7 Ways Strategy Consulting Equips Your Small Business

No general would ever go into battle without planning a strategy. The same is true about starting a small business. A strategic approach is vital to success. Regardless of your business size, a strategy consultant can help you develop practical small business solutions and focus on your goals. Strategy consultants have a wide range of expertise because they work with several businesses across a range of industries. The challenges your businesses is facing it likely something they have already solved for another business.

Strategy consultants can be industry experts. They know the ins and outs, the ebb and flow of small businesses. They also keep an eye on business and consumer trends to accurately project how small businesses need to adjust to real-world changes. The experience they bring can give you an entirely new perspective and support achieving the vision for your company. Strategy consultants can offer something that no one at your company can: a fresh perspective. Sometimes in business, we can become myopic, simply because we are too close to the situation. An independent business consultant can provide an outside perspective that will often see things that company insiders can’t see.

Strategy consultants are free from the minutia of running the entire company; they are focused on business strategy and efficient strategy execution methods. When you need to effectively and permanently solve a problem, these are precisely the kind of people you want in your corner. Throughout this article, we'll focus on several key ways a strategy consultant can help small and midsized businesses succeed against their enterprise competitors. 

As the name implies, a strategy consultant will guide you in creating a comprehensive plan of action for your company. A business strategy is similar to chess. A piece may move, but that one piece is part of a much larger plan. In the same way, a business strategy consists of many small objectives with key results that accomplish a much larger unified goal. A strategy consultant is someone who understands the broader vision and how to achieve it effectively.

Of course, creating a business strategy is only the first step in a long journey. The strategy consultant will also help monitor the execution of that plan to ensure its success. Without that monitoring and adjustments to the challenges as they arise, you might be surprised how many top-tier plans fail in execution. A good strategy consultant will develop a solid plan but also adjust it as needed when faced with the realities of putting that plan into action. Make sure implementation oversight and support is a part of any consulting services you pay for.

This execution element makes a strategy consultant one of the most valuable assets to your company’s health and growth. A company that is not moving forward will stagnate, and a company that is not growing is dying. Strategy consulting will ensure that your business is continuously moving forward and evolving to meet your current and future clients’ changing demands.

Some of the most remarkable strategy consulting benefits are the consultant’s knowledge, experience, and ability to appropriately assess the current situation in a small business. A great strategy consultant is an expert in the particular field of business in which your company operates and have extensive experience dealing with a range of business challenges. They bring with them years or perhaps decades of experience to the problems your organization faces.

Knowledge is power, and expertise is extraordinarily valuable. A strategy consultant brings a one-two-punch both to help problem-solve potential issues in your company and reliably predict its future. There’s no substitute for business savvy and know-how. A knowledgeable and experienced consultant will help you better understand how your business is meeting your customers' evolving demands. A company that does not adapt with its customer base will soon find their customers gone to a competitor better adept at meeting their needs.

The right strategy consultant will address areas for improvement, such as brand recognition, effective marketing and sales, customer support and user experience, and any product or service quality issues. These issues can have a massive impact on the health of your company as a whole but sometimes it can be difficult to pinpoint the problem and develop successful solutions without a consultant that's already done it before. Customers are everything to a business, and if your customers are having problems understanding your brand or how to interact with your products and services, it can be disastrous. To improve results, the knowledge and experience of a strategy consultant can be indispensable.

Ultimately, management is responsible for the smooth and successful implementation of procedures and plans. A company will live or die by its leadership. Therefore, an essential part of successful strategy development is analyzing the interaction between management departments. Clear and concise communication between management, leaders, and staff is crucial to implementing any plan. Even the best-laid plans will fail if communication breaks down between the planners and the team completing the execution. A top strategy consultant will assess some of the most vital questions regarding how well the leadership team is communicating to the "boots on the ground". 

• Are plans, instructions, and guidelines clear? 
• Does each team understand their roles and how their success impacts the success of the company's plans? 
• Is there a communication standard both in format and frequency?

