Are you an order taker or a consultant?

Hello!!! How is your internship? I hope everyone is doing fine.

In this post, I would like to share about the training session that I attended last Thursday given by the top management of the company that I'm interning with. It's about "PR Consultant".

From the lecture we learnt, we know that a PR consultant is a person who engage in dialogue with a client organisation and develop recommendations through his/her expertise. He/she is basically working for the client and fulfill the client's needs.

But, is it a consultant must follow and listen all what the client wants? 

Now, here is the difference between order taker and consultant. Order takers will simply accept and say yes to everything what the client wants. They are ‘yes person’. On the other hand, consultants accept what client wants and at the same time give a point of view. They are ‘yes but person’. The speaker emphasised the importance of a consultant to have a point of view. 

For instance, a client prepared a list of positive comments approved by the CEO of client organisation and asked you to post all of them on its Facebook. What would you do?

Basically, as a consultant, you must say yes to the client. But, you can have a point of view like asking the purpose of doing it, suggest reading through the comments first and edit the comments if necessary before posting them. 

Throughout this training, I learnt that consultants must have a point of view in every task they are working at, either in giving recommendations on accounts or in responding to the request of clients.

To all the future PR consultants out there, remember we are not ‘yes person’, we are ‘yes but person’!

Cheers,

Ching Mei