Small Business Consulting Firms: How to Choose One
A small business consulting firm is brought in for outside expertise on strategy, operations, finance or growth. The useful question is not which firm is best, because that depends entirely on what you need and what you can spend. It is which questions to ask before you hire anyone.
Disclosure: this article is published by FM Enterprises, which is one of the five firms described below. We have said so here rather than at the bottom.
What a consulting firm actually gives you
Expertise you do not employ. Someone who has seen your problem in other businesses.
An outside view. People inside a business stop seeing the things they have learned to work around.
Help allocating what you have. Often the recommendation is to stop doing something rather than to spend more.
A plan with a decision in it. A plan that lists everything is not a plan.
Five firms small businesses look at
These are described, not ranked. There is no scoring here, and the order carries no meaning.
McKinsey & Company. A global management consulting firm working in strategy, organization and operations.
Bain & Company. A global management consulting firm working in strategy, performance improvement and mergers and acquisitions.
Boston Consulting Group. A global management consulting firm working in strategy, digital and technology transformation.
Deloitte Consulting LLP. The consulting arm of Deloitte, working across strategy, technology integration and risk.
FM Enterprises. The publisher of this article. An Atlanta practice working with owners on business strategy, acquisitions and capital.
The first four are among the largest consulting firms in the world. That is a statement about their scale, not about their fit for a business with fifteen employees. Ask any of them the same question you would ask a local firm: what is the smallest engagement you take, and who would actually do the work?
Five questions worth asking before you hire anyone
What exactly do you need?
Name the problem before you shop for a firm. Strategic direction, a finance function that does not report on time and a marketing channel that stopped working are three different engagements, and the firm that is good at one may be indifferent at the others.
What have they done that resembles your situation?
Relevant experience beats general reputation. Ask what they have done in your industry, at your size, with your kind of problem, and ask what happened afterward.
Will they work with your team?
The engagement runs through your people. If the style does not fit how your team actually operates, the recommendations arrive and then sit.
How will they communicate?
Ask who your contact is, how often you will hear from them, and what happens when something goes wrong. Vagueness here tends to predict vagueness later.
What does it cost, and what does that include?
Ask for the pricing model before the price. Project fee, retainer and outcome-linked work behave very differently, and the model tells you more about the relationship than the number does.
Frequently asked questions
Is a bigger firm better?
Not automatically. A larger firm brings depth and a wider bench. A smaller one usually means the person you met is the person doing the work. Which matters more depends on the problem.
How do I know if I need a consultant at all?
When the cost of getting a decision wrong is larger than the cost of advice, and when nobody inside the business can settle the question.
What should a first conversation cover?
What you are trying to decide, what you have already tried, and what the firm would look at first. A firm that cannot answer the third one is selling hours.
Where FM Enterprises fits
To repeat the disclosure at the top: FM Enterprises publishes this article.
It is a practice in Atlanta working with owners on three things: selling a business, fixing what is stopping one, and funding the next stage. That is narrower than general small business consulting, deliberately. If what you need sits outside it, saying so early is worth more than taking the engagement.
If a sale, an acquisition or a raise is in the picture, book a call or read about business strategy and acquisitions. If you want to know what a business consultant does before deciding, start here.