Brand. Using the Power of Brand Alignment to Deepen Customer Relationships. Product Briefing

Brand 3 Using the Power of Brand Alignment to Deepen Customer Relationships Product Briefing

Overview For many organizations the brand that has the most impact on customer performance and loyalty is the brand that is too often overlooked, under-managed and under-leveraged the personal brand of employees closest to the customer. The personal brand of salespeople and other employees who have direct contact with customers is often the tiebreaker and differentiates one company from another. The purpose of Brand 3 is to intentionally integrate the personal brand of salespeople into the organization s marketing and sales strategies, creating a high-performing sales and marketing team. Sales and marketing leaders are missing a big opportunity to leverage the personal brands of salespeople. Providing personal brand-building tools and training for salespeople will create stronger brands where they have the most impact. By integrating the personal brands of salespeople into the overall brand mix an organization s marketing spending will be much more productive and have more impact on key marketing ROI metrics. Brand 3 is the innovation that enables marketing and sales leaders to leverage the personal brands of their sales team to further differentiate their company and improve revenue generation metrics. It is no news flash to any marketing or sales leader that the personal brand of a salesperson can have a significant impact on customer loyalty. For some companies and generally in some industries the personal brands of salespeople or service provider have more impact on customer performance than the product or corporate brands. Not integrating the personal brands of salespeople can be a significant shortcoming of a company s marketing and business strategy. It is also fair to say that the personal brands of salespeople have not received the same level of brand management discipline and attention as marketers apply to product or corporate brands. As a result, it is likely the personal brands of salespeople (or other customer-facing employees) are an under-managed corporate marketing asset and therefore not receiving enough corporate resources. Brand 3 is a powerful framework built upon two new innovations: the development of the personal brand-building competency of salespeople and aligning the strengths of the product, corporate and salespeople s personal brands to create more impact on customers. It s a systems approach to using all the brands that can differentiate an organization. Brand 3 provides an innovative approach for sales and marketing leaders to address a number of today s challenges and opportunities, like: 2013 Brand Tool Box, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2

Build Stronger Personal Brands That Have More Direct Impact. Equipping salespeople with a personal brand-building competency will enable them to more effectively adapt their personal selling style to have a bigger impact on each customer relationship. Rather than typecast a salesperson as one type or another using the latest model of high performers, personal brand training leverages the authentic strengths of each salesperson and teaches them the power of brand alignment to build stronger, more productive customer relationships. Take Advantage of the Situation When the Customer Has More Loyalty with the Salesperson than Your Organization. Taking advantage of the dominant impact of a salesperson s personal brand has on a customer begins with using the power of brand alignment framework. When the personal brands of salespeople are aligned with the corporate brand, powerful things can happen more loyalty inside and outside the company. Alignment will help mitigate the risk of strong customer loyalty to the salesperson s personal brand. In addition when there is brand alignment, high-performing salespeople are much more likely to be loyal to the company. Employing the Brand 3 approach will also leverage the strength of the personal brands of salespeople into a powerful corporate brand-building tool. More Effectively Adapt to Changing Customer Decision-Making. The Brand 3 capabilities create powerful tools to address shifting customer decision-making. In situations where decision-making by customers has become less dependent upon personal relationships with end users and more dependent upon the demands of procurement professionals, a shift in brand strength needs to move from the personal brand of salespeople to a stronger, more prominent corporate brand. Employing the Brand 3 process can create strategies to address this ever-increasing sales challenge. Align Salespeople s Personal Brands to More Effectively Implement New Marketing Strategies. Marketing strategies focused on driving revenue and customer share are much more effective when the personal brands of salespeople are aligned with the strategies. Successfully deploying a new revenue growth strategy may require a different type of personal brand to develop a different, broader customer relationship. As an example, a new marketing strategy focused on expanding the number of products purchased by a customer or adding a service component to existing product application or any type of solution sale might require a different personal brand to quickly ramp up the strategy. In some cases this may require a different type of salesperson personal brand, in other cases it s a matter of helping salespeople learn to make their brand more relevant. In either case strategy and brand alignment is necessary. Marketing and sales leaders can take advantage of the power of Brand 3 by engaging at a number of levels ranging from integrating a personal brand training module into existing sales training curriculums to implementing a powerful marketing and sales integration initiative. 2013 Brand Tool Box, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 3

Brand 3 Tools The Brand 3 framework will be customized for each client. Each Brand 3 component is adapted from one of Brand Tool Box s Power of Brand Alignment training workshops or consulting tools. The personal brand content is based upon the concepts contained in the best-selling book Be Your Own Brand, written by Karl D. Speak, founding principal of Brand Tool Box. Following is a description of each part of the framework that comprises the Brand 3 system. Develop Brand Platform Leveraging the Power of Brand Alignment depends on having all three brands clearly defined using simple, congruent models. Therefore a fundamental step in the Brand 3 framework is defining product, corporate and personal brands using a common framework and language. For some organizations this will require a simple translation of the current brand definitions into Brand Tool Box s proven brand-learning models. In other cases a Brand Tool Box senior consultant will work with the marketing team to use current positioning statements or brand definitions and extend them into the practical brand-learning models. Corporate and product brand platform definition. A Brand Tool Box senior consultant will work with the marketing team to translate the current positioning definitions of the product and corporate brands into a common framework that enables easy alignment with the personal brand of salespeople. The brand position platforms will also be used to develop a set of key messages to differentiate the product and corporate brands, if they do not already exist. Sales team brand. Some organizations may prefer to develop a sales team brand to augment or substitute for the corporate brand as the framework to align the personal brands of salespeople. A Brand Tool Box senior consultant will work with sales leadership to define the brand platform of the sales team. The Brand Tool Box brand platform template will be used to create a pragmatic definition of the sales team brand that will enable salespeople to clearly understand the alignment between their personal brand and the team brand. 2013 Brand Tool Box, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 5

