Jeremy Miller's Blog, page 25

Make Buying Insanely Easy

The gold standard of a strong brand is fast, efficient selling. When your customers get your value proposition, they buy.

It’s really that simple. Your customers are looking to solve defined problems, and they will gravitate towards the companies that make buying easy.

What’s striking is how few companies make buying easy. They needlessly complicate things by committing these three buying sins.

1. Too many options

“It depends” is one of the most frustrating phrases. A customer doesn’t want to hear “it depends” when they ask for the price. They want to be guided towards clear options.

You can make buying easier by streamlining the available options. Give customers a clear recommendation of what they should buy based on your experience working with similar companies.

2. Too much content

We are experiencing a strange phenomenon in marketing. Companies are creating too much content, and more importantly, they are giving their customers too much content.

The buying process can start on the wrong foot by overwhelming a customer with free content. Salespeople like to be generous, and will share white papers, videos, and blog posts. They’re coming from a good place. They want to “educate” their customers, but that can complicate the buying process.

Dial the content back by asking two questions:

What information does a customer require to make a purchase decision?
When does the customer specifically require that information in the purchase process?

Give the customer exactly what they need at the right moment. Anything above and beyond that is complicating things.

3. Too many benefits

Companies can kill their credibility by presenting too many benefit statements.

Here’s an outrageous example. Pemberton’s French Wine Coca was the cocaine infused precursor to Coca-Cola. In an 1880’s ad the brand claims, “The ideal nerve tonic and intellectual beverage … for the cure and prevention of mental and physical exhaustion, chronic and wasting diseases, dyspepsia, kidney and liver affections, heart disease, melancholia, hysteria, tired feelings, etc. This marvelous tonic acts like a charm.”

To our modern eyes we call bullshit. No product, not even one loaded with cocaine, can offer that many benefits. A strong brand has one, two, or maybe even three key benefits. Anything more, and you can quickly dilute the brand’s value proposition.

Customers want to translate in clear, practical terms “what they will get.” This is the story they tell to themselves and others to justify the purchase decision.

Make Buying Simple

Strong brands drive sales, because they make buying insanely easy. This translates into very tangible and measurable outcomes for your company:

Better customers. Companies that make buying easier are 62% more likely to acquire high-value customers — customers that are less price sensitive and choose premium offerings.

Happier customers. Customers that have a smooth, easy buying experience are less likely to regret their purchase or to speak negatively about the brand.
Repeat customers. Customers are more likely to repurchase from companies that make buying easy.

Simplifying the buying experience is good business, and that’s what grows your brand. Successful companies create great brands.

The buying process is a critical customer touch point that shapes your brand and how people feel about your company.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on Twitter, or send us a comment.

Successful Companies Create Great Brands

We need to put the cart before the horse. The only reason Apple is a great brand name is it’s affixed to a successful company. The same is true for Starbucks, Caterpillar, and Virgin.

There’s absolutely no way people would admire these brands if the companies were unsuccessful.

Successful businesses create great brands, and never the other way around.

Ray Kroc had to have “McDonald’s”

“That glorious name, McDonald’s. I had to have it,” says Ray Kroc in The Founder.

The Founder tells the origin story of McDonald’s. At the end of the film there’s a short clip of Ray Kroc talking about the importance of the brand name.

He explains, “It was a typical English American word. It flowed, ‘McDonald’s.’ It was easy for the kids to say and remember. And I liked the sound of it. It sounded wholesome, and it sounded genuine.”

By Kroc’s own descriptions, you’d think the McDonald’s name and the Golden Arches were the essence of the brand and its success, but it’s the reverse. The name and the Arches became symbols of success; what we associate as the brand.

What made the McDonald’s brand was several business innovations:

Business model innovation. Dick and Mac McDonald, the founders of McDonald’s, were pioneers in the quick serve industry. They created a brilliantly efficient system to deliver hamburgers, fries and a drink in 35 seconds. The “Speedee System” is the foundation of the company’s success, and why Ray Kroc got involved with the brothers.

Franchise innovation. Harry Sonneborn, McDonald’s first CEO, showed Ray Kroc how to create a lucrative business empire by buying the land and leasing it to franchisees. Sonneborn often said, “We are not in the food business. We are in the real estate business.”

Relentlessly selling. Ray Kroc was a relentless salesperson. He took a great idea and business model, and he ran with it. Between 1958 to 1959 he opened 68 new restaurants. He never took his foot off the gas, and was the company’s greatest champion.

McDonald’s became a great brand, because it’s a great business. It had a brilliant business model, a lucrative franchising model, and the right talent to create a global empire.

