Are you interested in becoming a Business Consultant? You’ll need a strong foundation in the fundamentals of business operations and project management as well as be an expert communicator to be an effective consultant. It will take commitment and hard work, but you can become a Business Consultant by following a few key steps, including getting a core education, getting certified, and gaining work experience. There’s a lot of nuance to becoming a Business Consultant, but a little research into what area you want to develop expertise in and cultivating that knowledge can take you far. You’ll be a better asset to organizations, helping them meet short and long-term business goals, expand their business operations, and grow the value of their business.
What is a Business Consultant?
A Business Consultant is someone who works with business owners to help them reach their business goals and improve their performance and efficiency through careful analysis. They are skilled professionals with a wide range of skills. They leverage a combination of objectivity, education, and experience to provide expert advice, creative solutions, and relevant insights. Oftentimes, they will choose a specialty to better serve their clients. Some of these specialties include strategy and management, operations, finances, human resources, and marketing. A Business Consultant can help a business identify and address challenges and offer objective recommendations based on their industry knowledge.
The typical workday varies according to the client, the project, and the industry; however, some of the more common duties of Business Consultants include meeting with clients to understand their needs and hardships, performing SWOT analyses, designing business plans that are customized to their clients, advising or managing project implementation, and assess the efficacy of implemented strategies. While many work for consulting firms, you’ll find that a great many experienced Business Consultants are self-employed, and just as many hold specialist roles within larger companies. Business Consultants often work as part of a team that can include a range of individuals based on the project goals. Many times they have to liaise between teams to evaluate and implement solutions effectively.
When working for a firm, there is an opportunity for growth through professional development classes and activities. Workshops, seminars, and courses are ways of continuing education that help Business Consultants stay abreast of current and cutting-edge business strategies, business technologies, and other helpful resources. The more knowledgeable they are, the more effective they are. Continuous learning is essential to progress in this career, as is networking and staying current. Certification opportunities and other helpful resources are available through professional associations like the Institute of Management Consultants USA.
What Tools Do I Need To Get Started?
Business Consultants use many tools to offer the best service possible to their clients and organizations. Some of them are commonly used amongst business professionals, while others are more specialized. Some are free to use, and some will incur upfront or recurring costs. Not every Business Consultant will use each of these tools, but having several can boost your success and create a more efficient workflow.
Microsoft Excel is a basic spreadsheet software that usually comes bundled with other software programs in Microsoft Office (pay upfront) or Microsoft 365 (subscription). Excel is based on paper accounting sheets. It stores, organizes, and manipulates data. Business Consultants often use Excel to perform What-If analyses on data, calculate profit and loss, find statistical values in a particular range of data, and sort and filter data. It can also be used to visualize data with charts and graphs. Excel works on PC, Linux, and Mac computers.
Data visualization software is an important tool that turns data into interactive visuals that make telling data storytelling much simpler. Popular software like Tableau and Power BI showcase data in a variety of ways from treemaps to geographical maps to line charts, and they can connect to multiple data sources like CSV and JSON. While both have a free version, there are also paid versions with premium features you can access with a subscription. There are other data visualization tools out there, so it’s up to you to discover which one resonates best with you and your data visualization needs.
Project and task management tools help you to stay organized. Time tracking tools, calendar management, and scheduling tools are critical if you plan on being a self-employed Business Consultant, but if you are working for an employer, you may only need to learn their task management system. These tools are just as useful with clients as they are internally. They can help keep staff abreast of current projects, meetings, and initiatives. There are so many tools to choose from. Some are free, some are available through subscription, others are cloud-based, and some are desktop software.
Marketing tools and accounting software are a must if you’re a self-employed Business Consultant. This can be as simple as a landing page and a LinkedIn profile or as elaborate as an email service with multiple tools like Kajabi. Being able to put your service out there and bring in business is crucial to growing your business and gaining experience. Whether you’re in the beginning phases of your business or you’ve been around a while, your brand needs to be strong and have some weight behind it. This can include a well-designed logo, professional website, social media engagement, testimonials, and consistent branding. Marketing efforts help you establish authority and credibility.
Accounting software is just as critical to your consulting business as marketing tools because you’ll need to keep track of your finances. Accounting tools like Quickbooks can help you when it comes to filing taxes, tracking expenses and profits, and general bookkeeping. While most accounting software does come with a subscription, there are free applications like Wave that only offer premium features to users for a fee. There are many options available, so be sure to do some leg work to find out which one works best for your business model and accounting needs.
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Steps to Become a Business Consultant
There aren’t a ton of steps needed to become a Business Consultant, but it does take time. While it is a very competitive career with a high-stakes environment, anyone who is a creative problem solver with a strong understanding of finance, business, and project management can have a fulfilling career in this field.
Earn a Degree
The first step to becoming a Business Consultant is to earn a degree. Most employers will require a bachelor’s degree at minimum. It’s best to major in something related to business, like finance accounting, marketing, or business analytics. When choosing a major outside of business, it should be relevant to the field you’re interested in consulting. A master’s degree isn’t usually required, but an MBA gives your earning potential a boost and makes you a more attractive hiring candidate.
