business and marketing consultant

business and marketing consultant

The Essential Guide to Business and Marketing Consulting

1. Introduction to Business and Marketing Consulting

Significant improvements can be made in email and contact channel efficiency, as well as manning levels, product awareness, and more. The list is vast, and businesses will probably require a marketing consultant if they want to achieve a certain level of brand awareness and efficiency. For a start, a consulting business is not really a business of its own. Some consultants spend hundreds of hours researching other businesses, other industries, and other business methods so that they can correctly measure company operations for their clients. The consultants are fully aware of the company’s current difficulties, whether they are threatened by the recession, financial instability, or coffin nail fundamentals. The recent appearance of existing consulting companies that are quickly becoming the new phenomenon of the financial industry is the purchase of an advertising and marketing business.

Marketing and business consulting is one of the best ways to start a business from your home or to help other businesses grow quickly and with a really low budget. Marketing consultants are experts in advertising and marketing and can cover a wide range of marketing techniques, from telesales to event promotion. Business consultants offer a wide range of services that make a business more efficient and more profitable. The services of a business consultant are similar to those of an advertising consultant with fluctuating intensity. Operations managers and other supervisors will often have several consultants sub-contracted to assess several aspects of a company on an ongoing basis.

2. Key Skills and Qualities of a Successful Consultant

First, what makes the consultant role unique? Why can’t an executive seek inside advisors to fill the same needs? To be sure, advisers (legal, financial, sales, production, political) often do contribute in their special spheres. Then what makes your job as a consultant special? To consult means to seek advice. But you (the consultants) must give more than advice – you must give action. When a vice-president goes to her corporate controller, she may get advice on how to handle a major problem. But you offer a continuing package of how to meet not just the short-term problem but the future developments. Only you can help coordinate the relationship with all parts of a business. The industrial advisor would, in any case, be a failure if he were not aware of all aspects of a business.

The Fundamentals of Consultation

You know how to do something better. You have knowledge of an area that other people in a business are dependent on. This important knowledge makes you invaluable. To obtain it, each part of the business consults with you. Your ability to obtain information is the main job of a business consultant. The wealth of information handed to you places you in a key position to help form company policy and action. This is the unique role filled by the business and marketing consultant.

The Consultant’s Role

3. Consulting Strategies and Techniques

To begin, it is important to have a mindset of knowing that we can positively impact any situation at any time just by putting our sensible power into a project. A sense of responsibility that generates a dynamic approach can lead to sound fulfillment!

1. Congratulate on a job well done. 2. Acknowledge the person’s assistance. 3. Promote the excellence of the company. 4. Give people credit for their ideas and improvements. 5. Let people know they can come to you if they have a problem. 6. Your strong marks create an ‘upward energy’ and create a natural emanation on a daily basis. 7. Good judgment comes from neutrality of reflection. 8. Every person has more talent than they use.

In order to do that, you can develop several tools and know-how to make it easier. Also, it is important to point out that promoting personal support with the employees and giving recognition to a job well done promotes self-esteem, which can lead to an enhancement of the company image.

Dealing with clients can be a very difficult task. Clients have the tendency of being “one more thing on my backside.” It is always good to help clients become an integral part of the success of their own business.

4. Building and Managing Client Relationships

The client relationship flourishes when the client explains the problem, and then the consultant explores the options open to the client. The solution must appeal to the client’s image of himself, his perception of his company, and its corporate culture. As consultants, we must always respect the client, regardless of our assessment of his business and marketing inadequacies. Our investigation may have exposed inadequacies in service, people, systems, standards, health, methods, morale, or management. Raising these with the CEO can bruise his pride, confidence, and, in some cases, may lead to severe depression. When a chief executive is advised that his business is terrible, he needs to trust the messenger. The worst time for a self-confidence blow is when one’s personal pride and image are at stake. You make friends with clients by building up, not by breaking down. This type of news upsets and can trigger emotions of anger, anxiety and fear of future job loss. Just give them the options, patiently, without being judgmental. A touching episode was an encounter in a team briefing. A company was performing poorly. Their overheads were too expensive. Several workers raised concerns about their operations and the future. A salesman who relied on the company for his livelihood began to give his forecast of future sales for the company’s products. The CEO was devastated by the low sales forecasts. He stood up and, with teary eyes, explained that he would be better off selling his home and looking around for a job. None of the employers wanted the company to fail. The exercise confirmed the company’s options and highlighted the dire need for firm and rapid management attention. Helping hand holding where option romantics may threaten the client’s business and hot buttons must be avoided and concealed so it is without consequence. Companies must be treated as people. Companies need help. We are their lifeguards. We rescue companies, not takeovers.

The profession is about assisting companies, not just CEOs, to address serious business and marketing challenges in a genuine, open, considerate manner. The clientele mix is made up of housewives, public servants, factory workers, farmers, shopkeepers, company managers, and other professionals. Respect them all, respond to their calls for advice, assist them, and serve their needs. Marketing consultants deliver solutions and outcomes to business problems by counseling, researching, probing, analyzing and evaluating, as well as advising, guiding, complex maneuvering, and hand holding. Many clients seek someone they can talk to and confide in. Advice by telephone becomes inadequate. Personal, face to face, support is vital. The ability to work effectively with the client’s staff is another skill.

“Client relationship management” and “customer attention” are the new watchwords. Business consultants now have their roots in “client relationship management”. Everything revolves around the client, not the consultant. The client comes first, the consultant and his ego second. Building lasting client relationships is critical. People skills like empathy, listening, rapport, sensitivity to rhetoric, tuning in to unspoken feelings, the judicious use of silence and body language are all important. Patience and appreciation of detailed concerns are critical personal attributes. Consultant/client relationships are most effective if the parties connect as friendly and likeable individuals. Likeability helps win business for you. A married family man attracts other individuals. Cheery and cheerful personalities work wonders. Formality must give way to friendship. As the trust level grows, a deeper connection is made. When you are friends you look out for your friends. It lays the foundation stones for solving future consultancy problems.

5. Ethical Considerations in Business and Marketing Consulting

Many categories of professional consultants would often like their clients to be prepared to increase their business risk, increase their profits, their power, or the competitiveness of their companies. The consultants themselves do not usually share in these business consequences. Business consultants become business problem opportunists. If business profits fall, companies lay off consultants first because many of their functions are non-essential to the operation of the business. Small business consultants often find that their clients cannot quantify the value added by the consultant as distinct from personal skills and relationships and that the client companies often express surprise at the relatively low cost of consulting. They expect to pay more.

In general, business people do not like business problems. They like business solutions, and they call in business consultants for help. Similarly, Gerry Johnson of the University of Strathclyde has found that company executives often do not really know what the problems are, “or they are not prepared to acknowledge them if they do, so consultants provide an objective focus for their concern.”

Ethical Considerations in Situations