There are only so many hours in a day. And the very things that made your firm successful can limit your leadership’s bandwidth.
What happens when months slip by, head down in the busy day-to-day? Ever worry that you can’t grow because you can’t focus on it? Wish you had some help?
Enter the Strategic Growth Consultant
What is an SGC (Strategic Growth Consultant)?
In short, a strategic growth consultant looks at the big picture in tandem with market research, business vision and more to help your firm grow. Not only grow, but grow in a sustainable, innovative way that excites ALL your stakeholders.
You may be thinking, “But wait, doesn’t the CMO, COO, and/or Director of BD take responsibility for business growth?”
Growth tasks and responsibilities have, traditionally, been baked into those leadership positions. As they should be. However, as we all know, everyone in our businesses are busy. That’s when it’s beneficial to hire an outside consultant to bring expertise in growth strategies, implementation methods and action plans!
What can a strategic growth consultant do for me and my team?
An SGC can:
- Help your business lock in and articulate a meaningful, clear-cut, long-term vision for growth
- Identify what growth opportunities your business should be considering, based on vision, market research and more
- Work with leaders to position your business to win work that feeds the business (and your soul!)
- Help assemble a team and delegate responsibilities accordingly
- Develop business plans, go-to-market plans, and create accountability strategies to ensure growth plans are not only being made but followed through on
Do you need a strategic growth consultant SGC in your business?
Here’s a litmus test. If any of these are true for you and your firm, a strategic growth consultant SGC could be the right answer.
I have a 3 year strategic plan and growth is part of it.
You have an idea of how you want to grow, but you aren’t sure how exactly to get there. You need someone who’s done it before, so that you can stay in your zone of genius. Which is running your business. Most strategic business plans have a growth component but they’re not specific enough which is where we can help.
You don’t have a growth strategy. Which means you aren’t ready to harness your future.
As a leader, you likely have a strategy for your business. But growth is not part of your business strategy, you are missing opportunities for resilience and sustainability. If the strategy for growth isn’t documented and socialized within your team, then it’s the same as not having a strategy at all. Even the most talented leaders can grossly underestimate how much their teammates understand about how the business acquires new work, develops products and service lines. (Or the role they each need to play in helping to get that work.)
A strategic growth consultant SGC can clarify what growth is right for your business, develop and document strategy, validate it against market research, and build champions for it within your team.
Winning work feels choppy and inconsistent.
When things are going well, you are “too busy to think forward.” And when things slow down, you’re already behind the curve on the activities needed to keep the pipeline full of work.
A strategic growth consultant SGC can develop an incremental, consistent strategy to make sure that initiatives are being acted on consistently.
Your team has ideas about how to grow but you’re not sure how to validate those ideas.
Sometimes your business and its leaders are FULL of ideas, but you’re just not sure if they’re the RIGHT ideas? The beauty of hiring an outside consultant is that they can;
- Take a non-biased view of the ideas and help develop a ‘go/no-go’ decision matrix for ideas.
- Bring diverse/different experiences to the decision making process and discussion.
- Devote ample time to meaningful Market Research that provides qualitative and quantitative data to inform stakeholders about the decision making process and create buy-in.
It feels like there are too many opportunities.
In sharp contrast to not being able to win work, maybe your firm is overwhelmed by the opportunities available. This is a great ‘problem’ to have, but a problem none-the-less.
A strategic growth consultant SGC, through careful development of your long-term business vision, market research, and more helps your team narrow down the types of work your firm should be pursuing. They collaborate with your leaders to get crystal clear on the types of work you’d like to win and the manner in which to win that work.
Your firm is stuck on a plateau in a growing or uncertain economy.
Sometimes, you just need extra horsepower. A strategic growth consultant SGC can help you identify opportunities you might be missing and craft a strategy to meet them. They can also ensure the right teams and resources are in place to execute that strategy.
This is our team! What now?
If you found yourself nodding your head to one or all of those scenarios above it’s time to set up a meeting with Sarah Kinard of The Flamingo Project and start making your growth goals actual PLANS!