We Admire the Successes

The building blocks of a brand identity — name, logo, symbols, tag lines, and campaigns — are the marks of a successful business. You may admire a company’s logo and advertising campaigns, but it’s important to acknowledge why.

When you admire a brand, you are admiring a company’s success.

Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple delivered category defining products that were beautifully designed and easy to use. Millions of consumers bought iPods, iPhones, and iPads, and this catapulted Apple into a household name.

As a result, entrepreneurs and professionals saw Apple’s success and would say, “I want to be like Apple.”

This story repeats itself again and again. A very successful company will spark a marketing trend. People will try to replicate the company’s success by imitating its brands. This is flattering for the company, but it misses the mark.

If you want to create a brilliant brand, create a brilliant business. Success begets success.

What does this mean? Simple:

Never stop serving your customers.
Innovate in your business model and seek out ways to dramatically improve your value proposition.
Relentless sell and promote your brand.
Never settle.

It’s easier said than done, but it’s at the heart of great branding. No one will care about your marketing if your business is not successful.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on Twitter, or send us a comment.

Types of Brand Names: The Anatomy of a Name

Brand names are like poetry. In a word or two you are capturing the essence of a company, product, or service. It’s a simple phrase that contains so much meaning.

Naming is far from simple. It’s one of the most creative practices in marketing, because the palette is so large. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to construct words for your brand.

In this post I dissect the types of brand names and examine them from two perspectives: categories and construction.

Three Categories of Brand Names

Brand names fall into three fundamental categories: descriptive, suggestive, and empty vessel. The three categories are like archetypes. They guide you, and help you determine the kind of story you want to tell.

Descriptive

Descriptive names describe what is the product or service.

Whole Foods
Toys “R” Us
Shredded Wheat

Descriptive brand names are functional, and clearly position the brand. There’s no ambiguity in Shredded Wheat.

Suggestive

Suggestive brand names indicate what a product or service delivers. They can function as a metaphor, analogy, or an association. Twitter, for instance, is a communication platform that’s like a flock of birds tweeting at each other.

Twitter
Buffer
OpenTable

Suggestive names are the most popular category of brand names, because they are unique and functional. They’re a creative way to position your brand by building upon an idea your customers already understand.

Empty Vessel

Empty vessel brand names have no connection to the product or service. They may be unrelated words like Apple or Caterpillar, or invented words like Verizon and Kodak. The name is unencumbered and the word becomes the brand.

Acura
Starbucks
Zappos

An empty vessel is infinitely flexible. It can be mean anything. The challenge is it takes more time and marketing resources to infuse the name with meaning. Educating your customers on what the brand is or what it delivers has to become part of the ethos of the company.

The Construction of Brand Names

Within the three categories of brand names there are dozens of types of names that you can use to select the right word or phrase to represent your brand.

Family Names

H. J. Heinz Company
Ford Motor Company
Colgate

Acronyms

IBM
GEICO
KFC

Historical or Made-up Figures

Tesla Motors
Dr. Pepper
Sid Lee

Mythical Names

Nike
Pandora
Hermès

Real Words

Apple
Caterpillar
Staples

Compound Words

Facebook
Snapchat
BlackBerry

Constructed Words

Instagram
Microsoft
Aeroplan

Truncated Words

FedEx
MetLife
Cisco

Invented Words – Greek or Latin Roots

Accenture
Dasani
Viagra

Invented Words – Phonetic

Kodak
Acura
Clorox

Misspelled

Flickr
Tumblr
UNKNWN

Suffix

Onesies
Spotify
Pampers

Puns

World of Woolcraft
Wok This Way
Tequila Mockingbird

Get Creative in Brand Naming

Understanding the various types of brand names creates opportunities. It’s like giving an artist more colors to paint with.

Brand naming rewards creativity. In the name generation phase explore as many categories and types of names for your brand as possible. The objective should always be to leave no stone unturned.

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We’re here and always happy to chat. Feel free to Contact Us with any questions, comments or ideas.

Quirks Make Brand Names Unforgettable

Pre-announcement: In August I will be launching a new program on brand naming. In just 5 weeks you will create an unforgettable brand name for your company, product, or service. The program will launch with just 15 spots. As a reader and member of the Sticky Branding community I wanted to give you the sneak peak. If this catches your interest  and I will give you the details before the launch. More to come in the next few weeks. Thanks! Jeremy.

Brilliant brand names aren’t perfect. They have flaws and quirks, but that’s what makes the name interesting and memorable.

