One of the most valuable things you can do as the founder or owner of a business is get reliable advice. You’re where the buck stops on every decision, and it’s simply not realistic to expect yourself to be an expert in every area – that’s a sure route to the very real condition of founder burnout.

Consultants offer to fill some of this expertise gap but unless you know what you need and how consulting works it can be hard to get value for money. Today we’re taking a look at business strategy. It’s an area that requires lots of different kinds of insight and skills to forge a path forward so let’s see who can really help in the field of business strategy consulting.

Market Research

You need to understand the behaviour of your customers if you want to devise a strategy that maximises your revenue from them. That understanding comes from data – and in large quantities. The best way to gather that data, and then to digest it into usable insights is to go to market research consultants. They have the expertise, they have the technology, and they have the reach to provide a fuller understanding of the market than you can reach alone.

Competitor Research

Another key area of understanding when you’re building out the strategy for your business is your competitors: who else is in your space, competing for your customers, buying the same raw materials, using the same logistics networks and bidding on the same marketing slots? If you know who they are, can you predict what they’ll do?

Competitor research consultants can do the heavy lifting here, identifying your most significant competitors and wargaming likely behaviour from them. This can become a key part of the strategy you’re assembling.

Economic Forecasts

A strategy needs to have some idea of what the prevailing economic weather will be over the period it covers. Even in the short term, we’re facing an unsettled, hard to predict period, with galloping price rises threatening big impacts on consumer spending. Talking with financial and economic experts can help you understand what’s likely to happen, and help you devise various potential actions to cover different economic outcomes.

Strategy Consultants

One of the best things you can do is consult a strategy consultant. These experts come with the contacts and expertise baked in to get all this insight in one point of contact, as well as being able to give direct advice on how to make a strategy that plays to your business’ strengths and your own ambitions.

If you search London strategy consulting options are relatively common, and available for a spread of business sizes and requirements