For small business executives, there often comes a time when you need to call on outside help. You need to call on someone with more experience than yourself; someone who has been in your shoes before or has guided other business leaders through the same situation.
In these cases, people often turn to business consultants, but the quality and scope of business management consulting services vary widely. If you want your investment to have a positive impact on your business and its bottom line, it’s important to hire the right person for the job, as the wrong consultant will just waste your time and money.
Unfortunately, the truth about business management consulting is that traditional consulting firms don’t really offer any legitimate help to small businesses. While the theoretical frameworks these consultants provide may sound good on paper, there is a gap between strategy and execution. When these plans are put into practice in a real-world business, they rarely yield the expected results, which is why the generic frameworks offered by most consultants are rarely very useful.
Small business consulting services that actually inspire transformation and a better bottom line
Disrupting this approach is Erick Parker, senior business consultant with Global Business Consultants, which provides custom services to small business owners, from start-up founders to leaders planning their exit strategy. Unlike many consulting firms, which just throw advice at you from their MBA textbooks with no regard for how it actually fits your business, Parker believes in a hands-on approach filled with engagement. He believes this is what can actually help a business change and evolve.
“Practical business improvement is having boots on the ground and rolling up your sleeves,” says Parker. “Grassroots efforts to help a business owner change the business and the behavior of the employees and the owners. To me, that has more impact in changing the direction of a business, because the business owner is focused on bringing in revenue, or we’re focused on improving the operations of the company.”
That’s not to say that Parker isn’t every bit as qualified to provide this support to business owners. For over 20 years, Parker served as the CEO, director, and president of a financial services company, growing it from a start-up to more than $40 million in sales. He then took this knowledge with him, deciding he wanted to actually help small businesses and their leaders, not just say things that sound good in theory.
Parker and his team at Global Business Consultants work alongside their clients to actually implement initiatives that have a real impact on the bottom line. In other words, Global Business Consultants helps small businesses with outsourcing, bookkeeping, and administrative tasks to keep the business moving forward and improving. With the help of Global Business Consultants, leaders don’t have to worry about common concerns like recruiting, training, turnover, payroll, or even being out sick. Parker and his team are there to save the day.
“To me, generic is someone standing on the sidelines telling the business owner what to do, expecting them to do it, and then following up on the results,” says Parker. “It’s like a coach in a basketball game on the sidelines telling the basketball player what play to make in order to score. We’re like the point guard, actually out on the court playing alongside the business owner, helping them to move the ball to the basket.”
“Our goal is to always make those phone calls, to negotiate with a potential supplier or creditor or vendor or lender, because we know what to say, how to say it, the terms to use, and we take the emotion out of the equation, because we’ve been here before,” Parker continues. “We know what to expect, and we know what questions to ask. Every business has challenges, but you want to point out the positives: how we are going to turn things around, to increase profitability, reduce expenses, streamline operations.”
Because of the private nature of the industry, Parker can’t discuss specific businesses that he has guided throughout the years. But the testimonials on his website speak for themselves. One business owner says that Parker’s guidance helped them “increase sales by $374,000 per year,” while another states that they “increased [their] gross profit from 1.85% to 13%.
Contact Erick Parker for your small business consultant needs
These measurable results demonstrate the level of commitment Parker and his team have to delivering a legitimate impact on their clients’ bottom lines. If you’re interested in seeing those impacts and taking your business to the next level, contact Erick Parker for more information today to learn whether his management consulting firm can provide the strategic insight your business needs for a full transformation.
