Why hiring a freelance consultant may be the best move for your company
If you have been in business for a while, it’s likely that you may have thought about hiring consultants at some point.
Now the question is: Where to find top consultants who can actually solve problems?
Well, for decades, businesses have been reaching out to big consulting firms to seek expert advice on their problems.
But the consulting industry has changed a lot in the past decade. In this day and age, a lot of consultants are leaving the employee lifestyle behind and are becoming freelancers.
In this article, we’ll discuss the top 4 reasons why hiring freelance consultants may be a better choice than engaging with a big consulting firm.
1. Broader Perspective
When it comes to hiring consultants, you could either let one big consulting firm handle the entire project. Otherwise, you can build your own team of freelance consultants from different professional backgrounds. It’s true that big consulting firms can also produce results. Otherwise, they would not have been in business for so long. However, choosing all consultants from one big firm comes with its own set of issues, such as groupthink, and potentially, narrow-mindedness.
But if you approach top-tier consulting platforms (also known as freelance platforms), you will have the flexibility to choose freelance consultants with different approaches. With a diverse team comes diverse perspectives, and with diverse perspectives come a myriad of solutions that could be used to solve a business problem or achieve an organizational goal. And this alone can significantly affect the overall results that your company achieves.
2. Ability to Hire Specialists
If you create your own team of freelance consultants by handpicking each one from a top freelance platform, you will have the ability to work with the best consultants from any given area of expertise. However, if you only engage with one consulting firm, you’ll have no control over the consultants that are assigned to your company’s project.
That’s why it’s way better to approach a freelance platform and take a look at their talent pool first. You could find the best freelance management consultant, social media specialist, SEO expert etc. under one roof. So, instead of working with consultants who ‘kind of’ know some things about a particular subject, you can contact freelance consultants who live and breathe their craft. This is the case whether it’s management, marketing, operations, strategy, or any other field. To build a top-tier consulting team, you need the best of the best consultants. Thanks to the freelance consulting platforms, it is possible to handpick freelance consultants these days. If you’re a business that’s looking for consultants, make sure you leverage this amazing opportunity and build your own A-team of top freelance consultants.
3. Cost-Effectiveness
Big firms have big advertising budgets, fancy offices in high-rise buildings around the world, and a lot more expenses contributing to a higher price. It's worth mentioning again that big consulting firms do produce results, too. But so can freelance consultants - a lot of whom have worked for big consulting firms and can bring the same expertise to your company anyway. Top-tier consulting advice does not always come from big firms with unshakeable brand image. Even freelance consultants, who don’t have a million-dollar business advertising budget, can undoubtedly produce exceptional results and take your company to the stratosphere.
If you’re running a small to medium-sized business, chances are, you are judicious with your business expenditure. And if you take some time to think outside the box, you’ll realize that you can get access to some of the brightest brains in the consulting industry without spending half of your business budget. This can be done simply by choosing to hire freelance consultants instead of engaging with big brand names. For example, here a Consultport, all the consultants in our talent pool have experience working with blue-chip companies or big consulting firms. So why not contact them directly and have them work with you for a reasonable price?
4. Access to Motivated and Driven Consultants
It’s true that consultants are highly motivated, energetic, and intelligent individuals. But freelance consultants take it to the next level. Freelance consultants are not employees, so they are not obligated to accept any and every project that comes their way. For example, here at Consultport, the consultants on our platform apply for projects that they are genuinely passionate about and for this reason, they are very committed to the projects they choose.
This attitude itself makes a lot of difference. As a business, you should always work with consultants who are truly confident about their ability to execute a particular project. It’s highly unlikely that a freelance consultant would take on your project if they are not fully into it. As they have many other consulting gigs to choose from. So, if they choose to engage with your company’s project, it’s likely that jaw-dropping results are on the way for you.
Conclusion
Hiring a consultant comes with a lot of benefits, but hiring a freelance consultant has some extra advantages. If all the consultants who are working on your company’s project are employees of the same consulting firm, the solutions they offer may be a result of groupthink and the ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’ mentality. However, choosing freelance consultants with different backgrounds gives you a broader perspective on your company’s problems and consequently, you get a variety of intelligent solutions to choose from.
If you hire freelance consultants, you can handpick specialists from different fields. Something that’s not possible if you outsource your entire project to one consulting firm. In that case, you may have to work with generalists who have surface-level knowledge about a lot of topics but in-depth knowledge of none. Also, freelance consultants are generally more affordable than big firms. And last but not least, they’re highly motivated and passionate about the projects they choose to work on.
