C Notes Newsletter Issue 11

Jump Start Your Brand

A contemporary brand – one that distinguishes itself from others and establishes clear ownership – is the ongoing relationship a business builds with its customers.

It is made up of the impression you make, and the reputation you get as a result. It is only in part about your actual products and services, but it is all about the experience of doing business with you. It involves every moment of interaction with customers: phone calls, dealing with complaints, demonstrating products, and much more. It is evident in the consistency – or lack thereof – in your company’s sales tools, in the eye appeal of the sign hanging out front, and in the content of your Web presence.

Owners must supply not only the vision, but also the will to allow the staff to contribute to it. This requires clear internal communications – which sadly, many organizations lack.

This is where many a quagmire begins. We need a marketing and brand-building strategy,” they say. “But we’re all over the place here. And we can’t seem to follow through.”

In our Jump Start™ process, we facilitate sessions to open channels of communication and shine light on a path that might have gone darkly unnoticed for years. In just one session, a company’s team becomes energized, focused and pumped with creativity and alignment. New ideas are captured and prioritized. From this point comes solid bedrock to build marketing and branding plans that start strong – and only get stronger.

Brand building requires knowing the customer well. The only way this can happen is to know yourself even better – so you can masterfully create a rich experience that defines the ongoing relationship between you and your customers.

Success: How Many Shots Do You Get?

It’s not a one-shot deal. Entrepreneurs and managers work for a long time, behind the scenes, on their enterprises before they ever reach that “opening day,” or launch of a product or service line extension.

The business is rare, if it ever existed at all, that went from zero to gangbusters because of one newspaper article or commercial or advertisement. Nearly every overnight sensation” is the result of many years of unsung hard work that finally pays off.

Other than entrepreneurs themselves (and their mothers), most people don’t realize all the preliminary planning it takes to get a business or project ready for even step one.

Many people are shocked to discover that – while any business has a critical window of opportunity to establish itself – its launch still requires a pinpointed strategy made up of myriad tools.

It is the end result of a history of plans, decisions… each building upon the foundations laid by what came before. But, then again, it IS a one-shot deal. While much of success is improvised, it also is planned. Therefore what makes the success is the plan. Even though the entrepreneur is a foot soldier, out in the trenches taking flak every day, he also must be the general, stepping back to see the maps and the pins, coordinating the overarching strategy. What’s the plan? There should be no one plan. One should not hang one’s hopes on the success of a single advertising campaign, a series of radio ads, or one direct mail program.

That’s the cross-your-fingers, buy-the- lottery-ticket approach to hitting it big in business.

In the countless discussions I have had with successful entrepreneurs, one thing they share is this: vision to supply customer service that exceeds the customers’ expectations. That is done through example and through training for all the staff.

And because many of these entrepreneurs have the hunger to come from behind, they are meticulous in making sure the product – and all the personality, style and service that surrounds the product – is glitch free.

Thus, the hunger to introduce something new to the world must be accompanied by the peripheral matters that flesh out the “brand.”

By comparison, a historical movie theater that receives an interior makeover and new upholstery will suffer if half the marquee’s light bulbs are burnt out. Just as often, the entrepreneur working on the inside will become so preoccupied he won’t even see the burnt-out lights outside.

This requires a big shifting for many business owners. The problem is that oftentimes an entrepreneur will be working so close to the nuts and bolts of daily operations – perfecting daily operations – that the marketing vision is hard to acquire. That’s when the entrepreneur must don his general’s hat, step back, and study the map.

Thus, it is important to have enlisted a communications visionary to provide the marketing air cover while the entrepreneur is both running the war strategy and winning in the tactical trenches. War-gamers say that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. That might be true. But any armchair general can tell you that you still need a plan to get you onto the field and the guts to improvise to carry the day.

Why Build A Picnic Table For Every Picnic?

Many years ago I knew a salesman named Adam who made up for in spunk what he lacked in imagination. Adam worked 60-hour weeks and expected his staff to do the same.

Adam discovered – after starting a family and looking hard at his company’s processes – that working smart is better than working hard. Or, as he put it, “Why build a picnic table every time you want to have a picnic?”

Instead of making cold calls, punching his way through the phone to his prospect, he worked with us to become something more than just a persistent (and annoying, he admits) caller.

He used friendly, informative (and carefully personalized) letters to help tell prospects who he was and why he was always calling. This required our doing a little research about the prospect – but a little goes a long way. It helped Adam go from talking about himself to addressing the concerns of the prospect.

This non-obtrusive correspondence helped to build relationships in which the “sales call” was just part of the picture. He personalized letters by referring to past phone conversations, alluding to third parties they both knew, and enclosing relevant company case studies (always with a section highlighted!). He’d also enclose interesting news items.

We turned Adam into an ardent newspaper and magazine clipper. If he saw an article about something in the economy, the industry, or anything that he knew was of interest to his prospects, he snipped it and sent it along with a friendly note. It was a small, authentic gesture to demonstrate his attentiveness and enthusiasm for building a relationship.

He softened many the hard veil that most sales reps face. This correspondence “humanized” Adam and allowed for a rapport to develop. It got his calls through. It led to sales. Consider marketing a plural word. It requires more than one tactic to complete a strategy.

Think of the spider, tossing out one silky filament after another. Not one of them is capable of capturing any prey. But all interwoven, they form the masterfully engineered web that does the trick.

Work smarter by using a variety of communication tools and strategies to create an aura of trust, respect, professionalism and authentic friendliness with your prospect. Then, as Adam discovered, you become more than just a voice on the phone trying to get through to sell something. You become known for more than just one thing. You become known to them personally. You become known as their business partner.