When deciding whether to pursue a career as a business consultant, an individual should consider their current experience, the additional education they will need, the features of their preferred career, and the area where they live or want to live. Business consultants must be knowledgeable about business operations, good at communicating and teaching, able to collect and analyze complex information, and skilled at managing time and resources. These skills can be trained through education and experience, but a successful business consultant is also creative, a good problem solver, adaptable, and tolerant of change. Business consulting is a career with constantly changing clients, challenges, and duties; those who prefer a stable, consistent workload may be overwhelmed by the frequent shifts of consulting work. Prospective consultants should also consider the training, support, and employment opportunities in their area. A stronger local environment for business consulting makes this career easier to start and maintain.
What is a Business Consultant?
Few business owners possess every skill required to operate and grow their business. The same is true even for many large companies. A business consultant is a knowledgeable professional who provides the missing expertise and services that client businesses need. Their guidance and assistance might be employed to solve problems, remove obstacles, support a company through a crisis or expansion, help their client find and add new customers, or improve the efficiency of a company’s internal operations. Most often, a business consultant is hired to start or expand a business or to facilitate a major transition.
Business consultants may specialize in particular kinds of services, such as information technology, human resources, or legal compliance. Consultants may also specialize in particular industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, or transportation. Some ‘business’ consultants tailor their services to non-commercial operations like education or government.
Business consultants can be independent contractors, employees of a consulting firm, or direct hires of the businesses they improve. In some cases, a business consultant acts as a temporary employee, filling a gap for an empty or not-yet-hired position. Depending on their tasks and terms of service, business consultants may be paid on a salaried or contract basis, hired at an hourly or per diem rate, or paid according to their Return On Investment (ROI), the increase in sales a business observes after the consultant improves their operations.
Studying can improve a worker’s understanding of business consulting practices, make them a better advisor and assistant to client businesses, and teach them how to run a successful consulting practice. However, the best business consultants are more than scholars, teachers, or aides; they possess experience running or participating in a successful enterprise. Such work experience proves their knowledge and skills but also teaches a consultant practical lessons about effective and ineffective business practices.
Why Become a Business Consultant?
Many who aspire to a career in business consulting do so because it offers a good income and long-term employment security. Though many business consultants, especially freelancers, must regularly seek new clients, often transition between clients, and may have occasional lapses in employment, consulting services are always in demand, required wherever businesses operate. A well-qualified and -established business consultant may find themselves with more offers than they can accept, and this demand plus proven skills can command even higher income. Particularly skilled and sought consultants often work for consulting firms or establish their own firms, where they can ascend to senior positions serving high-profile clients and overseeing multiple other consultants.
For some business consultants, this job’s frequent transitions are part of its attraction. Rather than being bound to a single company or industry, consultants can contribute to multiple businesses, solve a wide variety of problems, and gain experience in many areas. For such enterprising consultants, their client list is not only evidence of their skill, it is a traveler’s journal, a series of adventures where they became a rescuing hero.
Some business consultants specifically seek and enjoy this career for its potential to create beneficial change. They love seeing their clients grow and thrive, knowing that their help created greater profits, new services, and more and better jobs. Or, in cases where a business is struggling with a crisis, a business consultant might rescue it from disaster or at least reduce the damage.
For all of these reasons, a business owner or a corporate worker might choose to transition to a career in business consulting. Some prospective consultants are interested in self-employment, seeking the freedom of freelancing or the opportunity to create their own business. Others are simply tired of their previous work but want to continue using the skills they’ve gained. In either case, experienced workers who become consultants can share the expertise and confidence gained in their former employment, boosting clients’ knowledge and improving their operations.
What Should a Prospective Business Consultant Consider?
To become successful, a business consultant should have or learn:
- The general structure and operations of businesses
- to effectively advise and improve their clients
- More specialized knowledge is helpful but can be learned over time.
- Good communication skills:
- To hear their client’s concerns and observe their work processes
- To convey business knowledge through advice and education
- Strong analytical skills:
- To gather accurate data
- To produce informative analyses
- To report information in useful forms
- Organization and resource management:
- To explain and implement these skills for clients
- To improve their own work performance.
