Strategy Consulting is when business owners or managers bring in a third party to offer an external, expert perspective on all business challenges. Specifically, strategy deals with providing a long-term vision for the business, identify core capabilities that need to be improved and look for untapped market opportunities.
Strategy is the conceptualized roadmap that guides long-term goals and business objectives. It defines future direction, sets the framework, and identifies resource allocation such as budgets and human capital. It requires big-picture thinking, a keen understanding of all aspects business, marketing, and profitability.
Strategy also guides tactics, which are the implementation a strategy.
Why do you need a Strategy Consultant?
Strategy Consultants have extensive industry knowledge and are experienced to assess any business issue and come up with a solution. Strategy Consultants take a holistic look at specific business issues and provide several suggestions to deal with them.
A professional strategy consultant would have a structured process and methodology to develop your business strategy. While creativity is not an obvious trait that a strategist should have, it is essential when coming up with fresh and innovative solutions for problems.
A strategy consultant can bring an outsider’s perspective to the business and offer insight with fresh eyes. Expert consultants have the experience, expertise, tools, and cross-industry knowledge that can add to internal discussions. They can objectively identify a company’s strengths and weaknesses and work on a strategy to exploit strengths to grow the business.
All strategy planning should be preceded by research and analysis so that the consultant understands your business, your core marketing capabilities, market situation and competitor landscape. A strategy consultant is an expert in synthetizing research data. He can interpret and analyse information and offer strategic recommendations for your business.
Whether it is modifying a company’s offerings, improving marketing and sales processes, or helping a company transform digitally, a strategy consultant can provide the guidance and an implementation plan. The consultant will guide you, step-by-step, in translating your current business needs and situation into an actionable strategic marketing plan to achieve your desired business goal.
Solving barriers to profitability is often a common reason for businesses to hire a strategy consultant. After determining your business goal, identify issues in your sales cycle that require strategic marketing intervention. The purpose of business strategy is to guide a company in achieving a revenue goal. So, when the key challenges to revenue generation are identified, the right strategy can be crafted to address the issues. A strategy consultant can also help identify untapped marketing opportunities to generate alternate sources of revenue.
Strategy tools like the Profitability Framework allows the consultant to break down how sales revenue is generated, which can then be used to pinpoint challenge areas. If it is a systemic issue (and not a tactical one), you will need a strategy to address it.
A strategy consulting firm such as Singapore-based Evolve & Adapt have a strategy toolkit that they draw on to help clients. Besides the Profitability Framework highlighted above, they also utilize their original Marketing Inverted Pyramid to help companies grow their business.
Conclusion
Strategy consulting requires the mastery over several skills that include conducting market research, analysing and interpreting data, and making essential suggestions to a business regarding their marketing and promotional strategies. Engaging a strategy consultant can provide your business with a master plan to increase brand awareness, improve lead generation, and boost sales.
