What does a business consultant do? 7 supportive functions

So, what does a business consultant do?

Firstly, a business consultant should be a credible expert that has the experience, knowledge, and skills to consult you through the challenge of obtaining your professional goals.

The specific services a business consultant offers will differ from professional to professional, but in general, they support you in 7 ways:

1. Determine your goals and challenges
   
2. Highlight your strengths and weaknesses
   
3. Identify risks and opportunities
   
4. Enhance your strategic creativity
   
5. Teach the strategies that lead to success, and those that lead to failure
   
6. Motivate you through challenges and when needed, slap your ego back down to reality
   
7. Possibly research and prepare a variety of analyses and reports

What are the benefits of hiring a business consultant?

The benefits of working with a business consultant include:

• Saves you from time lost thinking and working ineffectively
  
• Saves you money from investing unwisely
  
• Saves you from wasting valuable energy (directly linked to your motivation)
  
• Helps you achieve your professional goals (and sometimes personal ones too!)
  
• Helps you to increase the rate of return (ROI) on your invested time, energy, money & other assets

Warning! Know my intentions before reading further

For full transparency and disclosure, if you see my profile, you’ll see that I am a business consultant attempting to explain the value of my profession for your gain.

Why so? It’s in the hope that I may win your trust, and ultimately business. This means there is inherent bias in the article you’re about to read.

However, I shall attempt to be fair and increase your chances of making an informed decision (whether you work with a business consultant, or whether it is with myself or another professional).

To do this, I will also explain in this article the answers to three important questions:

• When should you consider the services of a business consultant?
  
• When should you not consider the services of a business consultant?

As I’ve already summarized what you stand to gain from a business consultant, it’s only fair to know what you stand to lose by choosing the wrong business consultant also?

When should you consider the services of a business consultant?

Now that you have a top-level understanding of what a business consultant does, let’s highlight when you should possibly consider the services of a business consultant.

Answer the following questions as honestly as you can, if the answer is consistently no, then a strong argument can be made for hiring a business consultant:

• Irrespective of your business initiative or goal, do you have a track record of consistently achieving it?
  
• Do you have sufficient time, energy and money to ‘finance’ your learning curve through research, trial and error?
  
• Can you accept the responsibility, costs and social impact if your business endeavor fails?

When should you not consider the services of a business consultant?

Here are a few useful questions to ask yourself to determine whether you should not consider the services of a business consultant.

• Will the financial cost of hiring a business consultant (and additionally the cost of your time) ultimately outweigh the potential financial returns?
  
  As a crude example, if you expect a business investment to yield around USD 1,000 in revenue, yet the business consultant will charge USD 5,000 for their time and efforts, this would clearly not be a profitable decision, but rather a loss (from a monetary perspective in the short term at least).
  
• Does the business consultant have the credibility and track record of success to justify the value of their fees and warrant trusting their advice? Was the consultant referred to you by a respected acquaintance? Can they share case studies of their past work and client successes? Do they have client references that you can see?

What do you stand to lose if you choose the wrong business consultant?

As with any supplier, it’s important to shop around the market, even if a business consultant was referred to you by a trusted acquaintance.

The consequences of hiring the wrong business consultant can be detrimental to your business efforts in terms of:

• Lost time
  
• Wasted effort
  
• Lost money and other assets
  
• Damage to your standing and reputation

Therefore, here are some tips to help you better critique business consultants in the market:

Relevant industry experience does the business consultant have a track record of working and delivering success in your industry? Is their experience in-line with the services and products offered by your company and within the countries / territories you sell in?

Also consider if the consultant has experience dealing with businesses that are a similar size / corporate culture to yours.

And finally, the business consultant should be obsessed with learning themselves so that they can continuously share new insights for your business and personal success.

I created a ‘recommended reading’ page on my website to ensure my clients are up-to-date excellent books, but it also reflects the knowledge that I have personally acquired.

“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”

Peter Drucker – Management Consultant & Author

Strong marketing & sales touch-points does the business consultant have an excellent  website, informative blog content, engaging social media etc?

In my opinion, a business consultant should be an expert of revenue and profit generation, and this process is intrinsically linked to the function of marketing.

If the consultant’s marketing and sales touchpoints are of a poor standard, this could be a significant warning sign (clearly they’re not practising what they preach, or they don’t actually know what to preach).

Excellent knowledge of economics & psychology would you trust your life in the hands of a pilot that doesn’t understand the laws of physics and weather systems?

I hope not; business is exactly the same, but with economics and psychology.

A business consultant must understand the laws of economics and psychology in order to provide you with dependable consultancy as the laws of these fields greatly impact the success of your business.

As a passionate student of economics, I routinely draft blogs geared to help my clients understand their economic outlook, here’s a recent example detailing ‘recession 2020’ that I also recommend that you read when able.

Alternatively, I have a short video of the same subject here:

A clear unique selling proposition (USP) this ties in with their marketing knowledge, but I feel it’s important to highlight as some business executives are not clear on this powerful aspect themselves.

A USP gives a person or business the ability to claim that they are ‘uniquely’ different, and therefore can justify their supremacy over their competition.

Again, as a business consultant should be an expert of marketing and sales, can you determine a clear USP from their marketing & sales touchpoints?

For example, the USP of my business consultancy is economic psychology which basically means how the psychology of businesses, governments and consumers can impact your business as touched upon above.

Here’s a link if you’d like to learn more about my business consultancy services

Caring charisma and trustworthiness you’ll need to trust your gut on this one, but after completing an initial consultation with a potential business consultant, you should be able to describe your experience as comfortable, mentally stimulating, and feel that this individual cares for your success and well-being.

Conclusion

So, to recap what does a business consultant do? An effective business consultant will help you to:

• Increase your revenue, rate of return-on-investments (ROI) & ultimately improve your profit earnings
  
• Save you from the stress of financial losses, lost effort and time, as well as other capital losses
  
• Challenge your mental mindset and ultimately become a great confidant in life

And, when do I recommend that you should consider working with a business consultant?

Although I am inherently biased, this is my honest opinion for your consideration:

• If you do not have experience creating consistent success in the initiative that you wish to commit your time, money and efforts into, then the odds of you being successful are unlikely (no matter how hard your ego disagrees).
  
• If you have been entrusted with power to manage the money, assets and lives of others, then I believe you have an ethical responsibility to do all within your ability to protect and ensure success of these items of value. Don’t gamble with other’s assets, learn from credible sources of experience and knowledge (business consultants) that have walked the path before you – they can’t guarantee success, but you’ll have a clearer conscience.
  
• If you value learning and being the most effective and productive version of yourself. Time and health are our greatest resources, don’t squander them through stress, and poor management of your life’s priorities. A good business consultant will give you the perspective needed to enjoy your life as you take on challenges. 

Irrespective of my biases, I hope I have shared some thought provoking insight as to why you should speak to a business consultant.

If you feel I have the potential to be your business consultant, please book a free consultation with me today.