To understand the value of business consulting for startups, we reached out to CEOs, founders, and other business leaders for their insights. From understanding the bigger picture to breaking free from constraints, discover the top 14 benefits of business consulting for startups, as shared by these experienced professionals.
- Understand the Bigger Picture
- Gain Expertise and Experience
- Improve Adaptability
- Discover Marketing Strategies
- Achieve Specific Goals Temporarily
- Enhance Financial Planning
- Manage Risks Effectively
- Find Peace of Mind
- Select Project Management Systems
- Build Networking and Partnerships
- Fill Knowledge Gaps
- Receive Expert Advice
- Bridge Expertise Gaps
- Break Free from Constraints
Understand the Bigger Picture
Any business exists within one industry, has one area of expertise, and essentially, a niche. A business consultant can help a startup with the bigger picture, seeing the business from a wider angle and teaching its founders how to build its foundation.
When you scale back any startup, you’re left with the fundamentals of business, which to their core are the same. Business consulting helps you understand that skeleton and add on your model, operations, etc., from there.
John Berry, CEO and Managing Partner, Berry Law
Gain Expertise and Experience
One benefit startups get from business consulting is access to expertise and experience. Business consultants can provide invaluable insights into the best practices for running a successful business, enabling startups to avoid costly mistakes and maximize their opportunities for success.
Consultants can also help startups develop strategies to manage growth and improve efficiency, allowing them to focus on what really matters.
Gabriel Bogner, Co-founder, Mate Fertility
Improve Adaptability
One important benefit that startups can gain from business consulting is adaptability.
Business consultants can help startups navigate the constantly changing business landscape by providing them with the tools and strategies they need to stay flexible and agile. This can include identifying and mitigating risks, developing contingency plans, and helping startups stay abreast of emerging trends and technologies.
By working with a business consultant, startups can better prepare themselves for challenges and unexpected disruptions, allowing them to respond quickly and effectively when the need arises.
Ultimately, the ability to adapt and evolve is essential for long-term success, and business consulting can provide startups with the guidance and support they need to achieve it.
Discover Marketing Strategies
Startups can learn about excellent, customized marketing strategies from business consultants, which is extremely important as marketing is crucial to business growth.
Even if a startup has already developed and implemented successful marketing campaigns, it certainly doesn’t hurt to discover new ideas. In fact, the more options a startup has to work with, the better it can engage its followers so as not to bore them with the same campaigns too often.
Drew Sherman, Vice President of Marketing, RPM
Achieve Specific Goals Temporarily
Startups can benefit from business consulting by obtaining the services of a consultant temporarily to accomplish very specific goals, without the cost or long-term commitment of hiring a full-time employee.
Additionally, a consultant can provide an informed and independent perspective on the startup’s progress and evaluate its strategies, processes, and practices to identify areas for improvement. This can be particularly helpful for startups that may not have experience or expertise in specific business areas such as finance, marketing, or operations.
Brenton Thomas, CEO, Twibi
Enhance Financial Planning
One benefit startups can get from business consulting is financial planning. Of course, financial planning is an essential part of any business, and it’s especially important for the early stages of startups where cash flow and revenue is uncertain. Thus, business consulting can help in the areas of financial forecasting, budgeting, cash flow management, fundraising, and analysis, just to name a few.
Business consulting provides expertise for startups that may not be experienced in taking care of their finances, so it’s crucial that they invest in it. Working with a business consultant will help startups ensure they are making informed financial decisions that will set them up for long-term success.
Bill Lyons, CEO, Griffin Funding
Manage Risks Effectively
Startups working with business consultants may be better positioned to deal with risk management. A business consultant can help a company identify a wide range of potential issues, from legal risks to financial concerns to overseeing personnel.
Any serious mistakes early into a startup’s tenure can be costly; sometimes they’re enough to derail the business entirely. Because of this, it’s key for startups to identify and address potential risks early. A business consultant can help do that.