Intern
After earning a degree, an internship or certificate course is a great way to gain experience and learn in-demand skills that will be most helpful in your career. It’s also a way to expand your network and meet people who are deeply connected in the industry. You’ll learn what it’s like to work as a Business Consultant, develop a workflow, and get a chance to work with real clients and experienced Business Consultants. Then you should consider obtaining a certification or two once you’ve completed your education. While most employers won’t require this, it is helpful. A certification shows that you’re dedicated to professional development and that you adhere to a standard of ethics. Two of the more common certifications include Certified Management Consultant and Project Management Professional.
Get Experience
Once your credentials are in order, it’s time to gain some real-world experience. Finding employment as a Business Manager or Business Management Consultant is a great start. You’ll gain more relevant insight into how a business operates and the types of challenges that present themselves. You’ll also develop or hone your leadership and communication skills in a management role, which will help you be a more effective Business Consultant. Once you’ve gained industry and business experience, you’re ready to find employment as a Business Consultant.
Business Consultant Career Path
Business is a widely used skill in nearly every industry, which is why there is such a pressing need for Business Consultants. No one has all of the answers, and Business Consultants help to bridge that gap. They don’t have all the answers either, but a large part of their value lies in knowing how to find the solutions clients and organizations need. A Business Consultant manages projects, assesses the needs of organizations, conducts research and analyses to arrive at objective and strategic solutions to address the needs of organizations, and helps manage the implementation of solutions. Because the scope of every project can vary widely, solutions and tasks will also vary.
Although many Business Consultants have an MBA or a bachelor’s degree in business, finance, or a related field, a strong background in business is a must to succeed in this fast-paced profession. Those who do not have a degree in business must have a stellar reputation and some degree of technical training to make it as a Business Consultant. Enrolling in a business class with Noble Desktop is a great way to gain an entry point into this career path without a degree. It’s also possible to become a freelance Business Consultant. With a little marketing and possibly an unpaid project or two, you can get your feet wet and gain some references to jumpstart your freelance consultant career.
Why Become A Business Consultant?
What drives people into business consultancy differs from person to person. But many advantages come with being a Business Consultant. A lot of consultants appreciate that no project is the same. They get to work with a variety of different professionals, allowing them to gain better insight into the organizations they work with. This in turn results in getting a deeper understanding of business and industry. The more organizations and clients a Business Consultant works with, the more they learn and build their expertise quickly.
This profession commands a high salary because it is a very demanding role. The more experience and expertise you have, the shinier your salary will be. An MBA can easily catapult you into a six-figure salary range in your first year of consultancy. The prospect of earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is very appealing, but so is being able to apply a diverse skill set to your work. Business Consultants routinely have to employ a myriad of skills from creativity to leadership to technological to strategic thinking to effectively fulfill their role. This keeps them on their toes and exercising many of their talents in challenging tasks that are always changing.
The opportunity for career growth is also an attractive attribute of business consulting. If you start as a Business Consultant, the next step is to become a manager or project leader. Many consultants can make this advancement within three years. The next position is usually principal and finally involves becoming a partner. The different ranks have different requirements and responsibilities, but it’s possible to advance quickly when you demonstrate skill, dedication, and consistent results. As you grow in this field, your skill set will broaden in many ways, but it may also narrow down, allowing you to hone a particular set of skills that make you more attractive to organizations with specific issues.
Learn the Skills to Become a Business Consultant at Noble Desktop
If you’re seriously considering becoming a Business Consultant, there are several options for learning the necessary skills. Noble Desktop offers classes that can help you achieve your dream of becoming a consultant. Many Noble Desktop business-related courses include one free retake, 1-on-1 mentoring or bonus training outside of class, and flexible scheduling options.
The “MBA” Business Certificate course is a great start for those who are interested in becoming a business professional. In this 132-hour class, you’ll learn the fundamental skills and concepts to help you thrive in a competitive business world. Although this is a business class, it is not an MBA degree program. It is a comprehensive certificate program that covers project management, financial processes, marketing strategies, data analysis, and practical applications of generative AI. In addition to the live online or in-person curriculum, there is a self-paced module devoted to business law, employment law, and business insurance. Students can also choose 60 hours in electives, including Python for data science, SQL, stock market investing, Figma, and other business focuses.
A Data Analytics Certificate course will give you practical skills in data visualization, data analysis, and statistical analysis. Data analysis is a key part of business consulting because it allows you to make the most of a client’s or project’s data and make data-driven recommendations and strategies to achieve various goals. Earning this certificate will give you an in-demand skill that can be applied in any industry in various career paths. Data analytics is a hands-on course with projects based on real-world challenges that explore both predictive and prescriptive analytics. Topics covered in this beginner-friendly certificate program include data analytics foundations, Excel, Tableau, Python machine learning, and SQL. There are no prerequisites.
Marketing is another critical component of business consulting. There’s even a subset of Business Consultants who specialize in marketing. To help a company or client get their marketing strategy in order, you have to understand how to optimize it. This Digital Marketing Certificate course can boost your confidence in addressing digital marketing issues and help you learn when and why to make certain marketing recommendations. You’ll learn SEO, social media marketing, paid search, and analytics tracking to help your clients increase their ROI in today’s competitive markets. Course topics will include digital marketing strategies, YouTube, content, and email marketing, Google Analytics, and website optimization. This course is great for current professionals who need to expand their marketing skill set, business owners interested in learning how to market their business, and individuals who want to get started in digital marketing.