You Don’t Know Jack: Discovering your identity through brand facilitation

Know thyself. Words to live by. But do we really know ourselves? How many times have you been in this situation, “So, Jack, what do you do?”

Should Jack answer:

1. I am the Manager of U.S. Operations for Swellco. We are the global single-source supplier of a unique engineered solution for the oil and gas industry. Our team has over a thousand years of collective experience…(fill in the next 10 minutes).
2. I work as a manager for Swellco.
3. I make sure our drilling company clients double their efficiency every month.

If your answer was #1, you lost me at “single-source supplier.” You and everybody else. Don’t even get me started on “unique.”

If you picked answer #2, I’m pretty sure you are counting the days to retirement or hoping to win the lotto. If you have no passion for what you do, how will I?

Both of these answers have the same problem: They don’t engage me. They won’t make me ask the all-important next question, “How do you do that?”

In answer #3, Jack conveyed a value. Branding is all about projecting and conveying the value you offer a specific audience. If you haven’t discovered and defined that value, you are wasting money and lengthening your sales cycle.

So maybe you didn’t know Jack, but now you know the value his company delivers and whether that is something you want to know more about. And, if so, you can see that Jack has the passion to discover how Swellco can help you.

Do you (and by you I mean you, the company, or you, the marketable commodity) know yourself as a brand? A facilitated brand workshop is a great first step. During a brand workshop, company leaders and an experienced facilitator work through exercises that help explore the company’s features and benefits. And, from there, he or she will help you extract and define what a customer perceives as a value to them. Participants are often surprised to discover that each assumed he or she had the same picture of the company’s value as everyone else, but that many varying pictures existed. The outcome of the workshop: everyone is on the same page and participants can clearly and succinctly express what value their product or service provides. By the end of the workshop, even those you felt sure didn’t know Jack, will now.

Understanding the value your brand brings to others is a win-win. When you and your colleagues know your value and to which potential customers you bring the most value, you shorten the sales cycle. It saves everyone at lot of time. You won’t bore the wrong audience with an irrelevant message and you don’t waste your lavish presentation on deaf ears. And, no one will say, “You don’t know Jack.”

 

Do you need help building your brand? Contact ALLE.