A consulting engagement with a good consultant runs in about the same order every time. You talk through your goals and where the business stands, the consultant goes away and researches, you get a plan with the reasoning behind it, and then most of the work of putting it in place lands on you. If you run a service business in Pocatello or Idaho Falls and you’ve never hired a consultant before, that last part is the one nobody warns you about.
So what should you expect from a marketing consulting engagement? Honestly, more questions than advice at the start, and then a stretch where it looks like nothing is happening. This post walks through each part and what it asks of you. If you’re really asking when the payoff shows up, the order marketing consulting results arrive in is the better read.
Why a Consulting Engagement Starts With So Many Questions
The first meeting is mostly me asking and you talking. What do you want this business to look like a year from now? How do you market today, and what happens once someone says yes? We’ll get into who you serve and what you actually offer, too.
It wanders past marketing pretty quickly. We end up talking about sales and how the work actually gets done. It’s almost like a business therapy session, and I mean that in a good way.
What this part asks of you is honesty. If the website has been “almost done” for 2 years, say so. A consultant can only work with the business you describe, and a polished version of it gets you a plan for a company that doesn’t exist.
What Your Consultant Is Doing During the Quiet Stretch
After that first conversation, I go to the drawing board. I audit what you already have and what’s missing, from the website and the Google Business Profile to how a new lead gets followed up. I look at your competitors too, what they do well and where they’re weak, and then I work out how to position you.
From your side it’s quiet, and that can make an owner nervous. That’s normal. It helps to save the big changes until the research is done. It’s tempting to launch a new offer or rewrite the homepage while you wait, but the audit is a picture of your business, and it’s hard to take a picture of something that keeps moving.
What You Should Be Holding When the Strategy Work Ends
The research turns into a presentation and a set of documents you keep. In our Clarity Package, the piece owners care about most is the 45-day roadmap, which lays out what to fix right away and how you’re going to market from here on.
A plan should come with reasons. Jackie, who runs a bar in Pocatello, put it this way in her Google review: “Morgan outlined specific tasks and explained the reasoning behind them. We now have a clear 45-day action plan.” When a salesperson calls 3 weeks later with a billboard deal, you can check it against the plan yourself.
Here’s what you won’t be holding. I don’t create your content or build your website, and I’m not going to run your Facebook page either. I hear “can you just run my Facebook?” a lot, and it’s a fair thing to want. It’s a different service from a different kind of company, though, and it’s better to know that before you start.
Where a Consulting Engagement Usually Goes Wrong
When one goes wrong, it’s usually after the handoff. The plan is good and everyone is excited, and then Monday comes and the phone rings. Nobody was named to make the changes, so the documents sit in a folder. A few months later the website and the follow-up look the same as before, and the owner decides consulting doesn’t work.
None of this is new. Arthur Turner wrote in Harvard Business Review in 1982, in Consulting Is More Than Giving Advice, that a lot of what companies pay consultants for ends up as data nobody can use and recommendations that never get carried out well. His fix was for clients to understand better what a consulting assignment can actually do, and to ask more of the people they hire.
So talk about capacity in the first meeting. Tell your consultant how many hours a week you really have for this, and who on your team will own the changes. A plan that needs 10 hours a week from an owner who has 2 is a bad plan, no matter how smart it is.
What Happens After the Plan Is Yours
Some owners take the roadmap and run with it. You own everything I deliver, so that’s a fine outcome. Others get a few weeks in and realize they need the systems built for them, like the CRM and the follow-up. That’s a second, more hands-on kind of engagement, and it’s what our Foundation Accelerator is for.
Either way, a good engagement has an end. You should finish it understanding your own marketing well enough to lead it, without needing the consultant around to keep the lights on. If you’re still deciding who to hire, how to find the right marketing consultant covers the questions to ask before you sign anything.
If you’re in Pocatello or anywhere in East Idaho and you want to know what this would look like for your business, book a Clarity Discovery Call. It’s 30 minutes on Google Meet, or in person if you’re local. If working together would help, I’ll tell you, and if it wouldn’t, I’ll tell you that too.
