Leveraging Small Business Consulting Skills

A competent small business consultant will develop analytical skills that enable him to identify certain conditions within an organization that lead to areas of dysfunction, which may result in excess costs and profit leaks.  It is akin to developing a sixth sense: he will be able to recognize and articulate conditions that other businesspeople will not be aware of.

One competency he will develop is the ability to determine a problem’s root cause by being able to quickly assess instances of process failure.  The failure could be related to any number of steps or activities involved in a process, but what is unique here is the small business consultant’s ability to identify the problem quickly and efficiently, seemingly without effort.

Another key competency that the small business consultant will develop is “Pattern Recognition.” This is a skill whereby he will be able to readily identify how certain complex processes, and what would otherwise be perceived to be unrelated activities or processes, affect one another.  This skill develops as the small business consultant observes the many functional areas and processes within companies and begins to see their subtle dependencies.  He therefore becomes able to identify problems and conditions that may have been present for quite some time, but have been lying beneath management’s awareness.

The point of bringing up these unique skills is that they are the foundation for the small business consultant’s status as a skilled professional.  Therefore, much of the small business consultant’s value is derived from his unique analytical skills, and his ability to identify and implement the solutions.  The area of solution implementation is one where the small business consultant has the ability to leverage his skills.  This is an area where junior consultants or subcontractors can carry a lot of the responsibility for the implementation and documentation of the actions required.  Therefore, a small business consultant has the ability to increase the number of projects and revenue by utilizing lesser-skilled professionals to carry out the portions of the consulting engagement that are not as dependent upon a high level of analytical ability or solution implementation.