Outside help (consultants, agencies, freelancers) bring fresh eyes and new solutions for your business problems.
However, it is always better if you bring yourself up to date on the best practices related to the business problem.
For example, you have read, and people have told you that PPC (paid per click) advertising or Facebook advertising bring more benefit to Google and Facebook respectively than to most advertisers. Before you bring in a PPC expert to improve the performance of your online advertising, you should also read up on the important terms and concepts.
In short, please Google 'problem x concepts/glossary', 'problem x' etc before you meet the expert.
Things you might need to hire outside help for:
- Marketing: Cut down your spending, position your brand better, look into pricing, etc.
- Cost control: Cut down on excess spending, see where the wastage is happening, etc.
- Funding: Help structure the business plan - Connect with investors - Modify things on organization level, sprucing up the place for the investors, etc.
- Product/service innovation: So that our work is on level with the top players in the industry, and some more.
- Hiring: Help choose the right person for the job. Entrepreneurs often look for COO-type (Chief operating Officer) people, or people from the competition to handle a key department. Facebook poached its COO from Google.
- Training: Making sure that you company has all the skills needed to bring the product/service to the market successfully.
- Technology: Information technology, most of the time. How to use the internet and mobile networks to improve work performance as well as business performance (more customers etc.)
Thank you for reading.
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