- Creative problem-solving
- To find innovative solutions to clients’ difficulties.
- Tolerance of change and the ability to adapt to shifting demands
Good locations also help to support successful business consultants. These locations have:
- more potential clients
- more resources
- better local conditions like infrastructure and education
Business Knowledge and Experience
Simply put, every business consultant should understand how successful businesses function. Many consultants specialize in particular aspects of business operations or certain kinds of companies, but they should still have a solid grasp of common business elements. Consultants should understand how a business is started, how different businesses create and sell their products, the problems businesses encounter, and how they are solved. Certain concerns are more important in particular industries, such as logistics in manufacturing or information security for financial or medical service providers.
Business knowledge can come from study, working experience, or both. While some business consultants do start working with only a theoretical understanding of business operations, a purely academic background is untested and unlikely to impress clients. Consultants who gain experience from contributing to, managing, or owning a successful business have grounded, varied, and provable knowledge. Many business consultants transition into this career after working as entrepreneurs, executives, or administrators, using their practical knowledge to assist similar businesses. Others, already seeking a career in business consulting, may choose to gain knowledge and experience by working for a company or creating a self-owned business. Still, while experience is valuable, no individual can do everything personally. Classwork is always necessary to expand one’s knowledge beyond practical limits. Active, established consultants continue to take professional development courses to improve their knowledge base. Each topic they study can improve their analyses and advice and add services they can offer clients.
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Teaching and Communication
Knowledge is wasted if a consultant cannot communicate it effectively to their client. Consulting is a process of two-way communication: observing and interacting with a client to understand their business and its needs, then providing them information in the forms of analysis, advice, and instruction. A business consultant must ensure that their guidance is not only accurate but understood and implemented correctly. Depending on the nature of an assignment, a business consultant might need to communicate in different ways with varying persons. For example, some consultants act as advisors to business owners or senior staff, reviewing comprehensive reports and guiding high-level decisions. Other consultants might need to observe multiple workers during daily operations, learning about their activities and challenges and perhaps offering suggestions. Another consultant might teach employees subject knowledge, skills, or work processes. A consultant needs to be able to adjust their explanations to their audience by using appropriate terminology, noticing when listeners are not understanding, and using communication tools effectively to improve illustration and engagement.
At a minimum, a business consultant should be comfortable with frequent social interactions and prepared to do a great deal of listening, note-taking, and talking. Before they can even start an assignment, most consultants have to convince a client to hire them by explaining their service offerings, their work process, and their value. A consultant who is already a skilled communicator starts at an advantage; they may have prior experience in teaching, public relations, or marketing. Still, most communication skills can be trained. Prospective or working business consultants benefit from classes on public speaking, instruction, conversation, and interview techniques.
Analytical Ability
A business consultant’s analytic skills are a combination of good observation, trained measurement procedures, experienced reasoning, logic, and formal data analysis methods. These abilities are primarily used to measure and understand a client’s business operations, to describe and display this data in an informative way, and to gauge what advice and services will yield benefits. Consultants can also teach business owners and their employees how to perform analyses, giving them methods they can use later for internal diagnoses and self-improvement. These analyses can be quantitative, based on statistical analyses of measured data like productivity or sales. They can also be qualitative, based on a consultant’s overall understanding of successful business practices and the gaps they find in their client’s operations.
Business consulting classes frequently discuss the most useful measurement and analysis methods. Direct mathematical expertise, especially in statistical methods, is also helpful, but a background in data analysis is even better. Consultants trained in more specialized fields like financial, marketing, or operations analysis can translate this expertise into more focused studies of client businesses and more accurate (and valuable) guidance.
Organization and Resource Management
Strong organizational and resource management skills, whether learned through study or experience, benefit a business consultant in two ways: when conveying these methods to clients and when managing their own workload.
