For almost every startup, it makes sense to seek external expertise and perhaps even operational support from consultants when building their company. In this guest article for deutsche-startups.de Christoph Rammé shows under what circumstances and how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
"Management consultants are overpaid know-it-alls who only cause unrest"... I've often been confronted with this or similar statements as a consultant. There's usually no shortage of skepticism, and this raises the question, especially for young companies with limited budgets, as to whether using external consultants actually makes sense.
In our experience, the – well-dosed – use of consultants for startups is worthwhile in three typical situations:
Team structures and decision-making processes are unclear
When several founders come together to form a team, the distribution of roles is not always clear in the early stages. This often leads to a loss of market clout. Dr. Rudolf Lütke Schwienhorst, Consocium member and Managing Director of Partner im Dialog Unternehmensberater GmbH, explains how an external consultant can help resolve unspoken misunderstandings:
"It was the third meeting with the four founders. The discussions about strategy, marketing, product development, and financing were intense and helpful – just like the previous ones. Nevertheless, as a consultant, I had the feeling something was wrong and asked the simple question: Once the company is founded, who will be the boss?
When four arms were raised in the air, everyone in the room knew that a clarification process had to begin. And so, in the exuberance of the founding spirit, it's often necessary for an outsider to ask the obvious questions that would otherwise be overlooked.
We dedicated the fourth meeting with the founders to precisely these questions – with the corresponding homework to prepare. In the first step, each person self-assessed their 'caliber of leadership,' which we then aligned with each other and compared with the participants' experiences and their internal attributions of competence.
After that, the starting lineup for the organization was quickly and consensually clear – and the personal development programs for the founders were also agreed upon.”
In one area, the founding team lacks the necessary expertise
If a founding team lacks expertise and experience in certain areas, an external consultant can contribute the necessary experience – or even assume operational responsibility for a phased approach. Bettina Pauck, Consocium member and Managing Director of ConSourcing, shares how she made an online retailer's customer service competitive:
"At a Berlin startup, customer service wasn't working. Customer accessibility was poor, the quality of responses was poor, and complaints were piling up. There was also a clear problem with the department's management.
To kick things off, we held an analysis day where I was able to take a closer look at the problem and then present a clear plan of action for improvement. This gave the founding team a good basis for assessing my performance and working methods. This led to the decision to hire me as an interim manager for customer service.
After the aforementioned measures were quickly introduced (e.g., specialization of employees, technical support via call routing, introduction of a forecasting process), the first changes in the target KPIs were visible after just a few days.
The skepticism that initially accompanied the consultant's daily rate was forgotten after these successes, as the value of the service quickly became apparent."
