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By Julia Gosling
According to the British Business Bank’s 2026 SME Finance Survey, 41% of UK SMEs expected their turnover to grow over the next 12 months.
If you lead a business, ‘managing growth’ is a great problem to have. However, rapid growth or new opportunities can create complexity, and ‘business as usual’ can make it difficult to grasp the opportunity.
Businesses can reach a point where internal experience isn't quite enough to navigate expansion, transformation or acquisitions.
An experienced consultant can provide valuable independent expertise - but only if you choose the right one. In this article, we examine why, how and when to engage a strategy consultant to help your business.
What does a strategy consultant do?
A strategy consultant works with leadership teams to define direction, then helps make the decisions and changes needed to get there. That might mean shaping a growth strategy, assessing a new market opportunity, or reworking how a business operates as it scales.
Unlike an interim hire, a consultant isn't there to fill a permanent role. They bring an independent perspective, a structured approach and, often, experience of similar challenges elsewhere. And unlike a generalist advisor, a good strategy consultant works alongside your team rather than simply handing over a set of recommendations.
For businesses with 30-500 employees, this usually means someone who can move comfortably between board-level strategy conversations and the practical realities of an organisation that's still finding its shape.
Identify the problem
Before even starting to look for consulting help, define the challenge that you have.
These may include growth opportunities: scaling operations; entering new markets; or dealing with a new acquisition.
Alternatively, it may be around improving profitability; through organisational redesign; or a digital transformation programme.
Any of the above will need leadership alignment, and the deployment of dedicated and often specialist capabilities, both of which might be hard to achieve using internal resources alone.
Whatever the problem, if you can define the objective, it’s easier to start to identify the right expertise.
Weigh up practical delivery and theoretical advice
Many businesses have strategy documents that never became reality. Others might have invested in expert support for individual projects, but without an overall strategic plan.
It’s of course preferable to join the dots, and also to make sure change actually happens.
A good consultant will not only make recommendations, but they will also be able to put structures in place to support implementation and to ensure that actions are taken.
If you are going to invest in some consulting help, a first step would be to decide what you would like to finish up with. Start with the end in mind.
We have written recently about the core differences between different types of consulting. At a top level, strategy consulting dictates the direction of your business; management consulting ensures you get there. If you are engaging a consultant to help you, depending on the nature of the problem your business is facing, clearly specify the deliverables you are expecting.
Execution capability and the ability to engage your teams are often more valuable than strategy design alone.
Look beyond credentials
Once you have established the type of consulting you might need, the next step would be to locate the right person, or team of people, to work within your business.
Ideally, you’d probably like to talk to exceptional consultants who have solved similar problems. However, to really drill down into someone’s fit for your project, other questions to ask might be:
Do they understand businesses of your size?
Have they worked within your sector?
Can they adapt rather than apply a standard methodology?
How good are they at communicating with boards and operational teams alike?
Sitting beneath all of this is what you can afford. More experienced consultants will have higher day rates, and consultants who are MBB-trained, considerably more. These are all factors to juggle when doing your search.
“The best strategy consultants don't replace internal expertise; they complement it. Research from the University of Bristol suggests that combining an organisation's contextual knowledge with the specialist expertise of external providers can deliver strategic benefits, build capability and improve value.”
The value of perspective
Sector experience, as mentioned above, can shorten learning curves.
However, consultants who bring cross-sector insights might be able to identify opportunities that industry insiders overlook.
The ideal balance is someone who understands your commercial environment while bringing fresh thinking and new ideas from elsewhere.
“One of the greatest benefits of external expertise is perspective. Bringing an outside view can challenge internal assumptions, counter optimism and overconfidence, and help leadership teams benchmark strategic choices against what has happened in comparable situations.”
Source: McKinsey: How to take an outside view
Choose someone who challenges your thinking
The role of a consultant isn't simply to validate existing assumptions.
They should ask difficult questions – of you and of your team, and challenge conventional thinking. A good strategy consultant will identify blind spots – and call them out. These might ruffle feathers and fundamentally change the way a business operates, but in the longer term, change will facilitate better strategic decisions.
Assess cultural fit
Aside from a consultant’s previous expertise and approach, remember that they are likely to work closely with leadership teams.
Given this, it’s as well to consider their communication style, and to assess how they might be received within the culture of your business.
Are they adaptable? Do they exhibit emotional intelligence? And can you sense an ability to influence without authority?
Freshminds’ latest article on the importance of balancing IQ and EQ is linked below.
Understand how success will be measured
Part of the process of selecting, briefing and engaging a consultant is to define success, and how you would like it to be measured.
Some elements of a consulting project will necessarily be subjective, for example, better governance, or a clearer understanding of a company’s strategic plan within the team.
However, to prove ROI, you’ll need to work together to agree on a clear strategic roadmap.
Cost is part of this equation, too. Day rates vary considerably depending on experience and pedigree, so it's worth weighing that spend against the outcome you're targeting rather than the rate in isolation. A consultant who costs more but delivers a faster, more robust transformation may represent better value than a cheaper engagement that takes longer to land or needs revisiting six months later.
Elements that can be measured include:
Increased profitability
Increased/reduced headcount, as agreed
Faster decision-making
Delivery of transformation milestones
Consider capability transfer
The best consultants leave organisations stronger than they found them. Overall, you should look for someone who has the potential to develop long-term capability.
Does the consultant, or consulting team, have the gravitas to develop leaders and to coach internal teams? You should be looking for someone who shares knowledge and insights, and who creates frameworks that work for your business.
The bottom line is that a successful consulting project should reduce future dependency. Having to continually rely on consultants suggests a lack of robustness within leadership teams.
Conclusion
Hiring a consultant is an investment in better decisions, stronger execution and accelerated growth.
The right consultant won't simply tell you what to do; they'll help your organisation develop the confidence, capability and clarity needed to navigate its next stage of growth successfully.
If you're weighing up whether now's the right time to bring in outside expertise, Freshminds can help you think it through — get in touch to discuss your challenge.
FAQ
What's the difference between a strategy consultant and a management consultant?
Strategy consulting sets the direction for your business; management consulting focuses on getting you there. Many engagements blend both. For a fuller breakdown of how the two differ and when you might need each, see our guide to management consulting vs strategy consulting.
How much does a strategy consultant typically cost?
Day rates vary widely depending on experience, sector expertise and pedigree - MBB-trained consultants command a premium. Rather than comparing rates alone, weigh the cost against the outcome you're targeting: a higher rate can represent better value if it means faster, more robust results.
How long does a typical strategy consulting engagement last?
This depends on the scope of the challenge - a focused piece of work, like assessing a new market opportunity, might run a few weeks, while a full transformation programme can take several months. Agreeing a clear roadmap and milestones upfront, as outlined above, helps set realistic expectations either way.
How do I get leadership buy-in for bringing in outside help?
Frame it around the problem you're solving, not the fact that you're bringing in outsiders. Being upfront that a good consultant will challenge existing thinking - and that this is the point, not a criticism of the team - helps leadership see friction as part of the value rather than a warning sign.
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