From increasing efficiency and implementing new technologies, overcoming challenges, and identifying growth opportunities, a successful business consultant can create a significant impact on a company. Business consultant Valentin Melik shares what goes into the role and its impact
In your opinion, what are the key qualities that distinguish a successful consultant from the rest?
In my experience, the best consultants have a few specific mindsets and abilities. The biggest one would be the ability to think about the business the same way as the founder would but with a very wide lens.
What do I mean by this? I must care about the business’s success and its goals and maintain impartiality simultaneously to process where the business is currently effectively.
You must be able to ask tough questions such as: what are the biggest barriers to the business’s growth? Is it the lack of laser focus on the mission? Is it a lack of qualified talent, or maybe the wrong strategy at this time of the business life cycle?
You must truly care to make long-lasting changes, develop strategies, and solve issues.
Another component of the mindset would be that you can’t have an ego because it will prevent you from hearing, processing, and developing strategies for the business. I would address this with communication skills and attention to detail.
How do you approach the initial assessment phase when working with a new client? What factors do you consider most important?
To get things rolling, I like to interview the leadership to learn about the journey of the business, how it began, its greatest challenges and issues, and what are the business’s goals and core values.
The next step for me would be to learn as much as possible about the day-to-day operation procedures, do financial assessments, review policies (if there are any), and hit the ground level of the team, gradually familiarizing myself with the entire structure.
This approach allows me to see where the issues are from a bird’s eye view. Direct contact with the leadership throughout the process allows us to formulate solutions. In my experience, most businesses will struggle in a few areas:
Talent: Right people for the job
Sales issues: Inefficient sales tactics, strategies, or processes
Cashflow: overspending or not having clear financial goals.
Misalignments of company values partners’ personal goals.
Leadership strategies: This can tie back into incorrect people in the wrong seats.
All these areas require having tough conversations and making decisive decisions, which most people are not comfortable having, and having an outside council can help with this process immensely.
Could you highlight a specific challenge you faced during a consulting engagement and how you overcame it to deliver results?
This would have to be interpersonal communication with the leadership.
This is where egos can come out, walls of resistance rise, and inflexibility of personal character prevent one from making key decisions necessary for the growth of the business.
Often, partners can find themselves disagreeing on a direction a business should take, and this could be a very painful life cycle in the business, as both usually want what’s best for the business, but the communication or ability to convince the other partner may not be at the level where it needs to be, for an effective resolution how to move forward.
One partner may think it’s time to expand, another may want to play it safe and focus inward, optimizing internal processes and structures before taking the leap, and because of their personal investment in the venture, both can become stubborn in their views.
In this case, business consulting becomes like couples therapy, where you need to navigate the emotions and opinions and realign them to the best interests of the business.
I’ve seen this topple many businesses over the years.
What role do you believe emotional intelligence plays in consulting? How do you navigate challenging interpersonal dynamics within client organizations?
I would have to say that it is almost a primary requirement for consulting services because it is such a vital part of communication.
The best way to think about the role of a business consultant is as an interpreter in a wide range of domains. Your primary role is to interpret the issues and effectively deliver those issues with solutions to the owners. If you cannot do that, what was the point of your services?
What methodologies or frameworks do you typically employ to analyze and diagnose problems within a business?
For me, this is highly individualized based on what kind of business it is, but it starts with company values, roles and responsibilities of the leadership, organizational structures, cash flow, sales process, and the ground level of the service or the production.
It’s a very top-down analysis of the entire structure. Again, by learning about how the organization currently runs, coupled with the frustrations of the leadership, you can devise an appropriate set of solutions for any issue. It’s all about pinpointing where the issues are.
Can you share some examples of innovative strategies or solutions you have recommended to clients to help them gain a competitive edge?
When we talk about innovative solutions for business growth, it really depends on areas of current friction and what the bottlenecks are.
In the case of a talent shortage, it may be as easy as employing executive staffing agencies to market the open positions on Job sites.
If sales are the weak point, the solution is rebuilding the strategy and sales model from the ground up, or it could be finding a software solution for the business.
This is why it is crucial for the business consultant to dig deep and really understand what the business is, its operations, and its current strategies.
What metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) do you use to measure the success of your consulting engagements?
Most KPIs will be specific to the issues of the business you are brought in to create solutions and will differ from one another.
If you did your job right and aligned the business’s goals and the strategic plan, you could see the shifts happening in real-time and if the plan is being executed or not.
Most small-scale businesses can implement changes within a few quarters. Mid-size operations may need 6 -18 months to see the changes.
Can you share a significant success story where your consulting expertise made a tangible impact on a client’s business?
One of the best examples I can think of was when I was involved in an art-based production studio company, where we were able to double the gross annual income for the year by optimizing the production process, shifting roles and responsibilities of the team members, and fundamentally changing the approach to projects the company had in place.
Not only did we increase output efficiency, which resulted in a doubling of the revenue, but the byproduct of the changes was increased client retention, satisfaction, and repeat business.
It was a positive domino effect.
How do you ensure effective communication and client collaboration throughout the consulting process?
This can be a very twofold issue. It really depends on how invested the leadership is in finding issues and implementing changes.
Usually, you can tell how invested the ownership is in seeing positive returns on your services, and can be spotted during the intake process.
I can tell you from experience that if the leadership is eager, changes will start happening, and the consulting job will be a dynamic, consistent, and satisfying process because it is in the owner’s best interest to see positive changes.
On the opposite side of the coin, if the owners are laid back as if they have all the time in the world to make changes, it will most likely become a drawn-out, tedious process with little chance of possible change.
What is the most rewarding aspect of being a consultant?
Having seen the pressures that business owners go through and experienced myself, I can tell you that nothing is more satisfying than seeing the positive changes in a business and witnessing its success.
Often running a business is equated to parenting a child, and a business partnership is a marriage.
I wholeheartedly agree, and there is nothing more satisfying and fulfilling to witness than your child growing into a strong, intelligent, and positive influence in the world.
Clients benefit from the services or goods. Employees benefit from the income they make. Employers benefit from the legacy they build.
