Melvin Feller Business Group a Business Consultants Company Based in Texas and Why They Recommend Working with Consultants, Any Good Business Consultant.
Melvin Feller almost never uses the word “problem”; instead, he and his company talk about opportunities in order, Feller points out, to enhance value. Ask any consultant what they do, and they’ll likely say “I’m in the solutions business.” Despite criticism that’s sometimes leveled at business consultants, they truly can add value to company, but you need to know when and why to use them. In order to fully get value, you need to know the problems that need to be solved. There is a massive range of business issues that consultants can deliver solutions for, and different types of consultants bring different philosophies and concepts to the table.
It is interesting to note that, consultants come in many forms and skill sets. Here are just a few:
Types of Consultants
Business consultants can generally add value in five major areas of your business:
Management and strategy. Qualified consultants should have a deep understanding of your particular market and bring the best practices from your industry (or even other industries) to your company. If you’re looking to expand your markets geographically, extend your product portfolio, reorganize your middle market company to promote efficiency and cost-effectiveness, buy out a smaller competitor, or increase your overall capabilities, then hiring an experienced management/strategy consultant can make perfect sense.
Operations. Want to improve the quality and efficiency of your production processes? An operations consultant can help you create and implement a new way of doing just that. Many consultants specialize in business process re-engineering, meaning that they come in and map out your existing processes, analyze opportunities for reducing the number of steps in that process while maintaining quality, and re-engineer your processes in a way that reduces steps and costs. Other consultants are experts in quality control systems and can help you make changes that will reduce defects.
HR. If you’re a company needs to improve the overall satisfaction of your employees, recruit top talent, and retain your top performers? Many of these consultants specialize in developing compensation strategies that align with your overall business goals, training, and developing your people in areas such as business communication and leadership. They can help you improve performance-related feedback and evaluation to your team, making your employees work smarter.
Marketing. Whether you need a new logo for your company, a new market position for one of your brands, or a new social media strategy to interact with your customers, marketing consultants can help. Consultants can offer you a creative spark when your employees have run out of ideas, letting you see what other companies have done to attract more customers.
Reasons for Hiring a Consultant such as Melvin Feller Business Group
Now that you know the major types of consultants, why would you need to hire one? Here are five common reasons:
Rent a brain. You don’t have the human resources you need because some internal person has quit or your head count has been slashed, so hiring a consultant for a project or on a temporary basis can fill the gap until a full-time internal person is found. You won’t have to make a consultant a full-time employee, so breaking off the relationship is relatively easy and cost-effective.
Change Management. Many business consultants are experts at fostering change in organizations, so if your midsized company is extensive with internal squabbling concerning imminent changes, bringing in a consultant can break that logjam. The majority of consultants know that they’re often brought in for political cover and will often shoulder the blame for unpopular changes such as reducing head count and other cost-cutting measures. This is normal process.
Teach and Implement best practices. Often consultants are the leading experts in the fields they work in. They not only have academic and theoretical expertise, but they’ve also worked directly with leading companies to implement change. If you want best practices in areas such as IT and management, then consultants are the best source available. Why try to invent a best practice when consultants have already implemented with multiple clients?
Permeate Creativity. Consultants have a fresh perspective on your business, so having an outsider come in and offer ideas can be tremendously helpful. Sometimes your in-house people are too close to your company and don’t have the perspective to examine the bigger picture within your market, but consultants can share valuable insights that boost your internal creative thinking.
Training Deliver. You can hire a consultant to share knowledge about almost anything. Consultants are born trainers, so they’re a natural choice to do a training course or day-long presentation for your company in almost any area. A good consultant blends theory and practice, and this can deliver high value to your mid-market company.
Melvin Feller Business Consultants is also proud to offer this step by step checklist for becoming a business consultant.
Here is a list of things to consider when you are starting or growing your consulting business practice:
Start with your skills. You cannot be an effective consultant if you don’t bring value to the small business owner. Be relentless in your ongoing education. You become more in-demand and can charge higher fees based on the your wider the extent of knowledge and expertise.
Create and Maintain an experience level. It’s rare that a business owner will entrust their business to a business consultant who has never owned a business before, or to a consultant who doesn’t have a high level of expertise in a specific topic area. An expert is defined as having 10,000 plus hours of experience with the topic they claim as their expertise. If you use a traditional 40-hour workweek as your ruler, that means you need at least 5 years’ full-time experience with your business subject matter in order to call yourself an expert.
Always Know Your Why. Before you get down to the nitty-gritty of designing your business and getting clients, figure out why you want to be a business consultant, and why you want to help these owners. Why this specific target audience? What is your motivation? Knowing this will keep you going when you hit the inevitable speed bumps along the way to building your business and serving your clients.
Determine Your own Definition of Success. Keep your eye on the target. The definition of success differs from person to person. Take some time to visualize all the ways that a successful consulting practice will manifest in your personal and professional life.
Develop and Create a Business Plan. Go through all the same steps you would go through with a client, and work on your own business model design. Things to consider: what legal format you’ll use, what are your mission and vision statements, what are your offerings, your pricing and profit models. Include the resources you will need to succeed, like money, time, skills/knowledge, equipment, and people resources. Set goals and milestones for the next 1 year, 3 years and 5 years.
Develop and Create a Marketing Plan. There are countless consultants out there. How will you be remarkable and stand out from the crowd? How will you connect with your audience and build rapport and trust? Will you use traditional marketing techniques only, or combine traditional and internet marketing? Which of the 100+ available techniques will bring the best results? How much will you invest in marketing (in both time and money)? What are the goals of your marketing?