Business consultants may be hired to improve the organizational structure of a client’s workforce, workspace, workflow, or all of these together. Assessing and altering a business’ structures might also be necessary to correct problems. On a smaller scale, a consultant could suggest changes to individual employees’ work habits, or they might teach employees how to better structure their space and tasks for themselves. Similarly, a consultant might assess a client’s usage of funds, materials, time, or other resources, to suggest improvements and identify problems. Often, the greatest increases in productivity generated by consultants come from structural changes that reduce waste.
Business consultants themselves also need to work efficiently. Clients paying an hourly or per diem rate may be impatient, expecting measurable results within a reasonable time frame. Some contracts give a consultant only a specific limited time frame to perform their work, requiring efficient scheduling. In another sense of organization, a consultant does not want to lose data, duplicate their efforts, or miss any important tasks due to poor planning. Given a business consultant’s frequent changes between clients and duties, staying well-organized is a necessity to avoid conflicts and confusion.
Creativity and Problem-Solving
Most clients who hire a business consultant have problems they need solved, whether these are specific issues like unhappy customers, dropping revenues, or high turnover; more complex challenges like new product launches or major restructuring; or long-term projects with multiple difficulties, such as a company’s initial startup or an overhaul of their production facilities. Some of these problems have standard, generally effective solutions. Other problems, though, are more complicated or novel, requiring creative applications of standard principles or completely new approaches based on a consultant’s reasoning, intuition, and inventive abilities. Fortunately, this creativity does not have to be inborn. Many creative skills and problem-solving approaches can be learned in lessons and further improved with practice. Just as important, business consultants must enjoy and embrace this aspect of their work, trusting themselves to brainstorm, implement, and test new solutions to client problems.
Adaptability and Tolerance to Change
Another unavoidable aspect of business consulting is its shifting nature. Business consulting is not the best career for anyone who wants a steady, consistent workload with a single employer. First, a business consultant rarely works with the same client or in the same position for long. Freelance business consultants, in particular, must always be seeking new clients and new jobs and may need to adapt their services to whatever work is available. An employee within a consulting firm will also regularly shift between different clients and assignments.
Second, different clients will have different needs, even when they have the same business type and even when a consultant is providing the same type of service for each client. Even for a single client, an ongoing project is likely to move through several phases, steadily changing the type and amount of a consultant’s daily work. Additionally, a business consultant working for a consulting firm or another kind of company must sometimes change employers to find a better position or to further their training.
A business consultant, then, needs to be adaptable, capable of shifting between duties, between jobs and perhaps even between different clients on the same day. They must be able to manage different kinds and amounts of work, sometimes on short notice. They need to be ready to finish with each client when their needs are met. A freelance business consultant must always be ready to adjust their services to each new client, both to secure employment and to quickly start work once hired. A significant part of all this adaptability is a high tolerance for change, the ability to accept shifting conditions cheerfully and without resentment.
Local Advantages for Business Consultants
An external consideration for those interested in business consulting is the outlook for consultants in their area. Since consultants need client businesses, an area with a strong economy and many diverse companies will provide them with more employment opportunities and more consistent income. A supportive environment for startups and entrepreneurs is also valuable, as newer businesses are more likely to need consulting services. Consultants who plan to offer specific services or serve a particular industry should also check that clients of their preferred type are available. Local conditions are less of a concern if a consultant can provide virtual consulting services, but such remote work takes additional preparation and effort.
Local advantages also include conditions that make consulting work easier, such as manageable transportation, reliable communication networks, available financing, and a strong educational environment. Educational institutions, in particular, can provide training for aspiring and novice consultants. These assets also make a consultant’s work easier by providing the resources their clients will need to grow. Another local asset is an active professional and social community for businesses and consultants. Organizations that promote such interaction boost networking with potential clients, collaborators, mentors, or employees. To some extent, such organizations have shifted online and become national or international groups, but a local ecosystem that promotes consulting work can produce more direct and immediate results.
Do I Need a Degree to Become a Business Consultant?
Clients expect a consultant to be a knowledgeable resource, not only well-versed in business operations but also skilled in observation, analysis, and communications. However, these abilities do not have to be gained through formal education or proven with a specific degree. A degree program is just one way to build and prove ability. Other routes include individual study, training programs, certifications, and work experience.
