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How a Management Consultant Can Grow Your Business

Has your small business growth become stagnant? Have quarterly profits been in decline for some time now? Perhaps it's time to hire a management consultant.


Has your business growth become stagnant? Have quarterly profits been in decline for some time now? Perhaps it’s time to hire a management consultant.

Photo: Davis Nguyen, founder of My Consulting Offer | Source: Courtesy Photo
Photo: Davis Nguyen, founder of My Consulting Offer | Source: Courtesy Photo

Sure, you can spend hours watching informational videos or reading articles on ways to innovate business processes, but there is one easier way to move beyond this plateau: hiring a management consultant.

Here are the various ways in which a management consultant can help your business continue to thrive for years to come.

 

Alignment on the business challenge

What is consulting and do I need to hire a management consultant? In a nutshell, management consultants solve tough business problems. Many business issues look different depending on where you sit.

If you’re not reaching monthly profit goals, it may create conflict between various departments. Sales executives may say the marketing department is not targeting the right demographic in promotional initiatives.

Marketing leaders may suggest sales representatives are not following up on enough leads. Who is correct?

Yes, your marketing department or the sales team could be the culprits, or it may be a different department altogether. If your management team struggles to pinpoint the root issue, it’s time to enlist the help of an independent third party that can analyze data on the marketplace and how marketing, sales, profits, etc. compare to competitors. This is the vital initial step to fix a critical business issue.

In order to get various leaders on the same page, consultants build issue trees to clearly dissect business problems. Clear-cut dialogue and fact-based decision making is of the utmost importance, as leaders won’t be able to solve the problem if they can’t stop the blame game.

 

Pattern recognition of prior resolved business challenges

Of course, a management consultant will not be as well-versed on your business operations as your team. However, consultants have already helped other clients in your industry or in different sectors solve similar problems.

Management consultants help organizations solve problems, improve business performance, create value and maximize growth.

Management consultants can add value by leveraging their knowledge and best practices from other client cases. This ensures they can quickly pinpoint where the actual issue resides so your business can forge ahead with the best solution.

Keep in mind, though, even if a consulting firm works with direct competitors, there should not be a conflict of interest. Your business data, reports, and other key trade secrets will not be shared with competitors.

 

Access M&A and subject-matter experts

If your business doesn’t regularly go through mergers and acquisitions, then it is likely that you don’t employ a team of M&A experts. If there comes a time where you can purchase or sell a division, should you hire a team of M&A specialists?

If you don’t plan to acquire other companies on a regular basis, then the transactions are few and far between. Thus, it would be better to enlist the help of a consulting company like Bain & Company. Although the consultants at companies like Bain may be a bit pricey, it will definitely be more cost-effective than employing a full M&A department staff your business doesn’t need often. It is likened to hiring a full-time doctor even though you may only need an annual check-up.

In addition to M&A experts, this rule applies to other valuable specialists that are not needed full-time (such as corporate restructuring experts).

 

Access turn-key hands on deck to tackle big business issues

You may be dealing with a time-sensitive issue that requires big data analysis in a short time frame to pinpoint next steps. Should you hire a full team of data analysts and other specialists to tackle this task?

If it is a short-term project, hire a consulting agency that can designate a team to work on the project. They can start work on the project immediately.

On the other hand, if you plan to hire your own team of data analysts, it would take a long time to ramp up, hire and onboard new employees, and address learning curves.

 

Get leadership on board with the course of action

Once the best answer to the business problem is evident, it is time to ensure the entire company is sold on the solution and is prepared to implement it. A management consultant can work to gain a consensus among all leaders. Once accepted, everyone can move forward to benefit from the changes.

 

Should you hire a management consultant?

If you’re facing rapidly declining profits or other mission critical issues, take action immediately. The larger the company is, the harder it can be to pinpoint the root problem. It takes time to find others who have fixed the issue your business is facing, crunch data, determine the best course of action, and get the whole company on board with changes.

Management consultants can do all of this for your business and more. An experienced consultant can add instant value and save you time and money.

 

Davis Nguyen is the founder of My Consulting Offer, a top program that helps people land their dream jobs in management consulting. Davis was raised by a single mother who didn’t finish elementary school in one of the most impoverished communities in the United States before graduating from Yale University and starting a career at Bain & Company. Davis started My Consulting Offer as a weekend side-business in 2017 and, within a year, grew it into a six-figure side business without spending money on marketing. After becoming a full-time entrepreneur in 2018, Davis has helped over 500 people launch careers in consulting, grown his business to seven figures, and was featured at TEDx.

 

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