In this post, we explore the role of a strategy consultant and the skills needed in such a profession.
With the business environment consistently evolving due to market forces and external factors like the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses need strategy more than ever.
When businesses require assistance to improve business growth or processes, they often engage a strategy consultant to help them cross a hurdle or provide direction to get them to the next level.
WHAT IS A STRATEGY CONSULTANT?
A strategy consultant is a third party brought in by the management of a company to offer outside and expert perspective on the business’s challenges.
In a nutshell, a strategy consultant’s role is to objectively assess the core capabilities in relation to the market and competition and identify issues, current problems, and implement solutions.
Some strategy consultants may be specialised in a specific industry, sector or field. They possess specific domain knowledge and practical experience that can help a business improve its core capabilities, offerings or grow its market share in a specific market.
Different Types of Strategy Consultants
While the role of most strategy consultants is to improve or grow a business, there may be specific areas of specialisation that can add value to clients.
Here are some examples of specialised strategy consultants include:
Marketing Strategist
A marketing strategist focuses on building a business’s brand equity and improving market position to grow revenue. In the current digitally evolving economy, they should also play the role of a digital strategist to harness both traditional and digital media in reaching out to new and existing customers.
Growth Strategist
A growth strategist focuses on helping businesses achieve a higher market share than the company currently has. This goes beyond marketing and growth can be achieved through developing new products to serve an existing market, developing new segments of the market or entering entirely new markets.
Technology Strategist
A technology strategist helps develop, implement, and maintain a company’s information technology (IT) structure to reduce cost, improving productivity and efficiency to improve profits.
Talent Strategist
A talent strategist is an expert on the full scope of HR processes to attract, onboard, develop, engage, and retain high-performing employees. They specialise in talent management to improve business performance.
Investment Strategist
An investment strategist is a financial professional who advises on an organisation’s investment assets, such as real estate holdings, fixed income, and equity securities. They must be knowledgeable on market trends that could impact an organisation’s investments and be familiar with fiduciary principles and regulatory legislation.
What Skills and Qualities DoES a Strategy Consultant Need?
Not everyone can be a strategy consultant, and it requires a particular skillset and experience to add value to an organisation at a strategic level.
Here are some of the critical skills and qualities needed in a good strategy consultant:
Big-Picture Mindset
A strategy consultant is essentially a management consultant with deep industry or domain knowledge and analyses high-level business issues with a holistic mindset.
As such, the strategy consultant needs to have a big-picture view and the ability to identify connections creatively in the business landscape as it relates to the organisation.
Strategy consultants must be lateral thinkers with good domain and general knowledge. This allows them to provide “out-of-the-box solutions” that have not been considered before.
Analytical & Deductive Ability
A critical skill of a strategy consultant is the ability to analyse large amounts of data, assess problems and structure solutions, and present information at a range of levels.
This is especially important in the digital age, where highly accurate data is available through big data platforms and online analytical tools.
A strategy consultant must make sense of the data and make deductions that lead to identifying issues or developing solutions for problems.
Project Management Skills
Unless a strategy consultant is brought in for a purely advisory role, most consultants will also spearhead the implementation of recommended strategies and activities to help an organisation realise tangible value.
This means the consultant must be a capable project manager. This includes being able to manage timelines, resources, budgets, personnel and deliverables.
Whether a project is 3 months or 2 years long, good project management is necessary to ensure a project is completed on time and budget.
People Skills
An underrated skill for a strategy consultant is people skills. Consulting, in general, is a client-focused industry, and a lot of time may be spent understanding the needs and concerns of individuals and teams from all levels of an organisation.
A high EQ is necessary to communicate, collaborate, negotiate, and persuade different stakeholders to get the required information or to see a project through.
Strategy Consultant for Marketing In Singapore & Malaysia
Suppose you are looking for ways to build your brand and increase lead generation and sales in Singapore and Malaysia. In that case, you can consider engaging a strategy consultant specialising in marketing in these countries.
Evolve & Adapt is an award-winning strategy & digital implementation consultancy firm headquartered in Singapore with an office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
We are certified management consultants with expertise & experience in strategic hybrid marketing in both these countries. Our international team can execute the marketing strategies and frameworks we develop.
Learn more about our strategy consulting work here.