A degree can certainly help to reassure clients or employers that a consultant has studied appropriate subjects and trained useful skills. In particular, a degree from a general business administration course or a related field like project management can provide a significant academic background in business operations. A Masters in Business Administration (MBA) confirms extensive knowledge in this area. However, consultants can gain comparable business knowledge while working as an executive, administrator, or manager in a business environment. Successfully starting and growing a small business also teaches lessons that can be conveyed later as a consultant. When discussing your credentials with a potential client or employer, relevant work experience is more impressive than any degree.
Before working, some background study may be necessary, but here again, options exist outside of formal degree programs. For example, business training is available through textbooks, websites, and video tutorials. Professional training programs from non-college schools are even better than self-guided lessons. They provide most of the same information faster and for a lower cost than a degree, plus they include portfolio-building projects, career guidance, and support services to get novices started in their first job. Certificates provided by training schools may not have the reputation of a formal degree, but they do prove the completion of a valid course of study.
Studying other related subjects can also demonstrate useful knowledge and skills. For example, a business consultant specializing in software development will benefit from a degree program in computer science, software engineering, or a related discipline like information technology. Once again, consultants can gain these abilities through other routes, including working as a software developer, self-guided study, or a training program.
To be successful, consultants also need various other skills, including communication, data analysis, resource management, and marketing. While a college student might pursue a minor in business consulting, major degree programs for this specific career are rare. Some of a consultant’s necessary skills can be gained on the job, especially for novices climbing through a consulting firm. However, some starting ability is necessary to qualify for such jobs, and a freelance consultant needs adequate expertise right away to serve clients on their own. Here, non-college training programs have the most to offer. Students can take individual courses on skills like public speaking and data analysis, and some training providers do offer specific courses on business consulting, explaining the career and teaching its necessary subskills.
Finally, another way to prepare for a consulting career and demonstrate one’s abilities is an official consulting certification. Certifications are awarded by national or international organizations based on a candidate’s proven qualifications, which include education, work experience, and examinations. Examples of common certifications for business consultants include Certified Management Consultant (CMC), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Talent Optimization Consultant (TOC). These certifications often include training programs to help candidates prepare, programs that teach them some subjects directly and show them what more they need to learn in other areas. Successfully completing a certification provides as much proof of one’s competence as a degree, if not more, due to its specific requirements.
Learn the Skills to Become a Business Consultant at Noble Desktop
Business courses at Noble Desktop can teach you most of the skills needed to start working as a business consultant, including general business skills, soft skills used in consulting, and specialized skills often sought by clients. These courses span short classes of one or two sessions, bootcamps of varying lengths, and comprehensive professional training programs. Noble Desktop’s classes are available both online and in person in New York City. All classes include live instruction, supplemental reference materials, a digital certificate of completion, and the option to retake the class for free for up to one year. Students can also view recordings after each class session and for up to one month later.
Business Skills
Noble Desktop’s “MBA” Business Certificate course covers a full range of professional business skills, including useful tools and information on project management, leadership, finance, marketing, data analysis, generative AI, hiring, and legal concerns. While not a full MBA degree program, this certificate course was developed by experienced professionals to cover the core elements of a business education. In addition, this class’ certificate is licensed by the New York State Department of Education. The primary course runs for about five weeks, including both live class sessions and study projects. In addition to reinforcing class lessons, these projects will generate work samples for a starting portfolio. In addition to the primary course, students can select up to 60 hours of elective classes including programming languages, business software, financial tools, and digital marketing. The course also includes eight 1-on-1 mentoring sessions allowing students to work directly with a mentor to address individual goals, review difficult lessons, improve their portfolios and resumes, and refine their career plans.
Included within the “MBA” Business Certificate but also available as a separate course, Noble Desktop’s Project Management Bootcamp is an accelerated program teaching project management methods, tools, and strategies. The program is primarily designed to prepare students for a career in project management but is equally valuable for business consultants. This course is taught in two class sessions, Project Management Level I and Project Management Level II. The first session addresses the theory, practice, subskills, and commonly used tools of project management. The second class further details the individual phases of a project; covers financial, resource, and risk management; and introduces students to the Agile Project Management methodology and several of its implementations, or “frameworks”.
