Branding, Marketing & Sales Coaching
Whether you need help with face-to-face or remote coaching our process is to make it so your Marketing and Sales activities are more effective and that can only happen if your business has a solid and well-thought-out Brand – and, yes, that means that a Brand is more than just a name, logo and slogan.
With more than 25 years of helping people develop, refocus, refresh and/or diversify their Brands, we have developed a proven process. Depending on the amount of help you need, the time you have, the staff that will be involved and your budget, you can select the amount of coaching help you want: Step 1 only, Step 1 & 2, Step 1, 2 & 3 or our complete Branding package of Steps 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The WOW 4-Step Building a
Brand and a Business Process
When you build a house, the first step is to think about the foundation. How big will this house be? Will it be one storey or two? Will it have fireplaces in it and if so, how many? Will it have a walk-out basement or just a windowed basement? How many bathrooms and bedrooms do you want?
All these questions need to be answered before you think of pouring that concrete foundation because if you don’t plan for what goes on top of the foundation, you’re going to have problems in years to come.
It’s the same with your business. When building your Brand Foundation, Step 1 in our WOW Branding process is that you can’t just think about today or next year, you need to have a broader perspective on the years to come. How will your product line diversify and/or grow? How will your business expand? How many staff will you have? How will you address increased competition? Will you stay in your current location or move to other communities? What about franchising? Hey, what about having an online store at some point? All those and more ideas need to be analyzed through research to set the stage for years to come. However, even more than those strategic questions, a business needs to look at the philosophical side – what type of business do the owners want to have ethically, value-based and what type of personality do they want the business to have? That’s building a Brand Foundation.
Building a Brand Foundation is not just for start-up businesses. Over our years of coaching, we find that over 80% of the businesses we talk to have not developed their Brand properly or they have outgrown their current Brand.
You haven’t developed your Brand if this scenario sounds familiar.
You have a name and logo, but you haven’t had the time to strategize about how to grow your business in a reasonable and realistic way. Most of your Marketing is done in a knee-jerk manner. Your customer base is “everyone” but when you try to sell your products or services you hear more “NO” comments than “YES” comments. You have no idea what the philosophical mandate or vision of your business is because you are too busy just trying to generate revenue.
So where do you start in developing, refreshing, refocusing or diversifying your Brand?
You start with our Step 1 called Brand Foundation©. This step is where our coaches will help you answer all the Why questions your potential customers may have. You will develop an effective promise that speaks to, and motivates, a specific group of people with the core values that are important to you as the owner/manager. Your messaging will become effective and will answer why someone would want to purchase your products or services.
Our Brand Foundation process is:
- 15 hours of remote coaching.
- 1 – 1.5 hour weekly meetings for approximately two months.
- Coaching report after each meeting.
- Depending on your needs, this Brand Foundation Step 1 can be completed without moving onto Steps 2 or 3 but you have the option of jumping to Step 4 – Brand Future Maintenance.
- Contact us for pricing and details of the discussion points for this step. This remote coaching can be adapted to face-to-face meetings or a combination of face-to-face and remote meetings.
Once a house’s foundation has been built, the next step is to enhance the foundation blueprint with details. What will those bedrooms look like? Will the kitchen have one or two stoves? Will the bathrooms have walk-in showers or tubs? How about a hot tub in the upstairs master bedroom?
Hmmm. Will the house foundation support that?
In business, this is our Step 2 – developing your Brand Marketing Strategy. Our coaches will work with you to develop a detailed blueprint plan on how to drive demand and create awareness for your business by setting SMART goals, timelines, objectives and budgets.
However, you can’t develop this strategy until you have built your Brand Foundation – our Step 1.
You haven’t developed a Marketing Strategy if this scenario sounds familiar:
You aren’t sure if advertising is marketing or if marketing is sales. You have tried a bunch of activities and Social Media but your revenue isn’t increasing. It seems like all you are doing is spending time and money without knowing if anything worked. Your business or marketplace has changed over the years and you aren’t sure if your messages are reaching the right people because your sales aren’t generating revenue. You hear people saying they didn’t realize all the things your business offers. You think you know who your competitors are but haven’t any solid research to prove you are right.
Unfortunately, the result of this scenario is you are wasting time and money, and you don’t know if you have received any kind of rate of return.
