Strategy consulting at the enterprise level buys you an outside view and political cover. Neither is worth $30,000 to a business with twelve people, because you do not need cover to change your own prices.
What strategy actually means at your size
Four levers, and nearly everything else is noise:
- Price. Rate, minimums, how you charge for diagnosis, travel, and after hours.
- Capacity. Bays, trucks, chairs, heads. What you can deliver before quality slips.
- Mix. Which work you take and which you politely stop taking.
- Cash. Reserve, terms, and how long you can carry a slow month.
A good session moves one or two of these on purpose. A bad session produces a mission statement.
Where an AI strategy consultant earns its keep
Option generation and pressure testing. You bring the constraint, it brings three ways owners your size have handled it, with the trade offs stated plainly and the arithmetic done. You still choose.
An example
An HVAC contractor at $1.4M was booked six weeks out and thinking about a third truck. Options: raise prices 12 percent and stay at two trucks, add the truck and carry the payroll through winter, or drop the lowest margin maintenance contracts and free the capacity for replacements. The math showed option one and three together beat the truck for eighteen months, at a fraction of the risk. That is a strategy session. It took twenty minutes.
Where it stops
Partnership disputes, succession, anything where the real problem is two people who want different lives. Those need a human in the room. So does anything hinging on your specific contracts or tax posture.
The one page format
- The constraint, in one sentence.
- The 90 day target, with a number.
- Two or three moves, each with an owner and a date.
- The single metric you will check.
Try it on the decision in front of you
Bring the thing you are actually stuck on. You will get a grounded answer with real numbers and a next step, not a discovery call. Start a 7-day free trial or see pricing.