Leadership, Management, and Public Speaking
Although often described as ‘soft skills,’ leadership, communication, and management can be improved through study and provide concrete benefits. Business consultants use leadership and management techniques not only when directing clients’ employees but also whenever they advise, teach, and motivate clients or when devising organizational structures. Noble Desktop’s Applied Leadership & Management Skills is a two-session class that first teaches the fundamental elements of leadership, communication, and management, then applies these lessons to specific challenges like setting and meeting goals, managing workplace conflict, setting and meeting a schedule, and creative problem-solving. Another class, Intro to Public Speaking, is a shorter, one-session class that focuses more specifically on group communication skills and improves students’ confidence, clarity, and persuasiveness. These abilities are particularly valuable to consultants when teaching skills, delivering advice, or presenting research to clients. The class also includes a section on skillful, effective use of Microsoft PowerPoint for presentations.
Data Analytics
Data analytics is the ability to gather information, organize it, process it to obtain accurate and informative conclusions, and present these findings in clear, persuasive forms. Consultants regularly use data analysis to investigate and describe their clients’ operations, as a prelude to specific recommendations and interventions and as a way to track the effects of their changes. Most entry-level positions with consulting firms involve data analysis, and a consultant with significant data analytic ability is a stronger candidate for employment.
Noble Desktop offers multiple types of data analytics training. Their Data Analytics Certificate is their most general and comprehensive program. This certificate program can be completed in under two months on a full-time schedule but offers several alternate scheduling options if needed. The course covers eight units of instruction, starting with a short course on Microsoft Excel to give students a commonly used tool for data collection, organization, analysis, and visualization. The course then covers data analytics in more depth, addressing its foundational concepts, utility for decision-making, and applications in business. Subsequent units teach specific coding and visualization tools, including Python (a general-purpose programming language), SQL (a programming language specialized for data collection and management), and Tableau (a popular data visualization program). The course also addresses machine learning algorithms and their interactions with data analysis. This certificate course includes eight 1-on-1 mentoring sessions and a New York State licensed certificate of completion.
For a shorter and more focused course, Noble Desktop’s Business Analyst Certificate covers several data analysis tools used in business operations. This certificate program takes students from introductory lessons to advanced skills with Microsoft Excel, SQL, Tableau, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Each application’s section is the equivalent of an individual bootcamp, including fundamental skills training, specific methods used for data analysis and/or reporting, and advanced techniques to add more utility and improve efficiency. This course lasts about six weeks on a full-time schedule, with part-time scheduling also available. Completing this course awards students with a New York State licensed certificate.
Financial analysis is one of the most common types of data analysis for businesses and an asset for any business consultant. Noble Desktop’s Financial Modeling Bootcamp is an intensive, three-session course that uses Excel to demonstrate representations, analyses, and concepts useful to understand any company’s finances. Participants are expected to already have good fluency and working experience with Excel. Alternatively, the Financial Analyst Training Program adds two preliminary classes on Excel and its use in data analysis and then presents the same material as the Financial Modeling Bootcamp.
Marketing
Marketing is another necessity for businesses and a valuable skill for a business consultant. Finding interested customers, developing an appealing product, managing pricing and sales, creating interest and need, and confirming and retaining buyers all require trained strategy. Noble Desktop’s Marketing Strategy class teaches the fundamental concepts of marketing and addresses specific techniques to create, implement, and manage a marketing strategy. The class’ two sessions also include time to practice these methods in guided projects.
Two additional classes address modern, online marketing methods in more depth. The Digital Marketing Certificate program is a New York State-licensed certificate course that covers a complete range of digital marketing methods and considerations, from website creation and web advertising to email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media sites and campaigns. Students learn not only how to establish an appealing online presence but also how to manage online activity to excite customers, hold their interest, and avoid mistakes. This course can be completed in about one month on a full-time schedule. A shorter course, but also a State-licensed certificate, the Social Media Marketing Certificate program is a subset of the Digital Marketing Certificate program that focuses more specifically on social media use and marketing strategies.