Selling is Easier with a Recognizable Brand

What is a Brand?

The most important assets of any business are often intangible: your company name, brand, symbols, and slogans, and their underlying associations with customers to produce awareness and perceived quality and value.

Think about buying a cellular phone, computer, or vehicle. What brands come to mind? Why are these brands top-of-mind? How would you describe the brand value of your company and what it delivers? How would you describe the "unique selling proposition" of your company?

What do you see when you think of a particular brand? Most people recall the logo and the product associated with that logo. The graphic identity and any attached slogans or taglines are an integral part of a brand, but more importantly is the immediate perception, expectation and emotional response linked to the brand.

A brand is more about making people think thoughts or feel emotions. The essence of a brand can be captured by a logo and slogan to semantically reinforce what ad agencies like to call "the brand experience". The emotional response is developed from behaviour modification or conditioning produced by advertising, marketing and promotional campaigns.

Brand Management

Companies that are strategically smart, tactically creative and persistent in the way they manage their brand and identity are more successful.

Your brand is formed by the numerous choices your business makes, from your company name and logo to your advertising, corporate literature, and business cards all the way down to the way your frontline staff deals with customers. The promise you make to each customer combined with the customer's judgment about how well you deliver on that promise must be consistent. A successful brand becomes an emotional bond that builds customer loyalty and informs prospects on what they can expect from your products and services.

You want your company’s personality to be easily identifiable at every customer touch point and your brand experience reinforced. Everything your company is involved in, including email stationery, print stationery, collaterals, packaging, displays, presentations, ads, telephone reception, office signage, office spaces, any customer or employee touch point, should display your brand. The image should be consistent across media.

Branding Simplifies Selling

With a strong brand, you don't have to sell nearly as long or as hard. Customers know what you stand for and what they can expect from your products and services. It all comes down to selling. And selling is made easier with a corporate brand that sends a strong message about your company’s uniqueness, corporate personality and, more importantly, about what your organization essentially is and what a customer can expect.

When your brand represents quality, reliability, dependability and value and is linked to a positive emotional response you can demand higher prices for your products and services without strong opposition because customers know additional value is associated with increased cost; the price-value ratio justifies the added expense.

Graphic Identity – The Fundamental Building Block of Your Brand

You need to think of everything your company does as an exercise in building your brand. Be conscious of the way you convey a meaningful relationship between your products or services and their users. Your company’s name and graphic identity are the fundamental building blocks of your brand. An effective identity will reinforce the uniqueness and positioning of your business. The configuration of words, images, ideas and associations form an aggregate perception of value in the minds of customers, stakeholders, and the general public.

If your brand is an expression that reaches out and engages current and potential clients, it simplifies your job of selling.

Entrepreneur: Have What It Takes?

Do You Have What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur?

The Secret Formula to Success – FREE

Run, don't walk away from all of those people that offer you a "get rich formula" "easy money" and "quick way to get rich". If they had it all figured out, why would they be working to sell the "secret formula" to you? Instead, why wouldn't they just use the formula to become rich and spend the rest of their days floating on an air mattress in a pool behind their mansion drinking margaritas.

If you want the secret formula to success, here it is: confidence, drive, dedication, adaptability and hard work. And I won't charge you a single cent for it. If you want to be an entrepreneur, read on to find out if you have what it takes.

It takes confidence, drive, dedication, adaptability and hard work

A desire to be your own boss isn't enough by itself to make you a successful small business owner. Before you set up shop, you'll need to think about whether you have the confidence, social skills, temperament, leadership skills, support system, dedication and drive to be an entrepreneur.

Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses by answering these questions:

* Are you a self-starter?
It will be up to you to generate business, organize your time and follow through on details.
* Do you have the steadfast confidence to never give up?
Being able to pick yourself up when you fail to close a deal or lose a contract makes you work harder. You continue to believe in yourself and in what you have to offer prospects and clients.
* Do you learn from mistakes?
Do you evaluate your performance and adapt to improve the outcome? Being good at anything requires the ability to change your approach and behaviour to improve your success rate.
* Are you willing to invest 80 hours a week to run your business?
It takes a 24/7 commitment to run a business, particularly during the first few years.
* How good are you at making decisions?
Business owners are required to make decisions constantly, often quickly, under pressure and independently. You should be confident that you can make correct decisions under pressure.
* How well do you plan and organize?
Research indicates that many business failures could have been avoided through better planning. Good organization of financials, inventory, schedules and production can help avoid many problems.
* Is your drive strong enough to keep you motivated?
Running a business can wear you down. Some business owners feel burned out by having to carry all the responsibility on their shoulders. Strong motivation can make the business succeed and will help you survive slowdowns as well as periods of burnout. You really must love the business.
* Do you have a product or service that is in demand?
Evaluate whether the demand is long-lasting or a fad.
* Will your business have some advantage over existing firms?
It is important to know what distinguishes your business from that of its competitors.
* Who are your competitors?
Can you name all the major firms that sell your product or service locally or on the Internet? Do you know which firms are out-competing you and which firms you are out-competing.
* Are you willing to risk your savings on the business?
Entrepreneurs must do more than talk about their commitment to the business. They need to back it with their own money.
* Is your family behind you?
Starting and running a business places strict demands on your time. This commitment is shared by your family because the time you spend with your family is reduced.
* Do you have a network of friends or business associates that can help you financially?
Friends and family members, rather than banks, typically supply the loans that fund most small business startups.
* Do you have the social skills to network and build relationships?
Business owners need to develop working relationships with a variety of people to be successful.

If you haven't been able to give positive answers to many of the above questions, you may want to place your decision to run your own business on hold until you can develop the knowledge and abilities that will help ensure your success.