As the shopfront of your business, branding is all about selling your wares to passers-by on the street, right? Think a snazzy name in a stylish font, mannequins dressed to the nines in designer labels, and discounts and deals in flashy roundels.
Not entirely, as it turns out.
In fact, we’d argue that successful branding starts with your sales team. After all, if you don’t have their buy-in from the beginning, what are the chances your customers are going to be convinced? It’s your colleagues who will sell-in the brand once you’ve got those people through the door, creating an experience that lives up to the pitch.
No brand wants to be all fur and no knickers.
Here’s why branding starts with your stakeholders – and five ways you can win them over before throwing open the ‘shop doors’.
1. Invite the influencers
Think of your colleagues – from junior employees right through to the senior leadership team – as your internal customers. Yes, they might not be the ones paying for your product or service, but they still need to buy-into your branding in order to sell it authentically and effectively. The first step is identifying the influencers and decision-makers within your business and ensuring there is representation across the board to ensure different perspectives and concerns (from marketing and finance to sales and HR, etc.). Among these, you’ll need advocates: those who understand branding and can champion its value throughout the process.
2. The big sell
Remember, not everyone will be wrapped up in the land of branding, so you may need to sell-in the concept of branding up-front and demonstrate tangible impact and projected results before you get to specifics. Use data, case studies and insights to prove its value and demonstrate its significance on engagement, loyalty and, of course, financials. It’s here you’ll need to show how branding supports business objectives while setting out KPIs to showcase potential ROI (all the acronyms!).
3. Work it
Next, involve your team at clear points throughout the process, initially with a deep-dive workshop gathering data and insights to inform your strategy and creative, leveraging input and expertise from the very beginning. If you get buy-in on the journey, there’s only so much the destination can be criticised, right? Afterwards, agree on status updates for key milestones, helping to manage people’s time and bring them along for the ride. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate!
4. Pitch perfect
It’s time for the big reveal: get your team excited about the brand by reminding them of their invaluable input when you present it. The sell-in should be simple when your colleagues can see how their opinion and expertise has helped shape it from the ground up. Ask for their feedback, action the agreed builds accordingly, and re-present until everyone is happy that it reflects the business and will resonate with customers. Remember: this is your chance to tell the story behind the brand so channel your inner store salesperson.
5. Kit them out
Once your branding has landed, continue to engage colleagues by hosting additional workshops and ongoing training to help colleagues use the brand with confidence, whether that’s to brief in an agency or sell a product or service to a customer. Furnish them with the necessary tools – brand guidelines, etc. – to help them understand the brand, promote it externally and internally, and ensure its full adoption. Their success is yours.
Discover how Bray St. can help you sell-in your branding to stakeholders – as well as create it – by getting in touch.