If your business is struggling financially or you wish to have an overhaul of your current financial situation then you may consider bringing in a financial consultant.
A financial consultant will be able to go through all your company accounts in detail and make recommendations of how and where you can save money and discuss with you where they believe money is being wasted. This may be changes that are required to sort out issues with unnecessary staff, material costs or utility bills.
If you do bring in a consultant, it is wise to listen to their ideas and discuss them with other shareholders, employees or business colleagues. A good business or financial consultant will spend the time to get to know your business and how it works before making any recommendations as each business is individual and what works for one may not work so well for another.
If you are looking to venture in to the world of constancy then there are a few questions you need to ask yourself to find out if you are ready
When looking for a business consultant it can be hard to know where to start and so my advice would be to be specific in your search. If you have a large business dealing with many clients you are likely to need a different sort of consultant to a one-man-band business who deals with only a few clients.
Try to search for something such as ‘business consultant for hairdressers in Shropshire’ this should give you much more specific results meaning that you are more likely to find the most effective consultant for your business.
It’s also important to have an initial meeting with the consultant (which should be free of charge) to get an idea of what they are about and the sorts of services that they could offer you. You can also discuss costing and projected targets that they would expect your business to reach.
It’s always best to shop around and try to read some reviews from previous customers to get an idea of what the consultant is like to work with.
In business you can sometimes get stuck in a cyclical pattern of merely ticking over, you’re not losing money but after all of the overheads have gone out of the business you’re not making much money either.
Many business owners will just think ‘well at least we’re not losing money’ but is that really a good enough business ethos? No! It’s time to give your business a good kick by investing some money back in to it and the best way to do this is to pay for a business consultant to build you a tailor-made development plan.
A good development plan should show you simple ways to build on your existing business to increase profitability and increase your client base also, a consultant should be able to map out clear goals with targets and continue to help you achieve these goals by catching up with you on a regular basis and tweaking bits of the development plan where needed to ensure you get the best out of your business.
Business consultancy is on the rise and this growing market is providing more and more competition for the qualified consultants out there looking for work. So how can you compete as a business consultant?
First it’s about making sure that you are easy to find, if you have a business website then the first step would be to try and improve your search engine ranking in google, this is called SEO, search engine optimisation and can be done by a good web designer. It’s really worth spending a bit of money to get you as visible as possible on these sites as it will get you ahead of the competition.
Next it’s worth registering with a company that provides customers with a directory of business consultants to choose from. These websites can bring quite a bit of custom especially introducing customers to your website where if it’s good enough you can show how you stand out from the rest.
Ensure that you allow enough of your business budget for advertising and you should see great returns.
When you have put in time and effort and built up a company from scratch it can be hard to accept when you realise that you are actually getting further and further into debt. Many business owners in this situation may be tempted to just cut their losses and run, however there is help available that means you don’t have to lose your business due to debt.
It’s a fact of the modern world that many companies are in debt and most companies actually run at a loss for the first few years until things get established however it’s when this debt gets out of control and the business starts to run out of funding that the real problems occur.
As tempting as it can be to just burry your head in the sand debt is a problem that can easily be placed in the hands of a good business consultant for help. A business consultant will be able to take a look at your books, work out what is owed where and help you set up suitable payment plans. They will then be able to cast an eye over your business and advise you on how to maximise your profits to ensure you debts are paid off ASAP.
Accounts, book keeping and tax conjure up dread in many a business owners mind, entering the vast maze of business law and HMRC legislation is not for the faint hearted however there is help available and as well as making things much easier a good accounting consultant can help you to ensure that your business operates in accordance with the law as well as maximising your profitability.
Tax legislation is changing constantly and can be pretty hard to keep up with yourself, not to mention time consuming, filling out numerous forms and keeping track of the information that you need to submit each year.
A good consultant should also be able to recommend suitable accountancy software to help with the day to day running of your business which can also assist with things like automated invoices and MI reports to show how well your business is performing.
Accounts and tax don’t have to be something you dread, so take the hassle out of it and seek some good consultancy.
Most people may look at a business consultant and think how can they tell you how to do a job that you’ve done for the past 5, 10 even 15 years, and the simple answer to that is they are not there to tell you how to do your job but simply how to run your business to maximise profits.
You can be the best electrician/plumber/roofer in the world but if your passion is in the trade rather than the business side of things you are unlikely to be able to maximise your profits yourself.
It can sometimes be difficult to know where to start if your business is struggling and spending money on a business consultant when funds are tight may seem disingenuous, however a good business consultant should be able to make you far more money than their fee and should be able to project these figures to you as an example of what they can do for you.
If you own your own company, there may have been a time when you had to do everything yourself, maybe when you first started up. This could be everything from the marketing to the accounts along with the technical side of the company. As the company grew you may have been in a position where you needed to take someone else on. This can be extremely daunting the first time round as you are having to let someone else in to your business and therefore you need to be able to trust them.
Ideally you may want to find someone that you already know or have worked with before but this may not be practical. When you come to chose what type of person to take on you need to have a clear idea of what responsibilities you will be giving them. This will help you look for specific skills and qualifications. I would always recommend either giving someone a trial run or an initial short term contract so either party can part ways should it not be working out.
A marketing company should not only carry out specific marketing task but should analyse your current business situation and create a marketing plan based on your requirements and budget. They will often become more of a consultant to your business than just someone that looks after your website and online and offline promotions. These people are the experts and therefore will be aware of any recent advances in the marketing world that may assist your growth.
Marketing is all about being proactive, it should be something that is on going and monitored closely. Any body spending money on marketing needs to be able to try and establish how successful it is so they can work out if they should continue to invest down that particular avenue.
Usually it is quite straightforward to monitor the performance of an online marketing campaign, offline marketing such as leaflet dropping or TV / Radio ads may require a little more pre planning to be allow you to monitor it.