Consultant, Mentor or Business Coach -Choose the right business service for your need.

 By Greg Joynt, ActionCOACH Business Coach, Auckland, NZ

Who do I choose? Consultant, Mentor, or Business Coach ? When I need business advice and help what’s the difference?
By the dictionary description; Business Mentor, Business Coach, and Business Consultant could all be seen as offering similar services, “to help and give advice to someone who has less experience that you, to one person or a small group, or someone who advises people on a particular subject” and if we add in Life Coach, who also coach business owners it gets even more confusing. There are also many professionals in Accountancy, Law, IT, and Marketing, even Social Media experts who are adding the title of Mentor to their business card.

Broadly speaking Consultants tend to be specialists who are bought in address a specific problem. It may be an IT issue, or logistics, marketing, accounting or sales performance. Business Consultants tend to be regarded as experts within a specific band of expertise which makes up a part of the business. Consultants tend to work with a micro view, not work a macro view across the whole business. Their work is also often project based, dealing with specific one-off issues.

There are a lot of mentoring organisations, but here in New Zealand it is often associated with Business Mentors NZ that operates in association with the New Zealand Department of Trade and Enterprise. This is a free service which matches a mentor in a similar field to the business profile (Mentee). Often these Mentors are business owners who have achieved success and are willing to share their experience with others in their available spare time. Business Mentoring can be a rewarding experience, however there are a number of challenges associated with it; it is on a voluntary, part time basis, and accountability for performance is often up to the business owner (Mentee).

Business Coaches tend to be paid experts. Business Coaches at ActionCOACH go through a strict selection process and each Coach must pay for his/her license and also invest in intensive training, often on top of a solid corporate background or many years as a business owner and entrepreneur. ActionCOACH Business Coaches tend to be generalists/specialists taking a holistic view of the business and addressing the challenges not only in the business, but often with the business owner, and/or the team. For most coaches business coaching is not just a job but a passion, and for most this is their sole income so they are focused on delivering a service that gives the business owner a solid measurable return on their investment in their coaching program. A Business Coach is someone who is accountable for keeping the business owner on track, as they have an investment in their future as well as that of the businesses they coach.

So who do you choose? Consultant, Mentor, or Business Coach ? The answer lies in what sort of results do you want to achieve?

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