Professional consultant vs management consultant

The differences between professional consultants and management consultants can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both a professional consultant and a management consultant. Additionally, a management consultant has an average salary of $99,360, which is higher than the $80,770 average annual salary of a professional consultant.

The top three skills for a professional consultant include customer satisfaction, customer service and C #. The most important skills for a management consultant are healthcare, project management, and portfolio.

Professional consultant vs management consultant overview

	Professional Consultant	Management Consultant
Yearly salary	$80,770	$99,360
Hourly rate	$38.83	$47.77
Growth rate	11%	11%
Number of jobs	100,996	153,045
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 64%	Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Average age	44	44
Years of experience	4	4

What does a professional consultant do?

Professional consultants provide their expert advice to organizations and businesses. This professional advice helps the organization to improve its business performance in terms of management, operation, and strategy. Their main tasks are to detect issues and find ways to resolve them, conduct surveys and research an understanding of the business, and assess the pros and cons of possible strategies. Professional consultants must have good numerical, teamwork, and interpersonal skills to succeed. Also, they must have commercial awareness, self-motivation, and good attention to detail.

What does a management consultant do?

A management consultant's responsibility focuses on conducting an in-depth analysis of a company or business, including its target market. Through their findings, they can devise strategies that will help the business grow and attain a significant profit. There are also instances when a management consultant must solve particular issues that will require them to investigate the problem, assess damages, identify risks, and recommend the best solutions to take. Furthermore, a management consultant must adhere to the company's vision, mission, and policies at all times.

Professional consultant vs management consultant salary

Professional consultants and management consultants have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Professional Consultant	Management Consultant
Average salary	$80,770	$99,360
Salary range	Between $69,000 And $93,000	Between $72,000 And $136,000
Highest paying City	San Rafael, CA	Jersey City, NJ
Highest paying state	New Jersey	New Jersey
Best paying company	Citi	Apple
Best paying industry	Finance	Technology

Differences between professional consultant and management consultant education

There are a few differences between a professional consultant and a management consultant in terms of educational background:

	Professional Consultant	Management Consultant
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 64%	Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Most common major	Business	Business
Most common college	Northwestern University	Northwestern University

Professional consultant vs management consultant demographics

Here are the differences between professional consultants' and management consultants' demographics:

	Professional Consultant	Management Consultant
Average age	44	44
Gender ratio	Male, 56.7% Female, 43.3%	Male, 65.9% Female, 34.1%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 8.5% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 9.2% Asian, 10.2% White, 67.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%	Black or African American, 8.1% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 8.9% Asian, 13.6% White, 64.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage	12%	12%

Differences between professional consultant and management consultant duties and responsibilities

Professional consultant example responsibilities.

Manage implementation of initial ERP modules.
Manage a team responsible for designing service-orient application architecture, standards and best practices guidelines, security and data access frameworks.
Provide guidance to clients in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
Provide and customize marketing materials for TLC affiliates.
Identify improvements and gaps in client's existing SOX programs and testing parameters.
Work with several manufacturing clients with international facilities, assisting in streamlining the SOX process and focusing on key controls.

Management consultant example responsibilities.

Streamline and program manage operations for end-to-end creation of all assets using Smartsheet.
Lead daily agile scrum meetings towards the end of the development phase of the project.
Monitor and control project schedule for SaaS product to achieve project deliveries in at least 95th percentile.
Lead teams in implementation of value map streaming, ISO 9000 and waste reduction in manufacturing process.
Manage functional design team activities using baseline scope document information and develop process standards in line with SDLC methodologies.
Develop light-weight (fast) proprietary cloud-base licensing engine and UI to manage and track end user subscription licenses.

Professional consultant vs management consultant skills

Common professional consultant skills

Customer Satisfaction, 31%
Customer Service, 29%
C #, 11%
Financial Statements, 4%
Internal Audit, 2%
Regulatory Compliance, 2%

Common management consultant skills

Healthcare, 9%
Project Management, 7%
Portfolio, 6%
Business Process, 5%
Business Strategy, 5%
Business Development, 4%

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Professional Consultant vs Management Consultant

Updated January 8, 2025

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