Should I Hire a Small Business Consultant?

Monday, December 21, 2020 at 8:17 am in
young people discussing business in hallway

Let us start off by saying we’re biased, obviously. But, more importantly, we have many years of experience building our own businesses in a diverse range of industries. Looking back on all of them, there were many challenges we faced where a consultant would have saved us time, money, or generated more revenue than we realized by going it alone. Again, this is true for every one of our past ventures.

Are small business consultants expensive? 

Consider your opportunity costs. For example, let’s say your employees are spending a considerable amount of time performing strictly operational duties at the expense of focusing on sales and customer service. This can be as simple as entering data into a system or as complicated as concocting a lotion or potion from scratch every time it is ordered.

These are very common challenges for small businesses. Employees frequently must wear multiple hats and either do not have the appropriate skills or do not enjoy the work. These distractions keep your employees from maximizing productivity and generating revenue. If these inefficiencies become commonplace, your business will suffer and will likely become another failed venture.

A useful method of evaluating the benefit of hiring a business consultant is to calculate the loss of money, time, revenue, etc. versus the investment to efficiently solve your company’s problems. Nine times out of ten, this calculation will lead you to hire a consultant.

Some consultants base their project fee on a similar calculation. It is customary for the proposed investment to represent around 10% of the money saved, increased revenue, or time saved over the course of 1-3 years.

But your budget is tight and your time frame for a solution is narrow, right? 

You may be tempted to hire a consultant that offers the lowest quote. This can be a very costly mistake. The saying “you get what you pay for” also applies to the consulting industry. The potential downsides of hiring the lowest price consultant are lesser quality of work, longer time frames to complete the work, mismanagement of resources, less than desirable communication, and disappointing outcomes. Perhaps the consultant isn’t “bad”, but they will need to work on many projects simultaneously to earn a living. They may also under-perform because of the lack of financial motivation.

It is extremely important that you find the right consultants that understand your needs, have ideally been entrepreneurs many times over, and can jump right in and add significant value to your business. You are taking a risk hiring someone to help solve your business issues. In return for that risk, you must receive equitable value for your investment of time and money.

At Small Axe Consulting we work as an extension of your team. We thoroughly explain our findings, propose equitable and workable solutions, execute those solutions, and even train your staff, if applicable. When you hire us you can be assured that we genuinely care about the well-being of you and your business.

We welcome the opportunity to help bridge the gap between where your business is currently and where you desire it to be. We are experts at building strong, lasting foundations for success now and into the future. Click on SET APPOINTMENT below to schedule a free consultation that fits your schedule.