12 Proven Strategies from a Business Growth Consultant

A business Growth Consultant focuses on growing your business. Most businesses come to a point where they have tried everything, to grow their business to no avail. Growing their business is a tough challenge for most business owners. This is because they don’t have the in-house skills to make this happen. This is the point at which you should consider a business growth consultant. There are many ways such a consultant can help your business grow including the following twelve methods. Each one is designed with growth in mind.

This article will explain how each one of these twelve services assists your business growth. At the bottom of this article is the answer to one myth about the affordability of a professional business growth consultant. Here are the twelve services with a detailed explanation below the list.

1. Customer Segmentation and Targeting

Identifying opportunities by analyzing the customer data can provide many opportunities to grow the business. It includes customer demographics, geographic segmentation, psychographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation, and firmographic segmentation when applicable.

For example, it may show that the analysis says that your quotations are converted to sales when you present them to the customer earlier than your current average. Knowing such information can increase the sales and growth of that service business tremendously.

Also, analyzing your marketing strategies to ensure that you are getting the lowest cost per lead can once again increase your business leads. Especially when combined with other data such as in the example above. This can provide a tremendous boost to the business. However, it doesn’t stop here. The consultant will look at your overall marketing efforts to provide you with opportunities that will impact your business toward growth.

2. Pricing Strategies

The business growth consultant will review your pricing strategy. They will provide you with options that you may not have known or considered. Such strategies are to maximize and grow your sales revenues. The following are just a few of the many pricing strategies available, and the consultant will provide a proposal specific to your business for growth:

a) Value-based Pricing – This is based on what your competition charges for the same products or services that you are selling.
b) Price skimming – This strategy is generally implemented when you are introducing a new product or service that is not in the market. It starts at a higher price and gradually lowers as competition enters your market space.
c) Economy Pricing – This is offering your goods and services at a low price. It is often associated with volume sales to make up for the lower price strategy.
d) Psychological Pricing – This is where you create the impression that the price is lower than it is. An example is charging $9.95 instead of $10.
e) Optional Pricing – This is a strategy where you offer no-frills pricing for your goods and services. Then you charge extra for additional features and benefits.

There are many more pricing strategies that your business growth consultant can suggest. These and other strategies will gain you more market share for your business. Follow our business growth consultation and planning and take your business to the next level.

3. Supply Chain Optimization

Improving your supply chain from the purchasing to the delivery is important to your business. The consultant will assess your current practices and ensure that you are following best practices. Best practices will provide you with savings that can be placed into other business growth drivers. This enables your business to grow. These include demand forecasting and planning, inventory management, supplier management, logistics and distribution, sustainability and compliance, and much more.

4. Scalability Planning

Scalability planning goes far beyond the five factors mentioned here. However, these five factors are critical to have in your plan to scale your business properly.

I. Market Analysis

This includes market demand analysis, target audience and competitive landscape analysis to position your business to grow. This will also include a review of your sales and marketing strategies. Looking at your branding and proposing diversification of your present sales channels when applicable is another way to grow your business.

II. Business Model

The business growth consultant will also want to review all your revenue streams. Also review your cost structure, including assessing your variable costs, fixed costs, as well as your profit margins. Understanding this element and ensuring that you are positioned to grow your business is critical. One of the many mistakes that businesses make when scaling is not ensuring that their business is operating as efficiently as possible. This also includes having the right business model. This can cost a business tremendously and increase unnecessary stress when growing and scaling the business.

III. Human Resources Management

The greatest resource or assets that a company has are its employees and its human assets. Improper management of human resources contributes to increased management stress, increased employee turnover, higher-than-normal absenteeism, and lower productivity to name just a few. It is important that the company culture is also assessed, along with its management processes to place the company in a growth capacity position.

IV. Financial Requirements and Management

Growth has a cost. An important component of understanding the financial requirements is to perform a capital requirements analysis. Doing so allows us to find out what will be needed to grow at the consultant’s proposed rate of growth. It requires the business growth consultant to do a cash flow management assessment. This ensures that there is a positive cash flow to support the planned growth and daily operations. Therefore, creating a financial forecast provides guidance in the decision-making for the rate of growth that is right for your business.

V. Change Management

People struggle with change even when it is good for them. It is important to have a change management strategy when making changes in a business. The change management strategy is a continuous tool to assist employees with changing processes, implementing new protocols, and training for new responsibilities and roles.

Communication is at the heart of change management and a communication plan is part of the overall strategy.

5. Sales Training Programs

There are many skills that a salesperson requires. Therefore, it is beneficial to assess and improve the current staffing skills as needed. The consultant should review the current sales acquisition rate and then provide training to improve it. After all, just a small improvement in sales is enough to generate revenues that will help fund the company’s growth. Here are five areas that the business growth consultant will review and improve.

