Consultants

When it comes to marketing and management, many entrepreneursare on firmer ground than when venturing into accounting and law.But nobody knows everything, even about general management andmarketing. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you don’t knoweverything and seeking outside help in an effort to improve yourcompany’s weaknesses as skillfully as possible. In narrowdisciplines, such as managing mergers and acquisitions, marketingto ethnic groups or implementing new technology, the use of anexperienced specialist makes even more sense. And even if you feelthere’s nothing you don’t know about a topic, hiring outsideexperts will allow you to do things you would not ordinarily havetime for and do not want to hire permanent employees for.

Hiring a consultant is different from hiring almost any otherkind of employee, and it’s different from purchasing mostoutsourced services, too. For one thing, consultants are expensive.They can cost anywhere from several hundred to several thousanddollars a day. Make sure you know what the consulting fees will beand exactly what you’ll get for paying them. Consultants shouldprovide a more customized solution to your business problem thanmost outsourced providers. Make sure any consultant you hire askslots of questions about your needs and listens to your answers. Besure your description of your needs is specific, and avoidconsultants with preconceived notions about solutions.