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Business consultant vs lead consultant

The differences between business consultants and lead consultants can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 2-4 years to become a business consultant, becoming a lead consultant takes usually requires 4-6 years. Additionally, a lead consultant has an average salary of $103,221, which is higher than the $87,214 average annual salary of a business consultant.

The top three skills for a business consultant include data analysis, project management and strong analytical. The most important skills for a lead consultant are customer service, digital transformation, and business process.

Business consultant vs lead consultant overview

Business ConsultantLead Consultant
Yearly salary$87,214$103,221
Hourly rate$41.93$49.63
Growth rate11%9%
Number of jobs128,03378,252
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 67%Bachelor's Degree, 61%
Average age4443
Years of experience46

What does a business consultant do?

A business consultant is an individual who works directly with business owners on developing a business plan and identifying their marketing needs. Business consultants offer business owners a wide range of services, such as supplementing existing staff, provide expertise in a specific market, and influencing other people. To increase revenue in business, business consultants should have experience success with the previous business owners. Business consultants must also have a bachelor's degree in business management and received years of field training.

What does a lead consultant do?

The lead consultants oversee the work of a consultant team and are responsible for offering clients their advice and recommendations on the given project. They are multi-focus experts that assist the company in improving its business performance by acting as liaisons between clients and the consultancy team. Their main job is to ensure the daily management of client's projects. They help the client identify and understand their needs together with finding solutions to their difficulties. Additionally, they analyze and review proposals from the team and then provide relevant solutions to the problems.

Business consultant vs lead consultant salary

Business consultants and lead consultants have different pay scales, as shown below.

Business ConsultantLead Consultant
Average salary$87,214$103,221
Salary rangeBetween $64,000 And $117,000Between $80,000 And $132,000
Highest paying CitySan Francisco, CASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateAlaskaAlaska
Best paying companyZSGoogle
Best paying industryTechnologyTechnology

Differences between business consultant and lead consultant education

There are a few differences between a business consultant and a lead consultant in terms of educational background:

Business ConsultantLead Consultant
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 67%Bachelor's Degree, 61%
Most common majorBusinessBusiness
Most common collegeNorthwestern UniversityStanford University

Business consultant vs lead consultant demographics

Here are the differences between business consultants' and lead consultants' demographics:

Business ConsultantLead Consultant
Average age4443
Gender ratioMale, 62.8% Female, 37.2%Male, 67.9% Female, 32.1%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 8.0% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 8.9% Asian, 13.4% White, 65.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%Black or African American, 9.9% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 10.7% Asian, 19.5% White, 54.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage12%8%

Differences between business consultant and lead consultant duties and responsibilities

Business consultant example responsibilities.

  • Partner with PMO and lead testing effort to ensure completeness of test data sets and to manage risk.
  • Manage requirements gathering, identify KPI s, and oversee design and architecture decisions.
  • Manage various SOX, HIPAA and PCI compliance projects from the planning stages to completion.
  • Apply the specific rules for HIPAA X12, Medicaid manage care requirements and industry best practices for transaction handling.
  • Manage external technology suppliers to assure functional operations and system architecture meet the business needs.
  • Perform successful UAT - good knowledge & experience in SDLC - SQL querying and data analysis.
  • Show more

Lead consultant example responsibilities.

  • Lead a team of 10 members including both onsite and offshore.
  • Create and manage financial feed from BW to Hyperion for corporate reporting and processing.
  • Manage design and development of cloud-base billing application for streamlining payroll and invoicing, as well as offering real-time business analytics.
  • Create mainframe XML parsers and XML generators using COBOL.
  • Work onsite at client's home office in Washington, DC.
  • Design and implement test cases for verifying proper behavior of a large & complex ERP project viz.
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Business consultant vs lead consultant skills

Common business consultant skills
  • Data Analysis, 10%
  • Project Management, 9%
  • Strong Analytical, 8%
  • Analytics, 7%
  • Healthcare, 5%
  • Tableau, 5%
Common lead consultant skills
  • Customer Service, 11%
  • Digital Transformation, 10%
  • Business Process, 9%
  • Project Management, 5%
  • Architecture, 5%
  • App Development, 4%

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