I. Sales Techniques and Methods

There are many sales techniques that work. These include consultative sales where you concentrate on building relationships. The relationships improve your understanding of the customer and their needs. Understanding the needs of the customer provides an advantage that can translate into increased sales. There are also solution-based sales, value-based selling and the challenger-based method. The challenger-based method provides insights to the customer that they may not have been previously aware of and challenges their way of thinking. Often a business will settle on a hybrid approach of these four methods to ensure that they arrive at the best sales method for them.

II. Prospecting and Lead Generation

Most salespeople don’t spend enough time and effort networking for sales. Generating leads from both online and offline networking groups is tremendously beneficial to most businesses. T professional consultant will review what is going on and improve it. It’s also important to address potential client objections in the categories of time, authority, competition, timing, trust, and needs. This will provide you with an advantage that most competitors will not have.

III. Negotiation Skills

It is important for the salesperson to come to a win-win situation with the potential client and be able to close the sale. There are approximately 30+ closing techniques that are used to close a sale. Adopt a technique that not only works for them but also the others in the sales team. This approach allows the sales team to continually improve their sales acquisition rate to one of the best in class.

IV. Customer Relationship Management

Sales don’t just end when the initial sale is completed. It is important to build relationships throughout the fulfillment process. The follow-up to the initial sale can generate even more sales and revenues for the company. A thorough assessment is part of what a growth consultant will do to understand if the company is ready for growth and the next level of success.

V. Time Management and Productivity

Task and time management is such a critical tool for sales staff. It can double your sales in some circumstances. Training on the Eisenhower matrix, goal setting, and the use of efficiency tools are just part of what needs to be done to get the most out of your sales team.

These are five of a much longer list that a professional consultant will review, assess, and improve.

6. Crisis Management Planning

Most small and medium-sized companies do not respond well to the crisis when it comes their way. The consultant will identify potential risks in the following six areas:

Human Resources – Key roles must be identified, and personnel who are trained to take over should an immediate vacancy happen is necessary. This is especially critical when present personnel cannot continue in their role.

Equipment/machines – All equipment and software are assessed to ensure that failures don’t have prolonged downtime or losses.

Materials – Assess materials used in the process of servicing the customer. They must be of proper quality. There must be a plan on what to do should failure in the materials or products being used or delivered lead to negative consequences.

Environment – These risks include government legislation, natural disasters, company strikes if applicable etc. The environment that a company operates under has many risks that should be considered in the crisis preparation plan.

KPI’s – measuring is important as any company that doesn’t measure doesn’t know whether they are improving or not. Measuring the wrong KPIs can lead to blind spots that may cause a crisis. These blind spots will not be seen until it is too late. This is an important component of crisis management planning, and the professional business growth consultant will be able to identify gaps in your current dashboards.

Processes – Identifying potential process failures and how to deal with them will enable you to have a more resilient company that will be ready for growth.

7. Exit Strategy Planning

There are many exit strategies available that your business growth consultant will propose to you depending on your circumstances. Here are five of a much longer list that may be available to you and your business.

Management Buyout– This is where the business owner sells the business to the management team running the business. Financing may come from loans, private equity or seller financing.

Employee Stock Ownership Plan – This is where you sell the business to all employees. The transition can be gradual over a specified amount of time to ensure stability and a smooth business transition.

Sell to an Individual Buyer – This is where you obtain a business broker and sell your business to an individual buyer or group of buyers.

Family Succession– This exit strategy involves the transfer of ownership to family members. It usually includes training and mentorship to ensure the business sustains itself for the family members.

Franchising– This type of exit is where you are scaling and exiting at the same time using franchising or micro-franchising. Here you are earning a franchise fee and royalties depending on the set-up. This is usually not considered because of its expense; however, micro-franchising is a fraction of the cost of franchising and a great option for most businesses to explore. Please see number 11 for more details below.

There are many other strategies that you may not be aware of that may be proposed to you for your consideration.

8. Social Media Strategy

The business growth consultant will also assess your social media strategy and suggest improvements when necessary. Social media today is a great way of attracting new customers and sales leads. Most businesses don’t fully understand its power to increase sales revenues. The consultant will analyze the frequency of posts being uploaded as well as the number of social media platforms you are employing. Once this is done, then a thorough analysis of the content being produced is performed. It will provide your business with a winning strategy to increase your sales and grow your business.

9. Talent Acquisition and Retention

There are many strategies that a professional business consultant will propose to you to acquire the best talent for the growth of your business. Here are just three of the many that may be right for you.

Diverse Sourcing Channels – Your professional consultant may suggest talent acquisition channels that you are not aware of. This will bolster your acquisition program and get the best talent for your money.

Employer Advocacy Programs – These are programs where employees are encouraged to share their positive experiences on social media about working for the company. Such testimonials can attract the right talent for your company.

Assessment and Selection Tools – The selection of the right people for your business growth is essential. Skill assessments including tests are necessary to evaluate potential candidates. This also includes behavioral and not just functional questions. Properly selecting the right employees is a necessary component for growth.

Recruiting the right employees is not enough. It is important that you also have a retention program that keeps them. There are many retention programs and here are three of many that may be proposed for your business to grow.

