Types of Business Consulting That Drive Growth

Business consulting hosts a wide range of services, from corporate strategy and project management to bolstering sales and marketing efforts. Consultancies offer more than just observations gleaned from data but full-scale solutions to any particular business need. It is good to use a consultancy for a particular problem or need a business cannot source in-house.

Business consultants serving companies in the professional services space do a number of things. Systematizing processes. Helping business owners transition the size or scale of their businesses. Growing revenue or operational capacity. Helping business leaders seize strategic opportunities in the market. Adding software. Helping with financial forecasting. There are business consultants working to remedy nearly every problem a business might experience. So how do you choose the right type of consultancy for your business? Identifying the central obstacle that is holding you back is usually the best place to start.

Understanding the Different Types of Business Consulting

Understanding the problem is halfway to understanding the solution. When a consultant first enters a work environment or management meeting, they are usually there to address a specific challenge: hire more employees in production, onboard a new software, take on a branding project, or to help achieve a buyout of the company. 

A consultant is able to gather many perspectives at once and assess how to walk a company from the minutiae of daily tasks to the big picture of completing a goal. They work broadly to understand how systems interact but also specifically in understanding which key players and solutions are crucial to helping a plan to come together. 

Business and Management Consulting

A business management consultant does a bit of everything, starting with the friction point a business leader might experience. Walking back to the start of a problem is a process a  business management consultant might use to steer a company out of its current difficulty. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that a business consultant has a good understanding of your specific problem at the start. A particular problem or need is what brings a company to a consultant in the first place. 

The goal of a consultant is to win solutions on the client’s behalf. A good consultant will help open up new areas of consideration, spot trends, or possibly afford insight the team would not have gathered alone. Consultants aren’t paid simply to solve problems or to give out advice but to work synergistically within the team and leave a business with more than a quick fix but a solution through collaboration.

Strategy Consulting 

Strategy consultants function differently than business consultants in that they are deployed for a very specific result like the implementation of a project or goal. For example, a strategic consultant might help to coordinate the implementation of a new software or process that helps the company to save money or generate revenue. 

Strategy consultants can help companies handle the complex layers of brand change, team integration, and technology upgrades. Or they can play a facilitation role as part of a merger or acquisition between two companies. The mark of a good strategy consultant is in their decision-making ability and in their communication skills.

Strategy consultants might have some combination of operations, project management, and business acumen. They typically serve large markets and are experts in several forms of data that they employ to inform client decision making. Examples of large strategy consulting firms include entities like Deloitte, McKinsey and Company, and Ernst & Young. 

Operations Consulting

Operation consultants are implementers of a business strategy in any number of arenas: portfolio development, manufacturing, product development, and even customer service. Operation consultants help businesses link up with the right strategy to achieve success within a company’s systems. Generally, operational consultants work with larger organizations that suffer from complexity. Many have large multi-layer, multinational teams and logistical problems that require precise insight and advice. 

A perfect example of a scenario an operational consultant could tackle would be the massive backlog experienced in manufacturing and procurement with the car industry’s semiconductor chip shortage which persisted throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The auto industry lost an estimated $210 billion in lost revenue from this logistical weakness exploited by global supply chain delays.  An operational consultant diagnoses issues of this nature and provides potential workarounds to keep business systems flowing. 

Sales and Marketing Consulting

Sales and marketing is a fairly self-explanatory niche within the consulting industry. 

Sales and marketing consultants help businesses outsource a marketing plan they can optimize to get new leads through the door without having to learn the process of digital advertisement or website building themselves. Sales and marketing consultants work well for specific types of clients, particularly small teams that do not currently have the bandwidth to add headcount in this area. 

Many consultants are either individuals or firms who help to develop a strategy and achieve results through branding and logo design, content services, social media ad campaign management, copywriting, and SEO strategy. Sales and Marketing consultants know how to get customers through the door for their clients, boost sales, or achieve a rebrand depending on the goal. They are familiar with everything from the importance of the look and feel of a brand to the types of analytics and insights needed to boost a company’s standing beyond the fold of the competition. 

A sales and marketing consultant is substantiated by their results and connections within the industry. If they are good at what they do, they will help companies boost their visibility and gain more competitive ground in the space. 

Business Consulting to Grow, Scale and Sell with Coachwell

The path to finding the right consultant involves a bit of research on the client-side to have clear goals and identify opportunities where someone could step into your process and help! Perhaps your business has been struggling for a while with a backlog of work, systems that seem to break instead of scale, or a lack of direction over what move to make next. Hire a CEO advisor who can help you learn how to address roadblocks in the form of a business consultant.