10 Years. 10 Insights. #9
Insight 9: Getting ROI from a Consultant Doesn't Happen by Accident
This is the ninth post in a ten-part series marking Inkberry's 10th anniversary. Each post covers an insight drawn from a decade of working with B2B founders and leadership teams on growth strategy.
Bringing in outside help can be one of the best investments a company makes. It can also be a frustrating and expensive exercise that produces a document nobody uses. The difference often comes down to how well the engagement was set up before the work began.
Advice without a plan has limited value. A plan without execution support is hard for most organizations to actually implement. When you bring in a consultant, it's worth asking upfront how far they're willing to go with you, and being equally honest with yourself about what you actually need.
Consultant or Outsourced Team Member: Know What You're Hiring
Before you start looking for outside help, it's worth getting clear on what kind of help you actually need. A consultant typically comes in to solve a defined problem or deliver a specific body of work: a go-to-market strategy, a repositioning framework, a product launch plan. The engagement has a scope and an end point.
An outsourced or fractional team member works differently. They function as an embedded part of your team, taking on ongoing responsibility for a function, not just a project. A fractional CMO, for example, isn't just delivering a strategy. They're leading the marketing function, managing resources, and are accountable for ongoing execution.
Neither is better than the other. They serve different needs. Being clear on which one fits your situation before you start the conversation will save you time, money, and frustration.
How to Set Up a Consulting Engagement for Success
Step 1: Get clear on the problem before you go looking for help.
Before you engage anyone, take the time to articulate what you're trying to solve. You may not know what the solution looks like, that’s often why you're bringing someone in. But being specific about the problem puts you in a much better position to find the right help and to make sure you and your consultant are working toward the same goal from day one.
Step 2: Make sure you're speaking the same language.
Marketing, strategy, go-to-market, commercial strategy: these terms mean different things to different people. Before the work begins, get underneath the vocabulary and make sure you and your consultant share a common understanding of the key terms. Misaligned definitions can lead to misaligned deliverables, and that's a frustrating and avoidable outcome.
A good consultant will want this clarity as much as you do. Pay attention to how many questions they ask before the contract is signed. A consultant who jumps straight to solutions without fully understanding your problem, your organization, and your definition of success is a red flag. The best outside help starts with curiosity, not ready-made answers.
Step 3: Understand exactly what you're getting.
Be specific about deliverables and ask questions if anything feels open to interpretation. What will you have at the end of the engagement? What does it look like? And just as importantly, how is your organization going to use it?
This is where many engagements fall short. A consultant can do excellent work producing a new value proposition, a repositioning framework, or a go-to-market strategy. But if there's no plan for how that work gets implemented across the organization, it sits in a folder and nothing changes.
Think through the full impact. A new value proposition, for example, should ripple through your website, your sales conversations, your marketing materials, and your customer-facing teams. Who is responsible for that rollout? Is that part of what you're asking the consultant to drive? Is your organization prepared to support it?
Step 4: Align on execution before the engagement starts.
If you're asking a consultant to develop a 12 to 24 month commercial or marketing strategy, the strategy itself is only part of the picture. Once it's in place, who executes it? Do you have the internal resources to do that, or do you need the consultant to stay involved? Is building an execution budget part of the scope?
These are not questions to figure out after the work is done. Getting clear on them upfront is what separates an engagement that drives real change from one that produces a thoughtful report that never gets off the ground.
Step 5: Make sure your organization is ready to support the work.
The best consulting engagements are partnerships. That means the consultant brings the expertise and the plan, and your organization shows up to support the implementation. If your leadership team isn't aligned on the goals going in, or if no one internally has ownership of carrying the work forward, even the best outside help will struggle to make an impact. Set your consultant up to succeed, and you'll get far more out of the investment.
The goal is to set both yourself and your consultant up for success. The best outside help isn't just advice. It's a partnership that goes far enough to make sure the work actually results in positive change.