FEATURE
BUSINESS SUPPORT
Advice to get your business on track
By Phil Harris, Managing Director of Phormative
Business support comes in many forms and can be variously described as seeking help from a business adviser, coach, mentor, or consultant. Generally speaking, consultants are usually employed to carry out specific projects for you whereas an adviser will tend to be more hands-off, providing mentoring type guidance. For example, larger organisations with in-house skills will
often seek independent help with complex projects or when needing advice from specialist consultants in a particular field such as marketing, new product development or manufacturing techniques. Start-up businesses may ask for help from an adviser in
assessing the potential of a business idea or look for mentoring support during those difficult early stages when they are most vulnerable. When a great idea drives the entrepreneur they often
think that writing a business plan is wasting time when they could be out selling or making things rather than thinking about markets, sales projections and cash flows.
A business adviser can point out many of the pitfalls, ask those difficult questions that force you to think and plan and signpost you to organisations that may be able to help provide specialist support, funding or training. While an adviser should provide guidance and support,
in my opinion the start up business owner should write and research the business plan themselves because writing a good business plan is an incredibly valuable learning experience and the foundation for really understanding their business and the markets they are operating in. Also, a good business plan will help immensely when seeking finance and/or investors. Most leaders of SMEs will at some point need someone
to bounce ideas off, but it may be difficult to find an individual who will offer genuinely impartial advice. We’ve all heard the analogy of the consultant borrowing your watch to tell you the time and to an extent that’s true. However, another cliché ‘it’s lonely at the top’ is also true. Often as a business owner you are faced with decisions you
‘You can employ an adviser by the hour or day or for a fixed or variable, short or long-term assignment’
26 business network December 2016/January 2017
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