As a successful small or medium-size business owner, the last thought that comes to mind is seeking outside help or advice. After all, you know your business inside-out. Here are a few reasons why engaging a strategy consultant can add value and keep your business on track for future growth.
A strategy consultant’s expertise and skill set can be a game-changer for a company. Whether your business is facing a shift in customer preference, industry upheaval, increased competition, or an array of other challenges, a strategic consultant can show you where to focus and how to overcome challenges beyond your control.
Outside Perspective
One of the key reasons to consider hiring a strategy consultant is objectivity. It can be very difficult to get an accurate measure of the business you built, especially when sensitive or complex matters arise. A strategy consultant has the benefit of looking at your business from the outside. With a unique perspective, he or she can identify, analyze and report on what’s going well for your business and where some improvements can be made. Are all departments pulling their weight? Is resource allocation equitable? Is cross-functional communication an issue? An objective perspective can provide you with unbiased information for decision-making.
Cost-effective
Let’s say you have decided your company needs to spend extra time on developing a sales force training program. To bring in a new hire for a specific need can be financially prohibitive for a small or medium-size business, because the cost of onboarding and the ongoing cost of benefits can take a big chunk out of a budget. To hire a strategy consultant means filling a need within the organization in a nimble way such that costs are minimized. Your strategy consultant can draft and implement a program in far less time than the learning curve required of an employee starting from scratch.
Topic-specific knowledge
Tapping into the industry experience of a strategic consultant can open up a wealth of options and knowledge from someone who has the benefit of already having tightly-focused, hands-on knowledge in the field. Letting someone who’s shepherded a similar small or medium business through comparable challenges can smooth the way. Learn from another company’s successes through the expertise of a qualified strategy consultant.
Perhaps your marketing productivity isn’t meeting your goals, but multiple conversations with your department heads aren’t getting you past your existing strategies. A strategy consultant with industry experience in market research and analysis may be able to apply successful methodologies used under similar conditions to help you move past stale marketing models.
Change-agent
Change can be hard, even in the best of times. When hard decisions may need to be made, it can be best to bring in a strategic consultant to consider the issue and provide a solution or choice of solutions. The consultant is impartial, and his or her allegiances are to reaching the benchmarks set for the success of the project. To undertake significant change under the auspices of a strategic consultant can alleviate some of the intensity or tension that these decisions sometimes bring; hard decisions that prompt interpersonal drama can be mitigated by a third party taking charge of the decision-making process.
Deciding that your business can do better is a big step. And bringing in a strategy consultant to help guide your decision-making through the process of examining issues and coming up with workable solutions can be the right choice if you want an objective view from an experienced industry professional who’s comfortable making hard decisions in a cost-effective manner.