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Coaching, Consultancy or Strategy Blueprint?

What if you need help in guiding your business to a successful company sale? Or if you want to demonstrably increase the value of your business?

Just attend any networking event and you’ll come face-to-face with a myriad of coaches and consultants claiming they will improve your business.

But which route is the most effective?

The answer lies in understanding the difference between a consultant and a coach.

Coaching / mentoring can help turn an entrepreneur into a great leader over time. Governing body, The International Coach Federation, ensures that its accredited coaches help their clients improve their lives, relationships and business performance in a measurable way. It states the formal definition of coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential.”

In coaching, the focus is on the client and on helping them tap into their own ability to problem solve the challenges that emerge in work and life. Coaching is a great route for personal development for a medium to long-term result.

But for any business issue to be resolved in a coaching relationship, it relies on the client to accurately diagnose problems and implement effective actions…

Consulting is different.

Consulting provides objective expertise and advice, usually in one specific area such as business strategy, organisational structure, culture, productivity, marketing, finance etc. In consulting, the focus is generally on fixing a specific problem or problems that have been identified. The consultant will deconstruct the identified area to see what the issues are and will offer up best practices to address “the problem(s)”.

A consultant is (or should be!) an expert who is called on for professional or technical advice or opinions. They are relied on to understand the problem, give an unbiased view and present solutions to reach the desired result.

Unlike coaching that relies on the client to solve their own problems, or consulting that often operates within a narrow vertical field, the Strategy Blueprint© is a co-active evidenced-based approach that blends both coaching and consulting into one single approach.

Designed principally to help guide business owners towards a successful company sale, the Strategy Blueprint© is a unique methodology that provides the ‘blueprint’ for a successful exit within a medium term (e.g. 3 – 5 year) time frame.

The Strategy Blueprint©’s integral approach is an effective diagnostic tool as it addresses the whole company’s performance and its position within the marketplace, so no more guessing where to focus or in what priority order. Nothing is left out of the analysis and the discovery audit addresses all key business areas including:

  • Strategy & business planning
  • Profit & loss, management systems & KPI’s
  • Management & team incentivisation
  • Intellectual property, process & planning
  • Information technology
  • Systems, quality & process

…as well as benchmarking the competitive landscape and key financial comparatives.

The analysis of each functional area is presented to the client in an inter-active workshop which allows a co-active input into creating the ‘strategy blueprint’. Once agreed, the process then switches from ‘consultant’ to ‘coaching’ in helping execute the plan and improve shareholder value together with reaching any pre-determined goal (e.g. company sale).

In summary:

Coaching is ideal for long-term personal development of an individual..

Consulting is appropriate to fix a functional issue by engaging outside help…

The Strategy Blueprint© combines consulting and coaching into one singular approach aimed at improving shareholder value:

Coaching, Consulting or Strategy Blueprint?

If this sounds like it might be appropriate for your business book a discovery session to find out if we can help you.

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