You’re naturally drawn to the quirks. Dr. Sheldon Cooper, the lead character in The Big Bang Theory, is a brilliant physicist with a laundry list of character flaws. For instance, Sheldon’s OCD drives him to knock on a person’s door in a distinct pattern of threes:

Knock, knock, knock, “Penny ….”

Knock, knock, knock, “Penny ….”

Knock, knock, knock, “Penny ….”

The behavior is odd, but it’s endearing and memorable. It’s hard to forget Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

Quirks have an impressive pull on your memory. You notice things that don’t fit expectations, and that makes the item more memorable. This is a powerful lesson in branding. Perfect brand names are less memorable. It’s the quirks that make a name unforgettable.

Naming Quirks Are Profitable

Some of the most iconic brand names are blatantly flawed.

FCUK, for instance, is the acronym for French Connection UK. The name created an immediate controversy because the acronym looked like the F-word, but it stuck.

The name was so memorable that it propelled the brand to incredible heights. Between 1997, when the fcuk campaign launched, to 2001 the company’s profits soared from £6.4m to £19m, and its stock price rose over two and half times.

A quirk can make a brand name hard to forget, and that creates a competitive advantage. Customers will gravitate towards the products they know and recognize.

Death by Committee

One of the reasons that committees are detrimental to the naming process is they quash quirks.

Quirks rarely live through a committee selection process. Someone will deride a flaw of a potential name, and that criticism effectively kills the name before it even has a chance.

Slack, for example, would not pass the scrutiny of a committee. Slack is an office messaging app that improves team communication and reduces email. The brand name is short, memorable, and flawed.

A quick dictionary search of “slack” demonstrates a word with negative traits:

Laziness: A slacker who does as little possible.
Decline: The business lacks work or activity.
Looseness: A rope that is loosely held in position. There’s slack in the line.

A committee could fixate on the negative attributes, and may conclude the word isn’t credible or powerful enough for the brand. That would’ve been a mistake. Slack is a brilliant brand name, because it’s suggestive. The app gives you space to be great.

Slack explains, “Our name may seem funny, but think on this: without slack, there is no reach, no play, no flexibility, no learning, no evolution, no growth.”

Our name may seem funny, but think on this: without slack, there is no reach, no play, no flexibility, no learning, no evolution, no growth.

— Slack (@SlackHQ) February 7, 2014

Decision by committee is a path to mediocrity. A committee can’t help but select safe, forgettable brand names, because they kill the interesting ones with quirks.

Embrace Quirks

A hero without character flaws is two-dimensional, and a brand name without quirks is boring.

When choosing a brand name look for the quirks and flaws. Logically you may be able to use the quirks to explain why you shouldn’t choose the brand name, but avoid that impulse. Take a moment to embrace the quirk and amplify it:

How would your brand evolve if you owned the quirk?
Does it make your brand more endearing and memorable?
Does the quirk emphasize an outcome or a truth about your products and services?

You may not choose a quirky name for your brand, but you may discover names that are more interesting and engaging.Safe names are functional, but forgettable. It’s the quirks that push your brand to the boundaries and make it unforgettable.

Minimum Viable Outcome

Theodore Levitt famously said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

Customers buy outcomes:

Solve a problem
Complete a task or project
Gain sustenance
Be entertained

The product or service is a tool to achieve a result. For instance, I am critical when I hear companies talk about developing a “social media strategy.” That’s like a contractor saying, “I am developing a hammer strategy.” Social media is not an outcome, it’s a tool.

What outcomes does your brand deliver?

From MVP to MVO

Eric Ries popularized the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in his seminal book, The Lean Startup.

The Minimum Viable Product is a process to rapidly bring to market new products and services. The process emphasizes iterating:

Launch a product in the fastest time at the lowest cost,
capture customer feedback,
iterate and refine the product offering, and
repeat the steps until you have a successful product.

The MVP process is different from a Minimum Viable Outcome (MVO). While the names and ethos of the methodologies are similar, the objectives differ. The MVO process is a positioning exercise, while the MVP process is an execution exercise.

A Minimum Viable Outcome is the basic outcome a customer wants to achieve. To come back to Theodore Levitt’s drill analogy, the quarter-inch hole is the MVO of the drill bit.

Your brand’s MVO is a pre-step to product development, and empowers you to innovate with purpose. With a clear outcome in mind, you and your team can create category defining products and services.

Wrapping Your Arms Around Complex Problems

Some products and services are clear cut. A drill makes a hole. It’s not complicated. On the other hand, some problems or needs are too great for one organization to solve.