Personal Brand Skill Building Brand Tool Box Personal Brand Management Workshop is an innovative sales training workshop that adapts the concepts of personal brand for sales professionals. One of the key tenets of the Brand 3 process is the development of the personal brand of each member of the sales team. Building a strong personal brand is a competency that is new to most sales professionals. Accomplished salespeople have an instinctive or unconscious competence in building their personal brand. However most sales professionals will need to develop a personal brand-building competency to be more consciously competent in using their personal brand to have a bigger impact on customer relationships. The Brand Tool Box Personal Brand Management Workshop has been used by thousands of sales people to build stronger personal brands. This workshop will act as a cornerstone for deriving the most benefit from the Brand 3 process. Prior to attending the Brand Tool Box Personal Brand Management Workshop each sales professional will define their authentic personal brand and receive a powerful, fact-based assessment of how their brand is perceived by others. Each sales professional will be provided a copy of the Brand Tool Box Personal Brand Platform Tool Kit to complete. This practical tool has been used by thousands of salespeople to create a Personal Brand Platform to build their personal brands. The process begins with listening to a 34-minute audio tutorial and using the Personal Brand Platform Handbook to define their personal brand platform. Each salesperson will conduct an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of their personal brand using the online Brand Tool Box Personal Brand Assessment Survey Tool. The personal brand platform and personal brand assessment exercises will ensure that key parts of the workshop experience are personalized and will create a high impact and relevant learning experience. The Brand Tool Box Personal Brand Management Workshop will provide the sales professional with a proven set of skills to begin developing or accelerating a personal brandbuilding competency. The content in the workshop is based upon Be Your Own Brand, the best-selling and pioneering book on personal brand written by Karl D. Speak. The participants will learn how to use the strength of authenticity and power of alignment to be more effective in building stronger customer relationships. Participants will learn the core personal brand-building skills, such as: mastering the power of perceptions; the importance of making a difference in every customer interaction; getting credit from customers for the contributions they make; and accelerating the growth of customer relationships by managing the personal brand management gap. 2013 Brand Tool Box, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 6

Leveraging Brand Alignment The ultimate power of the Brand3 process comes from the Power of Alignment. The alignment gains traction in two places. The alignment of the personal brand of salespeople with the organization s brand or sales team brand creates the foundation for benefiting from the power of Brand3. Secondarily, aligning the product and corporate brand positioning (key messages) into each part of the sales process will focus the power of Brand3 to more clearly differentiate the company s products and services. The process of alignment begins when salespeople attend a session of the Brand Tool Box Brand3 The Power of Brand Alignment workshop. The design of this workshop is adapted from our Brand Tool Box Brand Alignment Workshop, the workshop that is at the core of the Brand Tool Box brand-training curriculum and has been experienced by tens of thousands of business professionals. The Brand Tool Box Brand3 The Power of Brand Alignment workshop is comprised of three learning modules. The first module is a reinforcement of the key principles of building a stronger personal brand. The second module focuses on the participants discovering alignment between their personal brand and the corporate brand or in some cases the sales team brand. The third module is designed as an action learning process to integrate the key positioning messages of the product and corporate brands throughout the sales process. Brand3 Action Learning Tools Customer-Centric Engagement Brand Inside/Brand Outside Alignment The Brand3 process is designed as a sustainable competency-building framework. The 3 Brand Action Learning Tools is a customized coaching regimen focused on sustaining the key learnings from the Brand Tool Box Brand3 The Power of Brand Alignment workshop. The 6session framework begins with a standard design allocating the coaching time into: one-third review of key brand concepts introduced in the workshop; one-third focused on application of the key principles in actual sales territory situations; and one-third sharing best practices and development of specific sales strategies. Employee Engagement Customer Engagement Sales managers or a certified Brand Tool Box coach can implement the 6-session brand alignment reinforcement coaching process. The sessions can be delivered in-person, webcasting, video conferencing or audio conferencing. 2013 Brand Tool Box, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 7

Brand 3 Applications The Brand 3 process, whether applied in part or as the sum of its parts, has many different applications to improve marketing and sales effectiveness. Here are a few common applications: In categories where products are mature the Brand 3 process engages the personal brands of salespeople as a tie-breaking differentiator. Organizations in the professional services category will greatly benefit from implementing the Brand 3 process. For companies where post-sale service activities are an important part of the value creation for the customer, Brand 3 will produce quick, sustainable value impact on customer loyalty. Customer service teams can use personal brand development programs as proactive corporate brand builders. Sales leadership development programs will benefit by integrating the Brand 3 tools to build the salesperson s personal brand-building competency and ensure alignment with the corporate brand, providing a strong platform as a future sales leader. The Brand 3 process is a powerful tool to support merging sales teams or business lines. The internal alignment that results from the personal brand and corporate brand alignment creates a strong platform for the newly formed organization. The Brand 3 tools have proven to be powerful learning tools at sales meetings to address a number of sales and corporate initiatives. To learn more about Brand 3 and how it can be implemented in your organization contact Brand Tool Box at henriksenk@brandtoolbox.com or call us at 612.338.5009 or visit www.brandtoolbox.com/services/brand-3. 2013 Brand Tool Box, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 8