Study Coaching and Mentoring Skills. You will be working with human beings who have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Learn deep listening skills and how to ask meaningful questions to get clarity and provide focus. Learn how to hold clients accountable for implementing their action plans, and how to deal with difficult client situations. You’ll find that you work as much with the business owner’s mindset as you do with the practical logistics of running a business.
Choose Your Niche. Determine if your specialty requires you to have a license or certification such as financial and tax advisors, legal advisors, insurance advisors. Will you focus on a niche area, like email marketing strategies, or will you be an expert who can help clients with a wide range of challenges and projects? Will you work with a particular size business based on number of employees or revenue? Will you work only with local clients, or will your consulting business be national/international?
Decide if you are going to advise them, or do the work for them. Some consultants are more like mentors and advisors, who work with the small business owner to do planning and strategy work. Other small business consultants provide a specific service as a sub-contractor, to augment the client’s staff such as part-time CFOs, website designers, and copywriters.
Learn the problems that most small business owners have and formulate a strategy to define and solve those problems. Use readily available strategies, tools and assessments to help solve these problems, or create strategies of your own. Consider putting together your own consultant’s toolkit.
Deeply understand the seven areas of a business model to help your clients in the areas that are causing the most damage or have the best return on investment if they make a change.
- Systemize your own business so that you have maximum efficiency. Use templates, automation and sales scripts. Take time early in the setup of your business to create these systems to free up your time and attention for more important tasks. Hint: you’ll then teach these efficiencies to your clients.
- Get help with the administrative and marketing work. Outsource the tasks that you do not want to do, that you are not an expert in, or that take away from your revenue-generating time.
- Get your ego out of the way. While your work can and should be meaningful to you, you are not a consultant to pump up your own ego. You are a consultant to serve your clients. You are going to advise them, help them to determine the pros and cons of each course of action, and then allow them to make their own decisions. You cannot stop them from making unwise decisions or from not following through on an implementation plan. Equally, if your client has a big win, it may be partly due to your advice, but much of the praise needs to go to your client for making it happen. Decide in advance what a “successful client engagement” means to you.
- Be honest about your own areas of personal development. No one is perfect. Sometimes we procrastinate. Sometimes we get distracted. Sometimes we let anger or fear get the better of us. Sometimes we don’t communicate as well as we could. Discover your weaknesses and either learn how to overcome them, or hire staff to help deflect them.
- Choose marketing techniques that bring qualified leads to the sales conversation. Track your marketing relentlessly. If your marketing isn’t bringing the desired results, revamp it. Do not choose marketing techniques because they are a hot trend if they don’t bring in leads or help build your brand recognition.
- Learn problem solving, decision making, project management, and time management skills. These four skills will provide the backbone of the assistance you will offer clients and help you run your own business successfully.
- Learn from the masters. Why re-invent the wheel? You can discover savvy shortcuts by paying attention to the leading consultants in your industry. In any small business consulting niche there are always several people who have risen to the top of their profession. Study their offerings, their marketing methods, the way they run their businesses, and the way they work with clients. Determine if those methods would serve you and your clients, too.
The right background for the consultant you select depends on your industry and your needs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that consultants can be management (business), scientific or technical. If you want someone to help your company develop new proprietary software or computer-based workflow, you may want to engage a technical consultant. But outside of specific needs, companies usually work with management consultants when they want to improve their bottom line, customer satisfaction or employee morale.
Regardless of the type of consultant you work with, their background is critical. It helps you understand how likely they are to improve your business. Here’s what to consider when reviewing potential consultants:
- Do they have hands-on experience? This can be especially important in the business world. If someone came directly out of college labeling themselves as a consultant, do they really know anything more than you do? Consider looking for consultants who have successfully owned or run small businesses, enterprise organizations or specific departments.
- Is their experience applicable? A former bank CEO may seem impressive, but do they have the knowledge and experience to turn your cupcakery into a profitable small business? They might, but if you’re also considering a former restaurant owner who now makes a living successfully helping small eateries grow, this consultant may be a better match for your business. Look for consultants who have worked in your industry and with businesses that match yours in style, size, needs and goals.
- What’s their track record with consulting? You don’t just want a consultant who has the right experience; you want a consultant who has demonstrated success with companies like yours. Ask for a portfolio or list of brands the consultant has worked for, and request references. Look for a consultant who has helped businesses overcome the types of challenges you’re facing or who has grown businesses very similar to yours, and reach out to those companies to find out if they were satisfied with the services.
The bottom line is that you cannot depend on your consultant for ever, and, once they leave, your team members will need to take responsibility for the project. Your team members will be the ones fixing problems or making adjustments in the future, so they must understand the consultant’s work, and develop the skills that they will need to continue it.
Include developing a knowledge management plan in your consultant’s tasks, and involve members of your team to ensure that this plan is a success. Make sure that the consultant cross-trains the members of your team on their techniques and their approach.
Build a knowledge transfer process into the project, to ensure that you are not caught out when your consultant finishes. The earlier this process begins, the more questions your team members can ask, and the more skills and knowledge they will gain.
It is essential to remember that consultants are professionals who provide short-term expert help and advice in a particular fields or industries. They have high levels of expertise and they can work differently to the rest of your team.
The key to working successfully with them is to be clear about expectations and deliverables. This includes monitoring the scope of the project: be aware that projects and budgets can grow, and that consultants may encourage this!
Any time you find yourself working with consultants, you must give detailed instructions, clear feedback, and the resources they need to work efficiently. Always, work to maintain positive relationships between them and their permanent co-workers.
By following these guidelines, you and your company will continue to maximize every opportunity and employee to the maxim thereby increasing your brand awareness and your bottom line.
