How can I use growth strategy consultants to support a turnaround plan for a business unit?

Growth strategy consultants can be very useful in a turnaround plan for a business unit, but they work best when you use them for commercial diagnosis and option generation, not as a substitute for operational execution.

Where they help most

A good consultant can help you:

• Diagnose the core problem: Is the unit failing because of market decline, weak positioning, pricing, channel issues, product gaps, poor segmentation, or execution?
• Prioritize growth levers: Identify which actions can improve revenue fastest and with the best margin impact.
• Build scenarios: Model what happens if you change pricing, product mix, customer targeting, sales coverage, or go-to-market investment.
• Define a turnaround roadmap: Convert strategy into a sequence of actions for the next 30/60/90 days, 6 months, and 12 months.
• Test assumptions quickly: Validate market demand, customer willingness to pay, competitive reactions, and feasibility.
• Bring outside perspective: They can challenge internal biases and “we’ve always done it this way” thinking.

Best way to use them in a turnaround

1. Start with a clear turnaround objective

Be explicit about what success means:

• Restore revenue growth
• Improve gross margin
• Stop customer churn
• Fix underperforming products
• Achieve cash preservation
• Decide whether to invest, restructure, or exit

2. Give them a narrow mandate

Instead of “help us grow,” ask for specific outputs:

• Commercial diagnosis of the business unit
• Growth opportunity sizing
• Customer and competitor analysis
• Pricing and segmentation recommendations
• GTM and channel redesign options
• Implementation roadmap with milestones, owners, and KPIs

3. Make them work alongside internal leaders

The consultant should partner with:

• Business unit head
• Finance
• Sales and marketing
• Product / operations
• Strategy or transformation office

This ensures recommendations are realistic and aligned with operational constraints.

4. Use them to create decision-ready choices

A turnaround team should not get a long report alone. Ask consultants to present:

• 3–5 strategic options
• Expected impact, cost, and timing of each
• Risks and dependencies
• Clear recommendation for what to do now vs later

5. Tie their work to execution governance

A turnaround succeeds only if the insights become action:

• Weekly steering meetings
• KPI dashboard
• Named owners for each initiative
• Rapid issue escalation
• Milestone reviews every 2–4 weeks

Typical deliverables to request

• Market and customer segmentation analysis
• Competitor benchmarking
• Pricing and margin diagnostics
• Revenue bridge analysis
• Growth opportunity heat map
• Turnaround business case
• 90-day action plan
• KPI tree and performance dashboard

What to avoid

• Using them too late: Consultants are most useful before options disappear.
• Having them do vague “strategy theater”: Require concrete, testable recommendations.
• Letting them own execution: Internal leaders should own decisions and implementation.
• Ignoring operational realities: A great strategy that ops, finance, or sales cannot execute will fail.
• Overreliance on slides: Require analyses, models, and pilot tests where possible.

Good use cases

Consultants are especially helpful when the business unit needs:

• Repositioning in a changing market
• Price resets
• Customer segment refocus
• Channel or sales model redesign
• Product portfolio rationalization
• Fast growth after a decline
• Objective support for a difficult restructuring decision

A practical engagement model

A strong turnaround engagement often looks like this:

1. 2–3 weeks: Diagnose and quantify the problem
2. 2–4 weeks: Develop growth/turnaround options
3. 1–2 weeks: Align leadership on the chosen plan
4. Ongoing: Support implementation tracking and course correction

Simple rule of thumb

Use growth strategy consultants to answer:

• Where should this business unit play?
• How should it win?
• What is the fastest path to profitable recovery?

Then have internal leaders answer:

• Can we execute it?
• What must change operationally?
• Who owns each action?

If you want, I can also help you with:

1. a sample consultant scope of work,
2. a turnaround project plan, or
3. a set of interview questions to choose the right consultant.