What do consultants do, anyway?

A good business development consultant is very similar to your doctor. The physician’s goal is to discover the real source of pain. Many times a patient will describe the symptoms, for example, “My leg hurts.” But the pain could be a result of something that is happening with your back, your neck or some other body part. Get the picture?

A doctor wouldn’t dare make a diagnosis without a thorough evaluation. In much the same way, someone who is going to come in and fix the pain relating to your business needs to do a comprehensive evaluation as well.

If he doesn’t, he might inadvertently overlook the practice or practices that are causing a business to be less successful than it should be. For all practical purposes, the consultant risks committing business malpractice.

Let me try to give you a snapshot of what your consultant should do. He or she will:

• Try to get a feel of the company’s structure.

• Discover what the company’s vision and mission are.

• Try to get a sense of the culture.

• Look at your customer service for external and internal audiences.

• Investigate management style(s).

• Look at your sales process, or lack thereof.

• Review sales numbers and analyze profitability.

• Investigate your employee evaluation process.

• Garner employee input and interview customers.

• Evaluate salespeople’s compensatory plan(s).

• Look at how coaching, training, mentoring and supervising are applied.

• Assess where the company is and where it wants to be.

• Conduct assessments of personnel and leadership core competencies, communication styles and behaviors.

Quite a list, right? But after all, if there were a quick and easy answer to the business pains that ail you, you would have figured out how to cure them ages ago.

After conducting a thorough needs analysis, the next step is to put some sense and order to the information that was gathered. Usually, but not always, consistent themes emerge. For example, if effective communication is a major obstacle for the business, it will often become apparent in several areas. The same is also true when the problem is cash flow, inadequate sales or poor training.

Once the primary challenges have been identified, individual consultants may choose to take different paths. I usually organize the list in order of urgency or priority. I put together a timeline and an action plan. That way, both the client and I have a tangible, measurable benchmark with which to manage the solutions to the problems.

Making the decision to hire a business development consultant to analyze and evaluate your company’s efficiency and viability may be a challenging one. Of course, if your business is operating at less than peak efficiency, the money you spend may be far less than the money you might otherwise lose. Find an advisor who understands what makes successful businesses work. Request client references. Interview them. See if there is a fit. In the long run, a talented business consultant might prove to be just what the doctor ordered. v

John Shrum is the owner of Awareness Management, a franchisee of the Sandler Sales Institute. He can be reached at 445-7694 or [email protected]