Strategy consulting for mid-sized companies: cost, value and the alternatives

What does strategy consulting actually deliver?

Classic strategy consulting delivers three things: an analysis your team couldn't have produced on its own, an outside view of assumptions nobody in the company questions anymore, and a structure that turns scattered discussions into a document.

That's worth more than critics of consulting admit. Anyone who works in the same industry for ten years starts treating decisions as laws of nature. That's exactly where an outsider is useful.

What consulting doesn't deliver is rarely in the proposal: your leadership team's willingness to own the result. A strategy someone else developed gets defended like an inherited piece of furniture.

What does strategy consulting cost for mid-sized companies?

The market spreads wide, and the range has less to do with quality than with the business model behind it.

• Large firms bill in project weeks with several consultants. A full strategic analysis lands well into six figures, more for larger scopes.
• Boutiques and specialists work with smaller teams and come in at a fraction of that, often in the mid five figures for a clearly defined topic.
• Solo consultants bill by the day. Here the person decides, not the firm, and quality varies accordingly.

The number that really matters in the decision appears in no proposal: your leadership team's time. A strategy process ties up five to ten people over months, no matter who facilitates it. If you only look at the fee, you're comparing the smaller line item.

Why do so many consulting results end up in a drawer?

Not because the analysis was wrong. Usually it's accurate.

The break happens between the final presentation and Monday morning. During the project, an external team held the reins, set the dates, demanded interim results. With the final invoice, that structure disappears, and day-to-day business fills the space within two weeks.

Then there's the ownership effect. People who made a decision themselves defend it in the next conflict. People who had it presented to them explain it.

What are the alternatives: in-house, coach, or platform?

Three paths, and they differ less in price than in where the knowledge ends up.

How do you know which path fits your company?

By one honestly answered question: do you have enough capacity internally? That means not just people, but time, skills, and experience, for the entire path from analysis through cascading into ongoing execution. Not just for the two workshop days everyone pictures.

In family businesses, the most common response sounds roughly like this: we'll manage it ourselves despite limited capacity, consultants are expensive, we're not a corporation. That's often right and sometimes expensive. If you handle the analysis yourself and save on facilitation, you pay for it at the moment when nobody in the room asks an uncomfortable question because everyone reports to the same boss.

One question almost always decides it: who should be able to explain the strategy two years from now?

If the answer is "our leadership team," then that team has to develop it. In that case, external analysis is one component, not the project. If the answer is "the result mainly needs to be on the table fast and hold up, for shareholders or a transaction," then classic consulting is the more direct route.

Take a supplier with four hundred employees deciding whether to enter a new market segment. If it needs market analysis nobody in the company can deliver, external help is the right call. If it needs a decision that all three managing directors and the division heads stand behind together, then a slide deck is the wrong product.

What should you have clarified before the first conversation?

• What exactly is the question? "We need a strategy" isn't one. "Will our core business still grow for five more years, and if not, where does the replacement come from?" is.
• Who decides in the end? If that isn't settled up front, the process settles it, late and expensively.
• How much time is the leadership team giving? An honest number in days, not the one you'd like.
• What happens after the final presentation? If there's no answer, the project is over before it has any impact.