Featured · Advisory
Different consultants for different problems
Firms talk about hiring a consultant as though it were one profession. In practice there are at least three quite different kinds, they diagnose different things, and a firm that hires the wrong one gets a competent answer to a question it did not have.
Telling them apart is straightforward once you know the symptom you are trying to explain.
Three kinds, three symptoms
Match the symptom to the type. Almost every disappointing engagement is a mismatch here rather than a bad consultant.
The strategy consultant. Symptom: the firm cannot agree what it is trying to become, or which practice areas to back. They work on positioning, priorities and what to decline.
The channel consultant. Symptom: a specific channel is underperforming and nobody internally can say why. Deep in one discipline — search, paid, content — and comparatively narrow.
The operations consultant. Symptom: enquiries arrive and nothing happens, or the firm cannot say what anything produced. They work on intake, measurement and process.
A fourth, occasionally: the interim, who does the job rather than advising on it while a firm hires or recovers.
Hiring a strategy consultant for an intake problem produces an excellent positioning document and no change in the numbers, which is the commonest version of this mistake.
The symptom is usually diagnosable before hiring. Enquiries falling is a channel question; enquiries arriving and dying is an operations question; nobody agreeing what to fund is a strategy question.
Where the symptom genuinely is not clear, an operations consultant is usually the safest first engagement, because measurement is what makes every subsequent question answerable.
How firms hire the wrong one
These are the routes by which the mismatch happens, and each is avoidable in a first conversation.
Hiring on reputation rather than on type, because somebody recommended a name without the context of their own problem.
Describing the symptom as the solution — we need a strategy — when the actual complaint is that nobody answers the telephone.
Engaging a channel specialist to give a view on the whole marketing function, which they will do and should not.
Buying strategy when the firm already knows what it wants and cannot execute, which is an operations or interim problem.
Assuming one consultant covers all three, which a few genuinely do and most claim to.
And asking any of them to implement, which turns advice into delivery at advisory rates.
Building a bench over time
Firms that use consultants well tend to accumulate two or three they return to, rather than searching afresh each time.
Start with whichever type matches your clearest current symptom, on a short defined engagement.
Keep the outputs. A diagnostic from two years ago is the baseline for the next one and saves paying to rediscover it.
Note who was right. Consultants vary enormously and the evidence accumulates only if somebody records it.
Use them episodically rather than continuously. A day twice a year from somebody who knows your firm beats a monthly retainer from somebody who does not.
Introduce them to each other where it helps — an operations consultant and a channel specialist working from the same diagnosis is considerably more useful than two separate opinions.
Keep one relationship warm in each type you have needed twice.
Ask each of them who they would recommend for the problems they do not cover. Good consultants have a bench of their own.
And never let advisory drift into delivery without repricing it.
Three names in a contacts list, each right about a different thing, is worth more to a firm than any single retained adviser — and it costs a fraction of one.
FAQs
Are all marketing consultants the same?
No — there are at least three kinds. Strategy consultants work on positioning and priorities, channel consultants on one underperforming discipline, and operations consultants on intake, measurement and process. They diagnose different things.
How do we know which kind we need?
From the symptom. Enquiries falling is a channel question; enquiries arriving and dying is an operations question; nobody agreeing what to fund is a strategy question. If the symptom is genuinely unclear, start with operations, because measurement makes everything else answerable.
What is the commonest hiring mistake?
Hiring a strategy consultant for an operations problem. You get an excellent positioning document and no change in the numbers, because the firm's actual complaint was that nobody answers the telephone.
Should we use one consultant continuously?
Episodically is usually better. A day twice a year from somebody who already knows your firm beats a monthly retainer from somebody who does not — and it keeps advisory from drifting into delivery at advisory rates.
How does a firm build an advisory bench?
By keeping the outputs, noting who turned out to be right, and asking each consultant who they would recommend for the problems they do not cover. Three names, each right about something different, beats one retained adviser.
End Note
Consultant is a single word covering people who would each answer a different question about your firm, which is why hiring on reputation alone produces such inconsistent results.
Name the symptom, pick the type that matches it, keep what they produce, note who was right, and build a small bench you can return to.
Key Takeaways
Three kinds — strategy, channel, operations — solving different problems.
Diagnose the symptom before choosing the type.
Strategy hired for an operations problem is the commonest mismatch.
Use them episodically; keep the outputs as a baseline.
Never let advisory drift into delivery without repricing it.
