How To Build a Brand.
“People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
This sentence plays in my head on a daily basis. Simon Sinek’s TED talk in 2009 did not change my life when I first saw it, but now I can safely say that it did. It took years for this particular earworm to burrow into the center of my psyche.
A great brand is what separates a great company from a mediocre one. The brand is what separates Apple from Dell, Nike from Fila, and McDonald’s from Burger King. The right brand can propel a company to unseen greatness.
I think all of us knew that, the problem is many of us have a difficult time understand what a brand is from a hands-in-the-dirt perspective. A “brand” is something akin to the personality of a business. It is the attractive characteristics that help a company attract customers. As a salesperson, the more you can understand how to create and cultivate a brand the better of you are going to be. This "“personality” will draw people in better than any singular marketing campaign.
Did you ever see Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad? This is an ad where they showed a picture of a windbreaker they sell and told people not to buy it because of the harm it does to the environment. This aligned with Patagonia’s core beliefs of loving nature and wanting to protect the earth. While the ad probably did not sell any of those exact jackets, it probably earned them a number of life-long customers.
“People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
So how do you create a brand. It is easy to talk about brands that are already built, but harder to explain the construction process of brand building.
One of the best strategies I ever heard was the “JK5 Method”. This was created by Jenna Kutcher. This is where you pick five topics that are the most important to you and focus on those. I came across this idea in Russell Brunson’s book Expert Secrets. Use this to start thinking about other great companies. If I had to guess Apple’s JK5, it would probably look like Minimalism, Photography, Empowerment, Rebellion, and Technology. Nike would probably be Motivation, Fitness, Empowerment, Sports, and Competition.
When I started this business, I picked Persuasion, Learning, Blue-Collar, Leadership and Entrepreneurship. I want these to be the core tenets of my Broken Salespeople brand. I want to attract people interested in the same things. That is what my ideal customer looks like.
Once you have these things in mind, it is time to put together values that align with those topics. That is a longer topic, but this will get you started. I will probably write that blog soon for you guys.