What Is A Business Growth Consultant (And Do I Need One)?

Finding the right people with the right skills to help is one of the most important roles of a founder, along with funding and strategy.

But deciding exactly what kind of roles you need to fill can be daunting, especially in the early stages. You need to stay lean, so every hire has to be thoroughly thought throw and justified. But equally, you need to ensure you’ve got the right people in place with the right skills and knowledge to give yourself the best chance of success. 

And in the LinkedIn era, new types of job titles seem to be popping up all over the place. We wrote about another one here – why hire a fractional CMO. How can you tell what titles are relevant and worthwhile for your business?

A ’business growth consultant’ might be unfamiliar to you, so we’re here to explain what the job is and why you might need one. 

What Does A Business Growth Consultant Do?

Thankfully, the title of business growth consultant is a bit Ronseal – it does what it says on the tin. A business growth consultant helps businesses who are in the early stages of growth, or who have reached a growth plateau, to acquire new customers and maximise their customer lifetime value.

A business might be failing to maximise its growth potential down to any number of reasons:

• Strategy and targeting
• Messaging
• Creative assets
• Channel selection
• Channel execution
• User journey
• Product development
  
• Growth processes

… or a combination of the above.

A business growth consultant should be able to take a look at all of this and come to a judgement about where the shortfalls are. They’d be able to identify the flaws in the growth efforts and build a plan to address them. That plan might include:

• Research – poor strategy and targeting can often be down to low quality (or non-existent) market and customer research. A business growth consultant could conduct or commission research to correct this.
• Creative briefing – a business growth consultant could find good designers and writers and properly brief them to produce effective creative assets.
• Channel selection – they should be able to analyse which channels are likely to work and instigate testing and validation on those channels.
• User journey – they could analyse the weaknesses in the user journey and find the right experts to plug the holes.
• Product development – they could advise on product development directions to take to improve growth.
• Growth processes – they could ensure the business has proper growth processes including experimentation and analysis. At Growth Division we call this a growth framework. 

What Do Small Business And Startup Owners Really Need Help With?

Small business and startup owners can sometimes find themselves at a loss as to where to start to get their growth moving in the right direction. How can they know which part of their process is failing to deliver?

In order to help them identify this and begin to make changes, a business growth consultant would take the following steps:

1) Discovery

A business growth consultant would have several conversations with the founder to get to grips with their goals and aspirations, their business model and their target market. They would have a look at any analytics set-up the business has, do some market research, and begin to build up a picture of how they can help the business.

2) Strategy

The business growth consultant would then put together a strategy including key actions points such as research, creative production or tool set-up. They would identify the key requirements for the business and should, at this stage, be able to estimate the costs involved. This strategy should come with an action plan with key milestone dates and should outline a process of oversight and reporting. 

3) Expert sourcing

A business growth consultant should know a lot about every part of marketing, but using a generalist for everything is not usually the best way to go. They would be able to identify freelancers, agencies and support staff to execute the strategy they put in place. 

4) Project management

The growth consultant should then manage the team to execute the strategy and be responsible for delivery. 

5) Analysis and reporting

A business growth consultant should report back to the founder on progress. This should include detailed analysis of the key data points and metrics from the campaign, analysis of the effectiveness of the experiments they are running and planned experiments for the next reporting period. Generally speaking, this is done monthly. The growth consultant should be answerable to the overall effectiveness of the strategy and propose changes where needed. 

What are the benefits of hiring a business growth consultant?

The main benefits of hiring a business growth consultant are as follows:

• Unbiased, third party perspective. A business growth consultant won’t be tainted by being too close to the product.
• A ‘black book’ of expert contacts. A good growth consultant should have a list of tried and tested experts they’ve worked with to execute strategies.
• A set of tools and processes to help you grow. A business growth consultant should put in place a set of tools and processes, potentially including a martech stack, that should last even after you don’t need their services anymore.

How Can I Find A Business Growth Consultant?

When choosing a business growth consultant you need to ensure they have the core skills, experience and track record. You should look for:

• Multi-year experience creating and executing marketing strategies. Ideally, these should include examples close to your target market.
• Testimonials/reviews. A successful business growth consultant should have built up advocates among their previous clients. Case studies or testimonials should be available to you to view. Or even better, some business growth consultants will give you the opportunity to speak to a previous client for a reference.

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