' do I choose the right small business advisor?' can be a question that is very difficult for any company owner. But the first question we must answer is why would they need one in the first place?


Running any business is challenging these days, from retail to manufacturing and everywhere in-between, how many rules and regulations to comply with looks to be growing by the week. From safety and health to employment law, if you're not on top of everything, when things go wrong you stand to take a very large fall. Furthermore, you might understand the best way to carry out the main aspects of your company, but are you getting the maximum benefit out of your advertising? Are you currently gaining from the advice they include and managing records and your company data well? Have you been concentrating your efforts on the customers who actually produce gain instead of just raising your employee turnover? A great little company advisor should be able enable you to concentrate on the things you do well, to take away the difficulties of running a company and ultimately raise the turnover, gain and efficiency of your company.


So just how do I choose a superb small company advisor?


Unfortunately, there's no magic formula to selecting a small business advisor, but the first thing you need to decide is 'What do I'd like to achieve?' Some advisers specialise in a definite place - safety and advertising, health, recruiting, management systems, web design, etc - while others offer a complete bundle of consultancy which you only must deal with one business. Narrowing down your demands should enable you to concentrate on a few of businesses, either locally or nationally, who look to help you to handle the work you require.


Make contact with the businesses that you simply've shortlisted once you have a particular goal in mind and inquire about what they could do to fulfil your requirements and what the likely price will be. Also, and very importantly, ask them for the contact details of firms for whom they've done similar work for in the past - any small business consultancy that isn't willing to do this, should be taken off your shortlist. Talk to the past clients to get a concept of how well things went, were objectives met, etc to build up a photo of the advisors you're looking to deal with. Have a look at the credentials the little business advisor has - are they a member of any professional bodies who can verify their abilities, do they have the right insurance in place for the work you want them to do - essentially, iron out any doubts you've got over the professionalism of their firm and the work they do.


Hopefully, you've now narrowed the selection down to two or one possibilities. This really is the stage to compose a clear description of what you want to reach (not how you need them to attain it) and ask the new shortlisted little company consultants to propose how they're going to reach your goals, exactly how much it's going to cost and what comeback there will be if they can't achieve what you want. Armed with each of the facts and figures, the final selection is actually only down to personal feeling; assuming the responses and costs are fairly similar - choose the right small business advisor to work with and it should be the best thing that has ever occurred to your company.