Josh Weiss, Founder and CEO, Reggie
Find Peace of Mind
One of the biggest difficulties when running a startup is the constant worry that you’re doing something wrong—whether that be your key idea, your business model, or any of your business functions.
Hiring a consultant can help you straighten all of that out, but more importantly, it gives you an invaluable amount of peace of mind that you’re not sabotaging your business because you’re doing something wrong without being aware of it. That’s worth its weight in gold, in my opinion.
Dragos Badea, CEO, Yarooms
Select Project Management Systems
Business consultants can match you with suitable project management systems. They can identify which of these systems would work best for your particular business in terms of productivity, quality of work, collaboration, and efficiency.
Business consultants would likely not recommend these project management systems if they were not already familiar with them, so your startup could certainly benefit from trusting their judgment.
Natalia Morozova, Partner, Cohen, Tucker & Ades Immigration Law Firm
Build Networking and Partnerships
Networking and partnerships are crucial for startups to gain exposure, build relationships, and access new resources. Business consultants can provide startups with access to their network of contacts, which can help the startup to identify potential customers, suppliers, investors, and partners.
Additionally, business consultants can facilitate introductions and help startups establish relationships with key players in their industry. By leveraging their network and expertise, business consultants can help startups form partnerships that can lead to mutually beneficial collaborations and opportunities for growth. Furthermore, business consultants can provide guidance on how to maintain these relationships and how to effectively communicate with partners and stakeholders.
Overall, networking and partnerships can be the key to the success of a startup, and business consultants can help startups navigate these areas and build valuable connections.
Harry Morton, Founder, Lower Street
Fill Knowledge Gaps
Founders of startups simply cannot be experts in everything. It’s common for them to be experts in one sector they are launching into. Their time has been spent on developing the product, service, or big disruptive idea they are bringing to the market. And that’s the way it should be.
But these founders are rarely experienced in every single aspect of starting and growing a business. Working with a business consultant to fill in a specific knowledge gap is key. Having access to the specialist knowledge that an expert consultant brings can save a startup from making costly mistakes, be that by offering insights into specific market trends or best practices.
Similarly, the time-saving afforded to a founder when bringing in a business consultant can free them up to work on key components of their growth strategy which only a founder can do. In summary: be honest about the knowledge gap of the founders, then bring in a business consultant with experience in that area.
Kayvan Moghaddassi, Business Strategist, Kayvan Consulting
Receive Expert Advice
Expert advice in one hyper-focused area is the major benefit of business consulting for small businesses. Innovation in business can be difficult to perceive from the inside looking out at one’s company.
Consultants leverage their outside perspective to look inwards and help the business grow from their broad expertise of industry best practices. An outside point of view can be a lifeline when inspiration is at a standstill.
Monte Deere, CEO, Kizik
Bridge Expertise Gaps
If you’re a startup, you’re going to be going through growing pains. Business consulting can help with that by bridging the gaps where you have not built in-house expertise, but it is not a long-term solution.
You should be approaching business consulting as a stopgap measure until you either build those skills in-house or can hire new specialists to take over the roles, as this will be far more cost-effective in the long run and will be needed once you can really start to scale.
Onno Halsema, CEO, Contentoo
Break Free from Constraints
From within an organization—even a small one—we inevitably have beliefs about how things “really” are; about what’s possible, and about the team, market, industry, and product. Those beliefs become entrenched as facts. Holding them like facts keeps us from considering an innumerable number of possibilities. They are constraints on our creativity, strategic thinking, goal-setting, and even how we think about our peers, ourselves, and our capabilities.
Consultants are like visitors from another planet. They know what an organization is, how to think strategically (or whatever their focus is), and can learn your business’ model. But they have none of those limiting beliefs. They can see the full range of possibilities.
Most importantly, a gifted consultant can help you displace those beliefs and realize they are not facts. Then you are free to be creative and use your expertise about your work in partnership with the consultant’s expertise in business to cause tremendous breakthroughs.
Amie Devero, President, Beyond Better Strategy and Coaching