How a Business Growth Consultant Can Supercharge Your Company

While it’s clear what a business growth consultant aims to do, there’s still some ambiguity over how they actually achieve growth. Do they set up a desk in your office and start to take over? Do they encourage you to spend more than you have? Or do they stay away and just provide pithy self-help quotes over Zoom every quarter?

The truth is that it depends on the business growth consultant you hire. At Forbes Burton, our specialist growth consultants dig down into the fine details of your business to offer practical advice that provides real results. We never force changes onto our clients that they’re uncomfortable with. We provide actionable suggestions and even help you to implement them if you choose, but the final say always belongs to the business owner.

So, if you decided to hire the services of a business growth consultant, what benefits to your company could you expect to see?

Streamlined processes

Some people worry that a business growth consultant will ask owners to spend a small fortune on different strategies that will bring money in over the long term. In reality though, a growth consultant can actually identify several ways that can save your business money.

Saving money is an often-overlooked method of achieving business growth. While larger profits can be the result of bigger sales, they can also be the result of smaller outgoings. This is where a fresh pair of eyes on the business processes can be invaluable. Simplifying procedures or boosting productivity can yield huge gains without needing to improve sales figures.

There are multiple ways to improve business processes, but constant developments in technology make this something that should be assessed every few years. Strides made in AI, in particular, can make previously labour-intensive tasks fully automated and quick to complete.

Looking at existing customers

Your existing client base can be a crucial part of any growth strategy. As customers that are already in the system and know your business, they can make for an easy win in your plans.

Not every business is lucky enough to have returning custom, however. A good business growth consultant will work alongside you to discover ways to make your client base stronger.

• If your business doesn’t lend itself to return custom, are there any services that can be tweaked, or new lines offered that can change this?
• Are customers not coming back, and how can this be remedied?
• If they are coming back, can we get them to return more frequently?

Finding new customers

One of the easiest ways to bring new customers to your business is to work on a new target market. This can be achieved by either operating in a new area, or offering a new product or service.

Operating in a new area needn’t mean a geographical change (though it can certainly help). It can just as easily be achieved by starting to trade online, or providing a delivery service. These new channels can expose your business to customers who would otherwise never discover or consider it.

Changing your target market

Sometimes clients have a great product that isn’t gaining traction because its being pushed to the wrong audience.

History is littered with examples of successful products that were originally designed for an entirely different use. The inventors of Bubble Wrap initially tried to sell it as textured wallpaper, and then greenhouse insulation before it found its niche in packaging.

Similarly, Play-Doh was conceived as a way of cleaning soot-covered wallpaper, and the Slinky was originally a means of stabilising naval equipment on choppy waters.

There’s no need to attempt a complete 360 degree turn like these examples did though. It can often just be the case that your premium product is better suited to a budget market, or vice-versa. A business growth consultant will look at your offerings with an open mind and determine how best it should be marketed.

Increasing sales

There are a number of ways in which a company can increase sales. This can include changes to entice more return custom, or ways to bring in new clients, as discussed above. Another method is to increase the amount of the company’s average sale.

This can, of course, be done by simply increasing prices, but this can also have the adverse effect of deterring customers. A good business growth consultant will help you to look at comparative offerings in your area to determine a reasonable price you can command.

Instead of this, it’s a good idea to look at how each customer can be upsold. This can either be through suggesting a more premium product, or by purchasing useful add-ons. A fine shoe shop, for example, may be able to sell polishes and brushes to those purchasing their shoes.

Trying new offerings

New product lines and services can open up many more opportunities for businesses. Just imagine how differently Amazon’s fortunes would have played out if they had decided to stick to just selling books.

Of course, Amazon didn’t jump from being a bookseller to offering TV streaming services overnight, and the reason for that is that they couldn’t. Businesses looking to branch out into other areas tend to have more success when their new offering is adjacent in some way to what they already offer. For Amazon, it made much more sense to dip their toes into selling other entertainment media such as CDs, and then develop their technology arm by producing Kindles, the e-reader that supplemented their literary offerings. Once established in these fields, they were able to expand further still.

A business growth consultant can look at your company’s capabilities and suggest possible other avenues for your business to explore and grow into.

Inorganic business growth

All of the methods shown above are examples of organic growth. They’re all things that can be tried within your own company. Inorganic growth, however, requires the acquisition of, or merger with, another company.

There are few quicker or more substantial ways for a business to grow than acquiring another business. This allows them to focus on a new geographical area, or new business offering straightaway, and often with a readymade client base.

If an acquired business belongs to the same sector and geographical area to your original company, meanwhile, this only serves to strengthen your market share.

Of course, a merger or acquisition can be more expensive than the other options a business growth consultant will consider, but it some cases, it can make sound economic sense. Those looking to launch a new service may not have the infrastructure in place to implement it to the standard they’d like. Instead of paying out for equipment, and then marketing to make customers aware of the new service, it can be more beneficial to buy out a business already established in that field.

Google had all the resources to create their own video-streaming site, but decided to buy YouTube instead. They could see that YouTube had already enjoyed a strong headstart on Google and it would be difficult to dislodge them as the de facto video-streaming service. They could have created their own version and battled YouTube for supremacy, but this would have cost them millions in marketing and likely would have ended in defeat.

As such, Google’s acquisition of YouTube removed their biggest threat of failure and lent them an instant user base in one fell swoop. It cost them more initially, but few would argue that it’s been the right move in the long run.

Talk to a business growth consultant for free

With so many growth opportunities available to businesses, the options can be dizzying for directors. At Forbes Burton, we offer free initial consultations so that business owners can get a sense of what we can do for them before they commit to anything.

Our specialist business growth consultants are on hand to talk through your options with no obligation to you. Call 0800 975 0380, or find out more about our acquisition service.