Are you considering a career as a growth management consultant? To build a successful career in growth management or grow in your current position, you’ll need to understand what growth management consultants actually do. It’s also essential for you to know the education, experience, and skills required to get hired and advance in this profession.

This article will explain what qualifications growth management consultants need.

What do growth management consultants do?

Growth management consultants tend to provide work within the following three categories:

1. Expertise and specializations. Management consultants offer counsel, advice, and functional knowledge in several areas ranging from strategy to risk management and operations.
2. Analysis and assessment. A growth management consultant often serves as an objective third party to conduct research and analysis and then provide an unbiased optioning and perspective on complex business problems.
3. Project management. Growth management consultants work directly with senior leadership and project teams to consult on project implementation, execution, and management.

What education and experience do growth management consultants need?

There’s no one answer regarding the education and experience required to become a management consultant. Typically, there are four varying levels when climbing the career ladder. The level where you end up depends significantly on your education and experience.

Here’s a look at the varying levels:

1. Entry level. This is typically the level of a business analyst or associate consultant. Those at this level usually have an undergraduate degree with little practical experience.
2. Management consultant level. The second level is known as the actual management consultant level. It generally requires an undergraduate degree along with four years of consulting experience or a graduate degree and two years of consulting experience.
3. Senior consultant or project lead level. This level usually requires significant education, including a graduate degree and seven years of experience, or an undergraduate degree and ten years of consulting experience.
4. Partner or principal level. The fourth level requires a graduate degree and more than ten years of direct consulting experience. At this level, other needed skills include supervising, business development, financial management, and team building.

What skills are needed to be a growth management consultant?

There are several skills that are needed to be a growth management consultant, including the following:

• Intellect. This includes consulting, advising, strategic thinking, analytical processing, action research, and problem-solving.
• Communication. The skills involved include communication (reading, writing, and speaking), conflict management, and presentations.
• Leadership. Judgment, decision-making, emotional intelligence, executive presence, client engagement and relationships, and managing ambiguity.
• Technical. These skills include analytics, data analysis and interpretation, statistical understanding, critical thinking and analysis, project management, business systems, marketing, sales, contracting, budgeting, and financial management.

Keep your company on the right track with NFA Consulting

While the path to sustainable growth differs for every organization, you can rest assured you’ll be on it when you work with NFA Consulting. Generally, a few critical areas of focus help us create custom strategies that allow our clients to be consistently (and increasingly) profitable over time, including:

• Help with strategic planning to prioritize goals and resources
• Estimating costs for your company’s significant investments
• Managing acquisitions to make mergers as smooth of a transition as possible
• Project performance analysis to understand the success of your company’s initiatives
• Help with risk assessment so you can devise solutions for negative trends or future potential issues

With over four decades of experience, our growth management consulting services offer customized solutions for growth that’ll keep your company trending in the right direction. Contact us for a consultation to get started!