Whenever you’re stuck in a bad place as a business owner, it can feel like there’s no way out. With clients to manage, employees to take care of, and bills to pay, who has time to review strategies, reconstruct finances, or market for more clients?
If you’re spending more time working in your business rather than on your business, you’re putting yourself at risk. More importantly, your role as a business owner is to be the captain of the ship—not the whole crew.
We can’t do it all alone.
And if it feels like you are, it’s time to consider hiring a business development consultant.
WHAT IS A BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT?
Simply put, a business development consultant helps you plan for a resilient future.
They remove you from the nitty-gritty of operations and allow you to see your business as a whole—including how far you’ve come, where you’re at now, and where you’d like to go. The best business development consultants are seasoned business owners themselves. They likely haven’t been consultants their whole life, because they were too busy running their own businesses!
Warning: be careful about who you choose. Consultants come in all shapes and sizes, and their CV is just one aspect of their experience.
WHAT CAN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS DO?
More than any other type of consulting, business development consultants are higher-level, strategic partners to you and your business. Their strengths lie in looking at your business as a whole. Rather than continually solving problems—they work to prevent them.
Business development consultants can help you in four key areas including:
- Creating a personalised business strategy
- Acting as your Parallel CEO
- Driving revenue
- Executing strategic initiatives
1. CREATING A PERSONALISED BUSINESS STRATEGY
All great consulting work starts with planning. To successfully run businesses, this means taking time to build an objective strategy.
Business development consultants thrive in being removed from your business—and they can take you there, too. By removing the emotional attachment, business problems and decision-making become much more clear. In some cases, huge burdens can be lifted in as little as one session—commonly called the “clearing phase”.
Business development consultants build strategies by looking at the helicopter view of your business rather than getting caught in the problem itself. They look at:
- Your current market and product/service-fit
- Your existing marketing, sales, operations, and HR strategies
- Your unique strengths as a business owner
- Your business’s unique challenges
From there, they show you what they find.
Once problems are identified, the real work can begin.
2. ACTING AS YOUR PARALLEL CEO
It’s lonely at the top. Owning a business is a liberating venture, but it isn’t easy finding peers that can give you effective advice. Furthermore, when you own a business, the lines between work and life blur. And if you’re not careful, work will absolutely consume your life. This is where your business development consultant steps in.
Not only to give you direction but support in:
- Setting boundaries
- Managing teams
- Organizing your time
- Helping you hire employees
- Dealing with customer and vendor relationships
3. DRIVING REVENUE
No matter their specialty, any business development consultant should drive your revenue forward. This is how you can truly measure whether your consultant is a right-fit after you’ve begun working together.
The methods vary for every business, but many small to medium businesses share similar struggles including:
- Narrowing your focus
- Automating systems
- Planning for business resilience
The key to revenue growth is having a solid foundation under your feet. Growth won’t happen where roots can’t plant. In order to see massive growth, you must have a massive understanding of exactly how your business operates first.
4. EXECUTING STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
Ultimately, planning will only take you so far.
A solid business resilience plan is only as valuable as your execution. It’s the same for business development consultants—their advice is only as valuable as your ability to take note and execute.
Business development consultants can help you:
- Design and develop new product/service offerings
- Connect with networks
- Find further resources in your area
- Apply big business strategies to your small business
But if you’re not ready to make changes for the growth of your business, what use is strategising?
CONCLUSION
Business development consultants can change the course of your business wherever it stands today. The only thing you need to do is find the right consultant for you for your business and be ready to enact changes. If you’re feeling ready to explore the options of hiring a seasoned business development consultant for your business, let’s talk.