Can a true brand help you scale your organization?

Investing in a brand is the way to grow your business by connecting with our ideal customers. The good news is that it doesn't stop there and also plays an essential internal role in attracting the right employees and strategic vendors that align with your brand values. A true brand can also help you bring your corporate culture to life, hire new employees that are an ideal organizational fit and motivate your existing employees to remain loyal.?

There are three meanings to the word true as it relates to a brand.??A true brand:

1.) Reflects what is unique and sets you apart.

2.) Has a defined "why" or purpose

3.) Aligns with the needs of its ideal customer and promotes loyalty

The founders I work with care profoundly about scaling their high-growth businesses, which means hiring the right employees and leveraging the talents of existing employees in many diverse ways. Likewise, businesses owners are apprehensive about retaining their best and brightest employees as high-paying, virtual career opportunities can lure them away. Even solopreneurs rely on finding the right strategic vendors, from accountants to virtual assistants to marketing support, to help go to the next level. This article shares a thought-provoking perspective on how a true brand can help you internally and externally as you grow.?

Turn your Mission and Vision into a Brand "Why"

A mission and vision are essential to a business strategy and provide a focus for all levels of the organization. Business owners often ask me how a mission and vision fit with a brand. Some web designers even put this messaging on a business's homepage, or companies use it as the first slide for customer presentations. I believe that in most cases, this is not the right way to use this valuable asset. A vision and mission reflect an organization's values & beliefs, but to be effective, they should be internally focused.?Sometimes they feature revenue goals and your business strategy in a way you would not want to announce to your competitors.??To drive organizational change for employees, your mission and vision should address internal concerns vs. customer needs.?

The way to ensure that your values resonate with customers is to define the "why of your brand in terms of your ideal customer.??The author Simon Sinek is famous for proving that your customers buy from you because of your "why" and not the features of your product and services. Incorporating the why in your brand through your values and beliefs is a better way to connect externally than announcing your mission and vision.??For many businesses finding the right partners and strategic vendors can be the secret to success and as important as finding the right customers.??The "why" of your business is essential to connecting with these strategic vendors and prospective employees who are the catalyst to expanding your business.??

An Example of a "Why" that Matters to a Customer Who is Scaling

The best brands identify the values and beliefs central to their business that helps their customers to understand them and create relationships. As an example, to illustrate this point, let me share the "why" of my business. "I am passionate about helping organizations be more collaborative, creative, and positive?at?work. In my career, I have seen many examples where organizations did not achieve the best solution for the company or the employees. The reasons were:

1.????They did not work effectively as a team that valued every member (Collaborative)

2.????They did not??deliberately push us for a better solution (Creative)

3.????They focused on weaknesses vs. strengths and could not move forward (positive).?

“Helping organizations be more collaborative, creative, and positive?at?work”?is not my mission or vision but expresses my values and beliefs. It clearly describes why I started my business and my reasons for jumping out of bed each morning ready to work with my clients.??Do my customers care about my “why?”??I would like to share with you an Instagram post from my customer, Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist, founder of NovoVia Consulting AB, that explains better than I can why my passion for being collaborative, creative, and positive matters to my customer's business.?

_______________________________Instagram Post______________

"When I started my company, it was to do one MI training while on parental leave with my son. When asked, I thought, "Sure! I can start a company to do this one training because I LOVE Motivational Interviewing (MI). Why not?"?

Later, I'd hear people talk about investing in your brand, and I'd wave them away like flies. "Nah! I can figure that out myself! Can't be that hard." And I did an OK job for the most part, but when I finally decided to invest in my business, brand, and career... WHOA! Did things change?

In just six months, I had:

• An understanding of the importance of branding.??Creativity?is the whole process of growing your business, not just visuals and?colours.
• Positive?feedback with ninety-nine previous clients that my work had impacted them in some way. People who described me and my brand using?positive words?such as: empathetic, professional, understanding, inspirational, happy, dedicated, and competent.
• A direction, not just a bunch of thoughts, vague ideas, and hopes.
• A team around me. A team that believed in me, my brand, and my work. As the sole person in my business, I was not alone anymore. (Collaborative)

Thank you to my wonderful branding agent, Kim Marie McKernan from Inspired Outcomes Now, for helping me discover and understand my true brand. Check her out!!!www.inspiredoutcomesnow.com"

Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist, Novovia Consulting (en.novovia.se)

______________________________End of Post__________________________

Three Ways You Can Use a True Brand to Scale Your Business

Recently I spoke with a successful founder of a technology startup who discussed his challenges instilling his brand values in his employees.??He had worked hard to define and build a brand that set his company apart but struggled to see his vision for the customer experience exhibited in his employee's behavior.??When you have a core team hired by the founder, it may be easier to monitor how your brand is coming to life, but rapidly growing can present challenges as new employees are onboarded.?

Here are three proactive ways to use a brand to communicate internally and externally to help you scale your business effectively.?

1.????Use the "why" of your brand to attract employees and strategic vendors that are an ideal fit

Try this three-part approach to your next interview with a prospective employee?

• Share the "why" of your brand early in the conversation. While you may be tempted to save time by sharing only the facts and figures of the business, going deeper into the brand's story creates a connection.?
• Describe your vision for the customer experience you want to be the standard in your organization.??Be sure to include why this is essential to the future of your organization.?
• Ask the interviewee what your company's "why" means to them? What do they value about a company that they work for???How have they brought their organization's value to life in their previous jobs???

