The Personal Brand model applied to Consulting Firms (part 2)

As I mentioned on my last post in the consulting firms’ traditional model, what they sell is the company’s brand and not the talent of their consultants. According to one of my teachers from university this is a better model because no one becomes essential at the firm. However in the model described by Allan Weiss on his book Million Dollar consulting in which my company is based, he shows another model for consulting firms proving that it is possible to make businesses by selling the consultants talent: their personal brand.

The Personal Brand: Selling the Consultant talent

According to this model, the basic is not to sell the consulting firms brand but the personal brand of each consultant that is part of the company and also their talent and knowledge. From the side of the company that is hiring the consulting firm this is beneficial because when they hire the project they know which consultant is going to work on it, his CV, his knowledge and how he can contribute to solve the company’s problems.

However on the side of the consulting firm constructing the personal brands of its consultants is not an easy task, but it can be accomplished over time. In our company Consultorías 360 we first had to become very specialized on our subject, which is innovation and business strategy especially in terms of technology and Internet. In a second place we has to show the world that we had this kind of knowledge, so we started to write in different media such as the newspaper La República, the magazines Revista Empresarial y Laboral and Gerente, and the blog of the companies Territorio Creativo and Movistar which is called Reporte Digital, among others. Also one of our consultants wrote a book published in the last months: Estrategias de Internet cómo destacarse y lograr el éxito. Finally we participate in talks, conferences, and as teachers in prestigious universities so people get to know us.

What I have just mentioned is part of our strategy as a consulting firm in which we sell the personal brand of our consultants. These don’t act as employees of the firm but as associates of it, because the company is aware of their talent and wants to keep them on the company. Also as I wrote before, this is a fair model for the companies that hire a consulting project because they know who is working on it and they will be able to transfer more knowledge to the company.

In this way I finish this post. You can see that both models are very different but they provide different benefits to the consulting firma and to the firm that hires the project.

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