Get Real About Branding

The key to building sales and a powerful brand without spending a fortune is to know what your customers need now, promise and prove you will deliver it and make sure your customers understand the value you provide as you ask them for more business or referrals. Your opportunity to benefit by doing this is huge because many organizations have lost focus on their real purpose: meeting current customer needs. At many organizations, owners, managers and associates don’t agree on the current needs of their customers…much less how to meet them. This lack of focus on meeting current customer needs means you have room to leap ahead of competition by differentiating your products, services or brand. It is also your opportunity to save thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars that are wasted on undisciplined creativity in marketing, advertising and branding (i.e.: expensive logos and tag lines that are unrelated to meeting customer needs or changed often). The Process shows you how to profit from these opportunities. It teaches how to capture the ideas and insights of associates and customers with thought-provoking questions and how to put the answers to work making your organization, products and services unique. The Process plugs you and your organization into the creativity and enthusiasm of the free-to-succeed-for-their-own-benefit thinking of Americans. Whatever your business, profession or other organization and your role in it, the business of your organization is meeting your customers’ needs better than your competitors and letting your customers know about it before and after the sale. Recognize and respond to customers’ current needs and you will prosper. You will sail past the thousands of organizations that allow computer modeling, the replacement of communication of useful information with fancy logos and slogans and standardized business practices to make them look just like their competitors. The most remarkable thing about meeting customers’ needs is that your associates and customers will tell you all you need to know about their needs and how to meet them… for free. The information you need is waiting for you in the hearts and minds of your associates and customers for years to come. The Process will help you access this information and use it to build sales and long-lasting brand value. The Process will help you succeed in these challenging times by: • Identifying all your customers (traditional and new types of customers) • Identifying your customers’ current needs • Capturing your ideas • Analyzing input and identifying insights • Promising your customers and prospects your products or services meet their needs • Proving it to them with facts that are relevant to their different needs • Making sure you deliver what your customers need • Telling your customers about the value you have delivered as you ask for more business or referrals • Doing it year after year You will learn where to get valuable information, how to evaluate it and how to use it to build sales and a powerful brand. You will also discover how to improve efficiency, create your own media, stimulate innovation, integrate marketing and sales, open new markets and motivate associates to work efficiently and effectively. The Process is presented in 12 Steps that connect everything you do to meeting your customers’ needs. Each Step includes its own worksheets. As you move through the Steps, use the worksheets to create and apply your own unique Tools. The Step 12 worksheet incorporates your work in the previous worksheets into your Associate Involvement Plan that will motivate your associates and customers for years to come. No question it is tougher to compete today—with lots of choices, instant information, imports from cheap labor markets, more competition, similar products and services and many other challenges. But many entrepreneurs, managers and professionals make it tougher than it has to be because they don’t put the uniting overall purpose of their organization (meeting customers’ current needs) first. Instead, they get distracted by (and spend money on) technology, marketing, advertising, branding and standardized business practices without first ensuring that they will help meet customers’ needs. Technology, marketing, advertising and branding as well as standardized business practices can be expensive and ineffective when they are applied without a focus on the real business of the business. American businesses invest millions to buy them but do little to make them work together to meet the unique needs of their customers. The results can be appalling. Here are some examples: A $200-million manufacturing business bought and installed powerful technology, adopted a highly-touted standardized manufacturing system and replaced management that had produced profits and growth for decades. Meeting customer needs took a back seat. After a few years, sales were down substantially, profits disappeared and the company was put up for sale. A famous boat manufacturer ignored the fact its unsinkable advantage was offered by other boat manufacturers and let its leadership position in technology and innovative design slip. A nationally-televised football bowl game concentrated so much on rewarding its volunteers that it lost its stadium and television audiences. A billiards table manufacturer stagnated as it focused on its traditional male customers even though women decide what furniture comes into their homes. Technology, marketing, advertising, branding and standardized business practices without the discipline of serving associate and customer needs can destroy the vital difference customers experience between your organization and your competitors. They can be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Success today depends on harnessing everything you and your associates do to meet current customer needs. To do this you must know your customers’ motivations, their perceptions of their needs and their current thinking. You will learn these, and how to use them to create success now and in the future as you complete the 12 worksheets in the Process. I created the Process during more than 30 years of helping organizations build sales and brand value. These organizations ranged from single individuals to giant conglomerates. I used the process to help me and my clients understand customers’ current needs and stay focused on meeting them…while getting credit for it from customers. The worksheets guided us. The Process evolved and improved as I updated it with my experiences and the experiences of my clients. Recently, I documented it and added more examples from my experience as well as explanations of what is behind the Process so entrepreneurs, managers and professionals can use it. In my consulting practice, I encourage clients to do everything they can themselves because that is how they learn. My objective is to make them successful now and equip them for long-term success. I am available to help but I encourage you to participate in the process yourself. You will be motivated by your business needs as well as your desire to make the Process pay off. My experience is that the process enhances professional life as it improves business results. At the heart of the process is learning your customers’ current needs and utilizing your thinking, your associates’ thinking and your customers’ thinking to meet them. You will learn who to ask for valuable ideas and insights in Step 1 and what to ask and how to do it in Step 2. Successful sales people know the value of their ideas and insights and other peoples’ ideas and insights. They learn to listen to customers and ask questions. Unfortunately, use of this information is often limited to individual sales people.