What is a Business Strategy Consultant? Do I Need One?

What does a business strategy consultant do?

A short answer: A business strategy consultant helps business owners or organizational leaders with decision making in regards to their business strategy. We understand and can lead you through the processes that will help you determine who you are, where you want to go, how you will get there, and how you will measure success. Leaders make many decisions every day, but strategic planning decisions focus on where to allocate different resources (money, people, and time) to achieve the desired objective of the organization.

A management consultant/strategic planning facilitator can help you determine which specific strategic initiatives are going to get you what you want, and which ones are leading you away from what you want. We work with you and your team to figure out what those things are through market research, competitive analysis, scenario planning, and professional experience.

Even successful organizations will benefit from working with a facilitator, especially if they are working towards sustained growth, optimizing team performance, or developing board leaders.

Or, sometimes things can be going great for your business, but something unexpected happens. We worked with an organization regularly experiencing 10-20% growth year over year, but the economic climate changed and their growth became stagnant. They wanted to understand what was happening, plan for future scenarios, and develop an adaptive strategy to adjust to the current market.

Strategic planning is an ongoing process, and successful organizations will review their strategies on a regular basis. Working with outside consultants has other benefits as well, including:

• Getting your team on board and aligned on your strategy – this is key for later implementation.
• Setting strategic priorities and measurable goals so you know what success looks like for your organization and your team.
• Finding opportunities to differentiate you from your competitors to create a more valuable value proposition.
• Looking at your systems and processes to find improvements that will support future growth.
• Doing a cost/benefit analysis to determine the best opportunities for growth.
• Creating strategies to gain new market share or protect existing market share
• Help you figure out what to do next with organizational change and development.