Let me share an example.??Imagine that you are a president interviewing a new employee and part of your brand is delivering an exceptional customer experience.??You are interviewing a web designer and you ask her to explain an example where she learned about a customer experience issue in her previous work. How did she address this issue? What was the impact on the customer? This example may tell you more about job fit than long discussions about job competencies or history.

The same questions work for strategic vendors and partners who are essential to your future. They are external to your company and sharing your "why" plays a critical role in determining fit in these cases as well.?

2.????Align your True Brand and Corporate Culture?

A recent article in Harvard Business Review entitled?Why Your Company Culture Should Match Your Brand?by?Denise Lee Yohn?discusses the many reasons why this is essential for business and what can go wrong when there is a mismatch.

"If your culture and your brand are driven by the same purpose and values, and if you weave them together into a single guiding force for your company, you will win the competitive battle for customers and employees, future-proof your business from failures and downturns, and produce an organization that operates with integrity and authenticity."

When you consider the who, why, what, and how of the brand, it is rarely what you make or your services that inspire corporate culture. We have discussed the importance of "why," but the "how" of the brand drives corporate culture. The "how" includes your customer interactions, marketing, affiliations, and customer experience.??At its most basic, the alignment of corporate culture and your brand should reflect your commitment to:

• How you communicate to your customers
• What do you do when you experience failure?
• How you treat your customer and employees when there is a change (good or bad)

The customer experience is where the brand meets corporate culture, and your ability to align here may determine your ability to scale your business. One of the things I am passionate about is the concept of developing a true brand.??The concept is an essential part of the customer experience because I have seen many situations where the company said one thing and acted another way.?

A disconnect between what you are saying and how you are acting is also how you can lose the respect and loyalty of your employees.??For example,??if you say that you are proactive, but your employees wait for a customer to call with a problem rather than reaching out, you have a credibility issue with your customers and employees. Customers will always find out if you are saying something that is not true because you and your employees will demonstrate your brand by your actions.???One of the ways that a customer experiences your brand is at contact points with your customers.??Your employees often?are?the customer experience, and at the very least, they will observe inconsistencies and friction points with customers.??

3.????Keep your Employees and Strategic Partners Engaged and Motivated

Many people are talking about the challenges of hiring employees now.??This topic is essential for the startups I work with as they cannot always complete on salaries and benefits.??An even bigger issue for organizations today may be keeping your best employees that you have invested in training and growing. One tech company CEO told me recently his employees being recruited by Facebook, Apple & Google for jobs where they can stay in their hometown and work remotely.??

A brand can help your employees see the future potential of your business and focus on the way you can impact the world. If employees??have powerful reason to remain loyal, a slight increase in salary will not be a deciding factor.??This requires that you proudly share with employees your branding and marketing activities.??Seeing this external communication instills pride and lets them know you are working to grow the business to create new opportunities for them.??Involving your organization in the developing brand is even more powerful as it helps build more engaged and motivated employees because they have been included in a process that drives the future of the organization.

One approach that has worked well in companies seeking to ensure a commitment to the brand by its employees is to ask what living the brand means to their job. For example, what does being a collaborative partner mean to an employee in an accounting role? What does it look like for an engineer? How does this differ from a customer service role? This kind of discussion brings a brand to life because it becomes behavior that your employees and customers can see.?

In the field of Appreciative Inquiry, one of the most important tenets for staying positive is that "an organization becomes what is talked about." Are your employees talking about your true brand and how they will build an exceptional customer experience???Or are they focusing on everything that is going wrong and talking about their dissatisfaction with the company???A positive process for building your brand involving customers, employees, and strategic partners can create the engagement and motivation you need for scalable growth.?

Using Brand as Your True North

A brand can be a true north for new companies and companies seeking to scale rapidly. Two tangible ways to do this are aligning your brand with your corporate culture and using your "why" to help you determine fit when hiring employees and finding strategic partners.??Involving employees in your brand development and sharing marketing successes with your employees can also help build engagement and motivation needed for rapidly growing companies.??Consider how your true brand can help you scale for the future.?

About?the Author

Kim Marie McKernan, MBA, MS, is a facilitator, speaker, and international marketing leader who left the corporate world after 30 years to start Inspired Outcomes. She is passionate about helping business owners bring their vision to life with a true brand that generates results. Her business combines Appreciative Inquiry + the Science of Creativity + Marketing to help organizations and individuals achieve marketing excellence. Kim has an?MBA from State University of NY (SUNY) at Buffalo?and an?MS degree in Creativity and Change Leadership from SUNY Buffalo State?and is proud to be a mentor at?Shift/Co?and?Collective Brains.

Please reach out for a free 30-minute brand discovery session to help explore how a true brand can help your business scale rapidly. Start Now

*Resources and Learn More

• Blomqvist, J.O., Novovia Consulting AB,?https://en.novovia.se/
• Sinek, S. (2009). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Penguin Group, New York, NY. TED Talk
• Yohn, D. L, Why Your Company Culture Should Match Your Brand,?Harvard Business Reviewhttps://hbr.org/2017/06/why-your-company-culture-should-match-your-brand
• Photo by Fab Lenz on Unsplash,?https://unsplash.com/