The absolute best thing you can do when you team up with a consultant is to work with them as if they were a fresh hire.
“Why? It’s their job to do the marketing now, I can relax and focus on other things.”
Nobody understands your business the way that you do. Are you giving them all of the information in order get up to speed on your company? When you hired them, did this person give confidence and curiosity and did they have the background fit that the work required?
Better use of time.
If you become the instant roadblock by sitting on white papers for three weeks, or you are rewriting every social media post (why are you wasting your time?), or just not responding to questions or approvals, you are preventing the strategy from doing its job.
Are you blowing off meetings that require your presence or decision to move forward to the next step? Did you stop showing up in your email? Do you just intensely dislike thinking about something you don’t understand or have zero interest in?
Another reason things may not be working well, could be a trust issue.
You don’t need to have all the answers. That was the entire point of hiring someone to think about your current situation, goals and internal bandwidth. Read that again.
Are you giving the plan enough time to actually work? Did you agree on a roadmap with what you want to achieve at the beginning? If not, revisit!
Is second-guessing occurring? Analysis paralysis is fairly common and can ruin an internal team’s morale and park your consultants’ work on the side of the road. You hired them for a reason. Let them do their job and get the results in the bag.
Too much data. Not enough data.
Everyone has different needs. What are you actually trying to accomplish? Does the data support that? If you don’t know, ask.
Did you hire an intern to do the job that requires someone with experience?
Having a deep understanding of your market, your product and the tactics that work best within your business model is not something you come out of school understanding. Hiring a curious self-starter is one thing, but there is a deep difference knowing that you hired someone who knows how to hit the ground running.
More questions to ask yourself (and your leadership team)
Are you getting caught in the trap of wanting only what your competition is doing?
Is there a clear consensus at the close of meetings for next steps?
Are you making expectations clear about your goals and are they realistic?
Are you measuring the correct data?
Consultants are there to problem solve! Let them.
When in doubt, ask!
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