As a business founder, your main role is as a decision maker – you have a finite amount of resources at hand in money, time and expertise and you have to decide how to use those resources to face the challenges of each day and create fresh opportunities for your business.
One of the decisions you can face is whether to invest some of that money in hiring consultants to bring additional expertise into your business – and, just as important, invest your time in putting their recommendations into practice. Key to a relationship with any consultant is that you need to make the effort to put in place the changes they suggest: merely hearing them out doesn’t convey any benefits.
Today we’re taking a look at Strategy Consultants, so you can make an informed decision before committing to one of the major growth consulting firms.
Why is Strategy Important?
Your strategy is an extremely important document for your business. It’s an investment in your future, and trying to run a business in the long term without a strategy is an exercise in ongoing disaster management.
Before you plan your strategy, you need to lay out your goals: what you want to achieve. What does success look like for your business? Do you want to stay stable in the same town and location until you’re ready to retire? Do you want to pursue aggressive growth or build towards a buyout from a larger corporation?
When you’ve set some goals, you can devise a strategy that helps you achieve them safely and sustainably, and in line with your values. You can lay down growth strategies to ensure you don’t rush into opportunities when you’re not ready. You can define your brand, to ensure your advertising properly represents you. You set down the rules for your business in a period of careful thought and research so you can apply them in situations where you don’t have those luxuries.
What Do Consultants Add?
This vital document isn’t easy to put together. It requires a deep understanding of your market, of your customers and competitors, financial foresight to see what people may be willing to spend in a year, five years or ten, and various other areas of expertise that there’s no real reason to expect you to have.
Getting strategy consultants to help you create your strategy frees you from the need to be this omnidisciplinary expert. You can focus on running your business, and providing input on how you want to do that, while they can translate that into a strategy that will work in the long term in your industry!