Business Strategies for a Challenging Economy
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Simon Banks in Business Tips, Feature
Business Strategies & Consulting - A Steady Sail in a Tough Economy
We at CIDA News recently spoke with Justin DeStoppelaire, a Business Analysis Consultant, who offers helpful insight of how to not get “busted by panic” in the current economic situation. His fierce credo is to not only offer one-time solutions to his clients, but to empower them to become solution makers themselves.
- EXPERT: One who has expertise in a particular field and typically ’sells and tells.’ They sell a packaged methodology and then tell you what to do with it. This method is the most commonly understood and, in many, cases the least effective. That’s especially true in this fluid, even volatile, beginning of the 21st century.
- DOCTOR: One who analyzes your company, then prescribes what you should do.
- PROCESS CONSULTANT: This class of consultant is more interactive with the client, working to discover both the pain and the solution together. This has the result of empowering the client to better solve future problems, without the need to always seek outside counsel. The focus of the Process Consultant is on both the business and person, or people, as they interact and integrate with the whole, rather than looking at each separately from the whole.”
Chances are, we have all bought from the expert – which can be a time and money saving viable solution, just as long as we know where exactly the problem is! While we would like to call him an expert in his field, Justin, however, puts himself into the third category, the one of process consultant. His aim is to offer solutions for those who have realized there are problems but have been unable to pinpoint their source. Oftentimes, he mentions, a person with great formal training in their respective field will unknowingly create a mental roadblock for themselves they cannot overcome, and thus becomes unable to move forward. Justin’s personal forte, proven by happy clients from various business backgrounds over the last 15 years, is to be able to view a business entity as a whole and see where things don’t fit or match. He then applies his artistic creativity to offer individualized solutions to get a business back on track.
Just as a kinesthetic learner will not profit from a written manual the same way a visual learner would, Justin points out that “what worked perfectly for the last client may not work at all for you.”
“Each client is different and responds different to mechanisms used to solve any problem. Rather than branding a particular system, we actually brand a particular train of thought:
Evaluate, Research, Discover, Implement.
- Evaluate the situation; look at all the variables.
- Research potential, available solutions; we use not only our own core modules, but all modules, systems, tests, etc. that are available. This pushes us to continue to study, learn, and implement new ways of solving problems.
- Discover what will work best in this-[your]-situation.
- Implement the solution. This, most often, means helping the client through the process. Any new process involves receiving new knowledge; understanding how to use that knowledge will inevitably bring one to that moment when, he is in a real life situation when the opportunity comes to implement the paradigm shift, and-Oh, boy!-one can get stuck. This is where the real learning happens and when champions are made. We will be there.”
For more information on how to run a business in a tough economy guided by hope and not propelled by panic, visit Cserviceconsulting.com or email Justin directly cscinfo@cserviceconsulting.com.
You also might want to check out how to attract new customers without straining your budget:
5 Low-Cost Ways to Get New Customers in 2009.
