David A. Fields Consulting Group While your consulting firm’s name is, ideally, memorable, it’s even more important to ensure your consulting firm’s offerings are mentally sticky.
Imagine if your consulting firm owned an offering as widely known as Net Promoter Score (Bain & Company, Fred Reichheld) or the Magic Quadrant (Gartner).
Sure, your consulting firm’s named offering and my company’s Firm Growth Lab may not have quite as much renown as McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index (yet), however, our branded offerings reap multitude of benefits, including:
- Credibility – A name implies your consulting firm’s offering is concrete, fully-developed and robust. The Chocolate Assessment Program is, implicitly, well thought through. In contrast, a generic, unlabeled series of steps in a proposal looks more like an approach you just developed; i.e., untested and unproven.
- Shorthand – It’s useful for your team and for your clients to agree on a common term to describe a well-defined a set of activities and/or outputs. When you ask your team to “work on the wafer CAP,” they know you’re referring to the Chocolate Assessment Program. Quick and confusion-free.
- Memorability – A crisp name makes your offering easy to remember and, just as important, easy for clients and prospects to mention to each other. When you receive an inquiry stating, “I heard about your Chocolate Assessment Program and would like that implemented at my company,” then you know your offering and offering name are working for you.
- Equity – Your named offerings could become valuable, sellable assets. With years of practice, benchmarks and public recognition attached to your Chocolate Assessment Program, a larger consulting firm may pay a premium to acquire your offering.
Names apply to all manner of consulting firm offerings, including frameworks, services, reports, deliverables, approaches and more. A few helpful rules for naming products are outlined in this post.
Other well known consulting offerings include Gallup’s CliftonStrengths Assessment, the Edelman Trust Barometer, and Tower Watson’s Global Workforce Study.
What’s the best consulting firm offering name of all time? Maybe we can answer that collectively.
Post in the comments some of your favorite, named offerings. (Feel free to include your firm’s named offerings on the list, but do not include links—those will be rejected by my team.)
Text and images are © 2023 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
What is better than your own name? ‘David A. Fields Consulting Group’. That does not define anything that you do except consulting – for what? Chocolate concoction? Bridge and Roadway work? Physical fitness training?
David – this is not meant to be snarky and I apologize if it comes off that way. My company name is also my name – Mitchell A. Fink Associates, LLC.
Happy to chat with you any time.
Mitchell
Health Insurance Strategy Audit (HISA)
Strategic Health Insurance Creation (SHIC)
Dynamic Benefits Mgmt
Valor – Central Florida’s Health Plan
Performance-Based Consulting
Alas, I don’t have 1 program with a catchy name. Closest might be SOAP (Strategy on a Page) but I didn’t make that one up. As for famous, Gallup’s Q12 and their StrengthFinders did quickly come to mind as did the Exponential Organizational SCALE (staff on demand, community, algorithms, leveraged assets, engagement) model but I use that so my focus might not as mainstream! Enjoy your vacation!
One Page Strategy?
Yes, high level to connect context to concept. Glad to share more if of interest.
As a professional name developer, I loved this article (and the one you wrote about handles). In fact you captured many of the items I list in my free name evaluation tool. Personally, I think the most important aspect is what you call “Include a conceptual tie” or I call “Does it deliver the idea or concept behind the product; does it convey something real and specific about the product?” The name should hint at the service offered because most companies do not have large advertising budgets to create meaning behind the name.
@Mark Prus – I’m just starting my fractional coo practice that will specialize in Exit Planning. However, the service offering is somewhat generic. Drive Value & Growth and everything that entails. Given I am planning to be a solopreneur and may never have more than 20 clients (in the lifetime of my practice which might be 5-7 years)….. do I need a company name? And if so, are there any ‘DIY’ resources you could suggest to help me as I don’t have a big budget to hire an expert namer like yourself 🙂
Situational Leadership® has wide-spread recognition.
Also DiSC® with the little “i” allowed CCL to brand the non-proprietary DISC as their own .