Good question! Small business consultants can help in a variety of areas that ultimately affect the company bottom line. Whether it be operations, branding, marketing, sales, or service...sometimes having an outsider poking holes in your business plan can be the best thing for you. Highlighted below are a few areas where businesses can benefit from using an outside expert.
1. Overall Business Process: Are there gaps in your current operations that are causing the company to lose money? To understand how to grow and change, you first must do a deep dive into what's working, and also admit to what's NOT working. To do this you must take into account various departments and make sure they are operating as efficient as possible; sales, marketing, accounting, IT/Security, executive team, and others are all subject to scrutiny. Once you know the current situation you can begin to understand where you need to focus. Small business consultants will help you with this deep dive and identify a road map with solutions to choose from in order to improve.
2. Short and Long Term Business Goals: This is kept separate from the process analysis, but is just as important and necessary. In order to strive for something you must have goals identified for yourself. This is often times the most talked about 'thing' a company needs, but is also one of the first to get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN! By partnering with a small business consultant they can help keep you on track, and offer feedback on attainability of goals based on the action items needed to ensure success. There is no sense in having goals, unless you have a plan of action to follow them up so you can actually achieve them.
3. Team Training and Culture: Creating a work environment that breeds success and accountability is a tricky balance (if you haven't read the Culture Code deck by Dharmesh Shah, I highly recommend you do) Small business consultants can take a look at your team and help identify ways to motivate, support, and grow your people. Happy people=high productivity. Make sure you have the right people, doing the right jobs, and great results will follow.
4. Time: What do we mean by time? Many organizations waste countless minutes and hours each day because they aren't bullish about keeping exact time. It sounds simple, but sticking to a rigid schedule is very hard to do. Small business consultants can help focus and redirect what is getting done in a day, and actually free up time to be more productive.
If you feel your company could use some brushing up on any of these areas, having a coach for you and your team, may be just what the doctor ordered. (for the checklist on picking the right partner click HERE). Ensuring your business is in the best possible shape will always be a good investment.
