Brand Sells

MOST PURCHASES ARE EMOTIONAL.

A common theme of most sales seminars is to sell the sizzle not the steak. But before a salesperson can even start enticing you with a sizzling product, most of our connections with it have already been made. Why did we even come to the store in the first place? The message. The story behind whatever it is we are looking for. It’s marketing but what marketers are selling is “the brand”.

Here’s what brands are:

• Corporate. The image of the company. What do you think of when people say Apple? Disney? BP?
• Personal. Think of presidents, CEOs, your own bosses, your Facebook friends. What feelings do they invoke? What do others think of you?
• Intentional. Yes, it is intentional. We choose how we want to be perceived. I say “want” because many of us are very good at sabotaging ourselves. Why do you think celebrities and people in powerful positions have handlers telling them where to go and how to behave in order to keep this image intact? That’s because brands are also…
• Fragile. How easy is it to “undo” all the work we put into our image? How closely is our image attached to our company? How easy is it to regain what we’ve lost?

LET’S GET INTENTIONAL

In Larry Linne and Patrick Sitkins’ book Brand Aid: Taking Control of Your Reputation – Before Everyone Else Does, there are a ton of great pointers on how to shape personal and corporate brands. However, the following quote from page 32 and 34 clearly spells it out. “To effectively manage your brand, you need to be purposeful in everything you do…identify what you want your brand to be, and act accordingly”

I once attended a presentation by Larry himself in which he described an interesting way of testing how well he was doing at managing his own brand. He said he would write out several words on a piece of paper that best describe his brand. Next, he asks the audience to do the same based on what they know about him. He then compares his answers with theirs. The point is to find a way to measure what you want people to see you as vs what they really see and make adjustments.

In the book Collapse of Distinction, Scott McKain provides specific Steps to help define your brand.

1. “Make a list of the ways that you believe your customers can tell the difference between you and your competition.
2. Other than product and price – what do you really sell? Make a list.
3. Why would a customer pay for your’s over and above your competition’s? Develop three reasons.
4. What is you level of commitment to achieving organizational and individual distinction?” (McKain XXI)

This to me sounds like steps to developing a unique selling proposition or a value proposition and it very well may be at some level. To become a brand, it needs to go deeper and become more personal. How would you suspect Larry Linne would answer my questions above? Do you think he’s developed a clever selling proposition or really made it part of who he is? If you’re not sure here is a quick test. How fast could you change it? A selling proposition can change very rapidly with a new angle on the service or offering. It also will probably not cause any serious harm to the company if it fails. If what you have is a brand, it will take longer to change and is inherently more dangerous if it fails, to grab hold of your market’s interest.

So how’s your brand? Do people really see you or your company how you want them to? The concept is easy but the implementation takes work and careful management.

Thanks for reading!