Leadership assessment is a critical aspect of any strategic consulting engagement. It is vital to know each leader’s strengths and weaknesses and understand the “why” behind their leadership style and the decisions that they make. Understanding leadership's pros and cons can help avoid issues and potential problems before they happen. Your strategy consultant can coach the leaders to improve in their role and help them navigate common requirements of upper and middle management. Strategy consultants can improve communication, decision-making skills, and conflict resolution, all vital skills for any small business leader. 

A strategy consultant may also examine the decision-making process to ensure that the methodologies meet the expected outcomes, are expeditious, without sacrificing quality, and are based on the feedback that the teams are giving to leadership not just their isolated thoughts on their plans. Even though you may already have a process in place, a consultant can help you streamline your existing procedure. The more efficient and focused management is, the better it is for the entire company. Things tend to filter from the top down, so as quality changes get implemented in leadership and pushed through to the teams, efficiency will trickle down throughout the company. New policies and procedures can be adopted to improve logistics so that your entire company runs as smoothly as possible, and things get done quickly and accurately. Running your company well improves how effective the teams can be and ultimately means your plans are more likely to succeed. Strategy consultants should always be working to improve leadership to ensure their strategic recommendations have the best chance of success.

Sometimes, a fresh pair of eyes can help see things in a new way, and that’s another benefit that strategy consultants bring to your company. Along with their extensive knowledge, experience, and singular focus, a strategy consultant's unique first principles perspective helps organizations identify problems and develop creation solutions.

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An experienced outsider’s perspective can be tremendously helpful for diagnosing issues, both internally and externally. A fresh perspective also instills a sense of openness for the team. When the team is given a chance to explore new solutions alongside a professional that can provide experience from other organizations facing similar challenges, you'll gain more creativity across the team members recommendations as they bounce ideas back and forth. The new perspective and ideas brought by a strategy consultant with the team's feedback on any day to day improvements will shed much-needed light on areas for improvement. 

Whether the problems are related to products, customers, or finance, with proper consulting and a willing team, implementing solutions with innovative first principles thinking will be a breeze.

Most people think they are good decision-makers, but when they need to make crucial decisions, they realize how difficult it can be. Many businesses are suffering from analysis paralysis, so burdened by a decision that they fail to act. Efficient decision making is a vital skill for fluid business operations. Being able to analyze a circumstance, respond rapidly, and correctly is critical.

One of the main reasons why people have trouble making decisions is failing to recognize the value of those choices accurately and then prioritizing the solutions. In business, everything always comes down to “the bottom line,” which is value to the business/customers and cost to achieve that value. To make a proper decision, the value of the available options must be clear. Incorrect decisions occur when choices are not assessed in connection with a realistic value of the outcome or the costs to achieve that outcome.

Strategy consultants can help you identify any stumbling blocks in your decision making and develop procedures for efficient decision-making processes. They take known frameworks for decision assessment and apply it to the challenges within your organization, often training leaders to implement this practice regularly after the engagement is complete. The consultant works with you to examine what issues are present, organize the necessary data, and create a set of best practices to handle any situation. Efficient decision making enabled by your strategy consultant is a valuable technique that can completely transform a company from a sluggish, unresponsive dinosaur to a quick, active, and smart machine.

Your business may have carved out a niche market that is working well. However, there are plenty of other untapped markets out there waiting with new customers and expanded business opportunities. All you need is a bit of market diversification. If you are looking to enter a new market, a strategy consultant can assist you with this too. Through strategy development, they can help you determine which markets, that fit potential products and services, are under-served. The can assess how to tweak your products, services, and marketing for expanded appeal across new markets.

Your strategy consultant will help you with market research, wading through the available data to make sense of the best choices, and devise a comprehensive solution to tap into that new market potential. Most businesses never recognize the potential for growth that is right in front of them nor realize the customers that are all around them if they just expand their products and services to nearby solutions or regions built out on a spider diagram or radar chart. Armed with a proper business strategy for opening up new markets, you will mine those resources and grow your business to new heights with your strategic consultant's recommendations.

Even the best business leaders need some assistance. Bring your dreams to life by gaining the competitive edge you need with the support of a professional strategy consultant. Put their years of knowledge and experience to work for you. Contact us todayto learn how we can bring our strategic experience to your business goals.