Don’t Make These Mistakes When Hiring a Consultant for Your Business

If you’re looking for consultant to address some of the gaps in your business, you’ll be wondering where to start. In fact, you might have even felt quite reluctant to seek a consultant – it requires being willing to listen to counsel from someone else, and that can be hard to do if you’ve conceived and grown a company on your own all this time. Here are some mistakes to avoid making if you’ve decided to take the leap and hire a consultant for your business.

Hiring without a goal in mind

It’s not unusual to have multiple areas of your business that you’re struggling with. You might need help refining a strategy, developing a product or marketing a service in the right way, but it would be unwise to ask your consultant to help you meet all these goals at once. In a best case scenario, they’ll be able to do a good job of it all, but you’ll pay an awful lot for it as a result of using so many of their hours. On the other hand, they may not have the expertise to help you meet every one of your goals, in which case it will be expensive and produce less than optimal results. So, set your goals and be realistic about what one consultant can achieve in the time frame and budget you have available.

Choosing a consultant with a limited range of services

When you’re searching for a consultant, be sure to only consider those who can provide the services you actually need. A very limited range of services might warrant alarm bells, as you may find that you need to hire an additional consultant to take on the work that your primary consultant cannot perform. You’ll need to take this advice with a pinch of salt, of course, as many consultants will specialise in a particular niche, which is excellent news for your business. Just make sure their expertise isn’t too narrow for your needs.

Choosing a consultant with too wide of a range of services

Have you ever heard the expression ‘jack of all trades, master of none’? It can be worth remembering when you’re choosing a consultant to work with your business, as sometimes it’s better to work with someone who has very in-depth knowledge in a narrow field, rather than a generalist with a little knowledge across the board. The exception to this rule, of course, is when you’re working with consultancy firms. The more individuals in a firm, the wider you can reasonably expect their service offering to be. So, by all means choose a consultant from a firm such as Alacrita (their range of services in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry is a very positive thing given their size), but don’t be tempted to sign up an individual consultant who claims to be able to do it all on their own.

Being too fixated on price

As is the case for all products and services, you generally get what you pay for. So, don’t let your decision be driven by money alone. Of course, you’ll have an upper limit in mind, but beware the very cheapest consultants; at best they’re selling themselves short (which doesn’t demonstrate the kind of commercial acumen your business needs) and at worst they’re not going to deliver the high-quality service you need. Gather quotes from multiple consultants, review their fees as a whole and establish an average price to see if your short list of consultants looks reasonable.

Not considering ‘fit’

For a consultant to be truly effective (and therefore a strong addition to the team and a good use of your business’s resources), it’s important that they fit with you, your business and the wider team they’ll be interacting with. This means that they’ll need to have an affable personality and an approach to work that broadly mirrors your own. This cuts both ways, of course, so be keep it in mind when hiring a consultant and make sure you’re both happy to work together – you’ll be spending a lot of time on the phone, emailing or working collaboratively in person.

Not pre-empting the work you’ll need to do

Finally, consultancy is exactly what it says on the tin: you’ll be given expert advice from someone who’s well-qualified in their field. But, they can only give you useful, relevant and timely advice if you’re prepared to put in the ground work. That means being in a position to give them all the information they need, access to resources, time for catch-up meetings, and even access to key individuals and decision-makers. Don’t forget to pre-empt those kinds of needs if you want this arrangement to be successful.

Be aware of these mistakes before you hire a consultant – it will stand you in good stead to build an excellent relationship with the right individual, taking your business from strength to strength.