more effectively together towards a common goal, getting the system working for you and your team.

I hope that helps people think about the different roles a consultant might play if you decide to hire them. As a reminder, the list of Nonprofit Salesforce Consultants is on the Foundation’s website. You can also find consultants on the redesigned AppExchange, but I don’t think that list is vetted by the Foundation. In a future post, I’ll talk about the process of finding and vetting a consultant.