Brand building

As a consulting company, building a strong brand requires two things:

1. Delighting our clients
2. Being visible

Both are needed. If we only delight our clients, but aren’t visible to the world, then the brand won’t get strong (except to those few that already know about us). If we are highly visible but not delighting our clients, then the brand won’t get strong either. Well, OK, there are companies that can pull off that trick, but it’s not our style…

How we delight our clients

We kind of cheat here, because our model only attracts the type of consultants that were already pretty good at delighting their clients - with or without us. In fact, that’s a requirement (see recruiting)! We don’t have an army of sales people chasing down clients for you, and you don’t get any kind of base salary if you don’t have a client, so it really is in your own interest to delight your clients!

Also, our model attracts the kind of people that like to learn things and spread knowledge. And clients appreciate that.

How we make ourselves visible

Visibility happens as a result of two things:

1. Provide plenty of ways for members to communicate with the world (web site, blog, Speaking, Meet-ups etc)
2. To support, and make sure nothing gets in their way, so they can shine

Again, because our model attracts the kind of people that like to learn and spread knowledge, all we have to do is make sure nothing gets in the way. That way, a bunch of cool stuff happens automatically, such as:

• Blog articles
• Books
• Public courses and evening seminars
• Talks and keynotes at public conferences
• Partnerships with well-known people and industry influencers.
• Community development like in meet-ups
• Encouraging, in fact, supporting members to continue development of their own personal brand
• … and, of course things like this DNA site!

It’s all about co-branding

As consultants we are very proud to be at The Agility Collective, and very proud of our colleagues, which is why we list everyone on our consultants page. From there you can browse to individual pages where each person presents themselves in any way they wish. You’ll even find email addresses and phone numbers. Go ahead and call any of us, have a chat, offer us employment if you dare, and prepare to fail.

Many companies do tot allow individual employees to engage in personal branding, and even restrict access to individual contact info. Perhaps through fear that it conflicts with the “brand” or employees might be called by recruiters and leave for greener pastures. We do the opposite - we encourage each person expose themselves as much as they like. The idea is that people should stay at the Collective because they want to, not because the headhunters haven’t found them.

We believe consulting doesn’t have to be a market for lemons, and our philosophy is to be as transparent as possible. You will never be assigned an anonymous consultant from the Collective - it will always be Mark or Anna, individuals. Our CVs all look different, which may seem unprofessional, but we will always be individuals under the same umbrella.

So the the Agility Collective brand is a whole that is greater than the sum of it’s parts - a bunch of creative individuals sharing stuff, and changing the world.

Definitely a win-win-win situation! Win for the individual, Win for the Collective, and Win for the world (because of all the free stuff we share).