How to Become a Strategic Planning Consultant

ShillBill

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posted on 13 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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Strategic planning consultants are used by small businesses, large corporations and nonprofit organizations to help plan long term growth and development strategies. A strategic planning consultant must have a good understanding of the business and its current direction in order to gather information and make recommendations on designing a future path. Become a strategic planning consultant by studying business, finance and strategic planning models and marketing yourself to companies and organizations that might need your services.

Steps

Training to be a Strategic Planning Consultant

Obtain a bachelor's degree. Good majors for a strategic planning consultant include business, finance, communications and public administration. Take classes in financial forecasting, marketing, statistics, organizational management and human resources. To be a strategic planning consultant, you will need to understand various operations of a business.

Consider an advanced degree. Having a master's degree in business (MBA), or in other fields such as public policy and public administration might make it easier for you to enter the consulting field as a strategic planner.

Learn about different strategic planning models. No single model works for all businesses. Having several different models in your toolkit will help you be an effective consultant. Familiarize yourself with the basic models, including the goal-based strategic planning model, issues based planning, the alignment model and self-organizing. Allow for flexibility as you study the models. For example, some elements of one model might work well within another. Keeping the process fluid will help you work with companies on their strategic plans.

Get experience. Work with professional strategic planners as an assistant, intern or associate.

Stay current in the field. Best practices and new procedures are being tested and reviewed all the time. Subscribe to the Harvard Business Review and similar publications in print and digitally. They often review strategic planning processes and models. They also review books on the subject.

Become a certified strategic planner. The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP) offers 2 levels of strategic planning certification. Testing is administered every quarter. Start with a certification as a Strategic Planning Professional (SPP) and then advance to the Strategic Management Professional (SMP) certification. You can also earn a designation as a Strategic Planning Associate (SPA).

Getting Work as a Strategic Planning Consultant

Join the ASP. This association can provide you with resources and career opportunities.

Market yourself and your skills. Design a website that promotes your education, experience and abilities as a strategic planning consultant. Include success stories from past clients and testimonials from references. Put together an e-newsletter on strategic planning topics that might be interesting to your contacts and potential clients.

Use social networking. Businesses and nonprofit organizations of all sizes are on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Establish communities on social networking sites where you can share information, make recommendations and drive traffic to your own website.

Join professional groups and build a network. You can find consulting work at Chamber of Commerce events as well as through other civic and professional organizations.

Ask for referrals. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. Ask former clients and current contacts to recommend you to companies that might be considering a strategic planning process.