Onboarding programs – Most companies do not have onboarding programs to help new employees integrate with the company culture. The result is greater than necessary new employee turnover and much more. Developing these programs can have tremendous benefits. Make sure you include a buddy system where a long-term employee is assigned to help new employees get acclimated to the company culture faster and easier.

Career Development – Most medium and small businesses dismiss how important career development is to many employees. It certainly can make a difference in retaining employees longer. The employees usually taking advantage of these programs are usually the ones that not only shine but maybe the company leaders of the future.

Leadership Management Programs – Most employees who are promoted do not have the requisite skills needed to perform at the highest levels of their new position. The lack of training for their new role will manifest in poor performance. Every management position has new skills to learn and develop from supervision to C.E.O. Without training the promoted individual cannot excel in their new role.

These retention programs and many others may be proposed. Together with the right recruitment strategies your company will be positioned for continued growth and success.

10. Customer Loyalty Programs

These programs are designed to not only attract but also retain customers to buy from your business continually. The business growth consultant will provide you with one that will work for you. The list of potential loyalty programs for your business is long. Here are just five of the more than 30 that may be available to you.

Points-based Loyalty Program – These are programs where customers earn points for purchases to be redeemed at a certain point. Each point has a value that customers can use as a coupon to reduce the price of future purchases. Making this a tiered program creates an even stronger loyalty program.

Cash-back – These are programs where the customer earns a percentage of their purchase amount as a credit for future purchases. This program closely resembles the points-based loyalty program. You can also make this a tiered program where people can earn higher percentages based on higher spending amounts.

VIP and Membership Programs – These types of programs provide early access to customers on exclusive sales. They also can provide access to new products or events that regular customers don’t have access to. Like the above two programs, creating tiers such as silver, gold, or platinum levels can increase customer loyalty to your business.

Referral Programs – These programs offer a reward of some type to the customer for referring a sale through someone they know. These types of leads are great because the customer has ‘warmed up’ the customer on your behalf. They also have a much higher closing rate and are well worth the investment when done correctly.

Discount Programs – These are programs that provide special discounts to members only. You can also have promotions during special times in the year to attract even more sales to your business.
Loyalty programs can increase sales and therefore revenues. The professional consultant will provide you with options to grow your business that may include a customer loyalty program that will be part of an overall growth strategy.

11. Franchise Development

Franchising is a fantastic method to grow a business that already has a track record. The proper foundations must be in place to transform your business into a franchise. They include the following:

Policies & Procedures – Written documented procedures and policies are necessary to create a franchise. The business growth consultant can assist to create, develop, and even implement procedures that may not be in place. Most companies have unwritten procedures and having them in a written format allows everyone to follow. This is part of having established standards so that the business is replicable in other areas or geographic regions.

QA & QC – Being able to replicate the business in various locations with different people is what franchising is all about. Quality Assurance and Quality Control are major drivers of this effort. Quality assurance is the documentation portion of these two and focuses on standards, process development, and auditing frequency. Quality Control is focused on the measurement of outputs in a process. These include volume capacity, production volume, error rates, corrective actions, and inspections.

Marketing & Brand Promotion – Having a robust marketing ecosystem that drives sales for franchisees is most important. Also, promoting your business as a franchisor is critical to having a successful franchise system. The professional consultant will ensure that you have a program that will produce results. It will be tailored to your specific business so that it can grow.

12. Brand Licensing Development and Creation

Micro-franchising is where a business licenses its brand to someone else. The location owner can then operate the business in a different location. It does not operate in the same manner as a franchise but does have many benefits. It is much easier to create and much less expensive to do as well. The business that decides to grow in this manner will also need to have documented policies and procedures, as well as a QA & QC program and other aspects of a franchise but will not have the traditional control that regular franchisors have. It is an extremely powerful method for growth that truly deserves the attention of all business owners who want a great growth path for their business.

Why Trust My Advice?

As a practicing business growth consultant for more than 33 years, the advice given in this article is part of my services to businesses. Growing your business is what I do. Choosing a competent business consultant will provide you with possibilities that you never would think were available to you. My advice is to seek out someone that you can work with and who is willing to work with you. It is the reason why I have the best guarantee in the industry. My guarantee is if you are not fully satisfied with my services in the first month then you don’t pay for my services in the second month (of similar value to an ongoing project or consulting work).

Myth

The most common myth is that consultants are too expensive to hire and are an expense I can’t afford.

Answer: This can be true for most large consulting firms but smaller firms like my own strive to find ways to work with businesses who truly want to grow their businesses including consulting compensation methods that work for the client. Remember that a complimentary discovery session is where we start and you can usually learn a lot without any cost to you.

Summary

A Business Growth Consultant can have a transformative impact on your business and make it the business you always wanted. The 12 business services that a professional can assist you with are just the tip of the iceberg. The time is now to make your business grow. Contact us today and start the journey now. It’s within your reach.