Our Brand Blueprint Marketing Strategy process:
- Using the information developed from Step 1, this is another 15 hours of remote coaching.
- 1 – 1.5 hour weekly meetings for approximately two months.
- Coaching report after each meeting.
- Step 1 – Brand Foundation must be completed before starting Step 2. You have the option of taking either, or both, Steps 3 and 4 after completion of this step.
- Per-hour pricing for this step will be reduced because you have accessed Step 1. Contact us for pricing and details of the discussion points for each step. This remote coaching can be adapted to face-to-face meetings or a combination of face-to-face and remote.
Step 3 – Brand Implementation cannot be started without the completion of Step 1 – Brand Foundation and Step 2 – Brand Blueprint Marketing Strategy.
If you are following along with our analogy that building a house is the same as building a business, then you have reached the point where you must implement the steps you have completed – what’s going inside the house based on how strong your foundation is and what fits with your blueprint?
For a business, this step is where we coach you on how to build on your Brand Foundation by activating your Marketing Strategy so as to maximize your investment of time, energy and money. This step means implementing your Brand Foundation & Strategy – it’s time to sell.
You know your sales activities are not based on your foundation or any strategy if this scenario sounds familiar:
You don’t have time to think about what sales techniques to use because you are busy just trying to get through the day so you continue to use sales techniques that you have used in the past. You don’t have a system in place to know the rate of return on these techniques and you aren’t sure if they are working or not. You are not sure if all your messaging is consistent because you tend to react to what your competitors are doing rather than having a focus on how to make your company grow.
UNFORTUNATELY, we have found that this step (Sales) is what most businesses do for Step 1 rather than Step 3.
They haven’t put the time into building the details of their Brand or conducted a thoughtful Marketing Strategy. These businesses are trying to sell their products/services to EVERYONE with an unclear message. The result is these businesses end up pushing their products at people who really aren’t interested in buying from the business.
Our Brand Implementation process is:
- Using the information developed from Steps 1 & 2, this is another 15 hours of remote coaching.
- 1 – 1.5 hour weekly meetings for approximately two months.
- Coaching report after each meeting.
- This Brand Implementation Step 3 cannot be completed without completing Steps 1 & 2.
- Per-hour pricing for this step will be reduced because you have accessed Steps 1 & 2.
- Contact us for pricing and details of the discussion points for each step. This remote coaching can be adapted to face-to-face meetings or a combination of face-to-face and remote.
Just as a house needs maintenance to protect the investment and to react quickly to a problem, so does a business’ Brand.
As a business grows, it must constantly adapt and diversify. During this step, it is easy to lose focus. A business can never stop being alert to how the actions of the owner, the staff, the marketplace and its competitors will affect a Brand.
Once a Brand has been developed, every action taken on behalf of the business must complement the Brand Foundation developed. However, cracks can develop in a Brand’s foundation and it can happen without the business knowing, until it is too late.
This is our Brand Future Maintenance package. It is designed to support our clients who have completed all or some of our Brand coaching program.
Through this maintenance, we are still available to our clients on a monthly basis to ensure they don’t fragment their Brand, lose focus or just want to brainstorm with someone who knows their business and has an objective and knowledgeable point of view.
Our Brand Future Maintenance process is:
- Using the information developed from previous steps, this is 18 hours of remote coaching.
- 1.5 hours of remote monthly meetings.
- Coaching report after each meeting.
- Per-hour pricing for this step will be reduced because you have accessed other WOW services.
- Note: Step 1 is an essential requirement for participating in this maintenance step. The other steps are not essential but recommended.
Brand /Marketing / Sales Appraiser Step:
Just like you need people to appraise your house, you may need just a wee bit of help with appraising your Brand, Marketing and/or Sales. We can help with offering an objective but experienced viewpoint on an idea you have, or if you just need to brainstorm with someone outside your organization and/or if you need someone to kick you in the butt and get motivated, then we have a small coaching program that may work for you:
- 10 – 1 hour online coaching meetings to be used whenever you need business help to be used within one year of signing the contract.
- Coaching report after each meeting.
- This step can be conducted without taking our more detailed “Building a Brand and a Business” steps.
- Contact us for pricing details of the discussion points. This remote coaching can be adapted to face-to-face meetings or a combination of face-to-face and remote.