For instance, I am on the board of directors of CODE, a NGO focused on advancing literacy and girls education. Literacy is a complex problem. The forces that prevent children from learning to read and write are daunting, and there really isn’t one tool or answer to solve global literacy.

As a result, organizations like CODE are constantly stretched to serve a need that is greater than their reach and resources. That pull can be highly problematic, because a Jack of all trades is the master of none.

To combat the negative pull of a complex problem, the MVO process provides clarity:

What does the market really want and need? (Related to the expertise and capabilities of your organization.)
What is the smallest measurable outcome you can deliver to address that need?
Why is that outcome important or valuable to the target market?
Does the target market recognize and value that outcome? If not, what outcomes does the market value?

Complex problems often generate multiple Minimum Viable Outcomes. This is a core value of the exercise. By clarifying the potential outcomes your market wants to achieve you can determine where your brand plays and how it wins.

Coming back to CODE, the overarching outcome of literacy is for children to learn to read and write so they can secure their future success (get a job, educate their families, get out of poverty). A Minimum Viable Outcome of advancing literacy could be to train teachers to educate the next generation.

Training teachers to spread literacy is only one path. CODE can consider multiple MVOs, and determine different routes to deliver on its literacy objectives. This understanding helps CODE to both challenge and clarify its mission. It can’t do it all, but with laser-like focus it is achieving measurable results to advance literacy.

Discover Your Brand’s MVOs

Products and services are about you and your company. It’s what you do. Outcomes are all about your customers. It’s what they want.

You can push your brand further by focusing on your customers and their needs. By defining the Minimum Viable Outcomes, you have an opportunity to innovate around a defined need. This helps you to narrow your focus, and use your limited resources with purpose.

What do your customers want?

Start big. In an ideal world, what do your customers really want? Get the ultimate outcome down on paper. Once you’ve documented the ultimate outcome push the concept by asking, “What’s the next best thing?”

Keep asking, “What’s the next best thing?”, until you arrive at a set of clear, tangible outcomes that your customers will value. These are your Minimum Viable Outcomes.

Understanding your customers’ MVOs opens up so many possibilities. It helps you clarify where your brand plays, the problems it solves, and how it wins. And that process is all anchored on your customers and their needs. That clarity of focus will give your brand a tangible competitive advantage over companies iterating to find a need.

Small Acts of Participation

Vibrant communities are organized around Small Acts of Participation. These are activities that bring like minded people together to contribute to the organization’s mission.

My definition is a little academic, but the concept is really simple. Small Acts of Participation are the most visible and central activities of organized communities:

Habitat for Humanity organizes teams to build homes for people in need.

Days for Girls facilitates sewing groups to create reusable feminine hygiene kits.

BNI forms local groups of entrepreneurs and professionals that meet weekly to network and share leads.

A more obvious example of a Small Act of Participation is “going to church.” Christians go to church on Sundays to worship and reinforce their faith.

Small Acts of Participation are not the purpose of the organization, or even how it delivers value. Rather the activity is a community building block. It brings people together to participate in the organization’s mission.

Small Acts Lead to Meaningful Outcomes

It’s easy to ignore Small Acts of Participation, because they can be so central to an organization. For instance, what would Habitat for Humanity be without a home build?

Habitat for Humanity could be a valuable NGO that raise funds and awareness to achieve its mission of “housing for all.” But the build — bringing a group of volunteers together to help a family build a home — is the linchpin of the community. It’s a Small Act of Participation that enables people to get involved in the cause.

A Small Act of Participation generates several benefits for the organization:

Member Growth: People recruit their friends and family to participate in the activity. Often times people will have no prior experience or knowledge of the cause, but they get involved because they were asked to by someone they trust.

Brand Awareness: The community grows and reaches new audiences, because participants share their stories. The activity is a point of pride, and becomes something to talk about.

Deeper Engagement: The Small Act of Participation is a stepping stone. Some people will choose to only do the minimum level of participation, while others will choose to go deeper. This is key, because the participants who go deeper are the ones that get involved with the true value proposition and work of the organization. But to find these active participants, the organization has to cast a wide net and engage lots of people.

By baking build projects into its funding and delivery model, Habitat has grown into one of the successful NGOs on the planet. Each build becomes a multiplier for participation, recruitment, fundraising, and fulfilling the organization’s mission.

3 Elements of Small Acts of Participation

With the rise of social media, it’s never been easier to engage a large group of like minded people. But not all activities are equal for community building. Events, social media campaigns or blogging may appear to spark engagement, but they may not be enough to foster a community.

Small Acts of Participation deliver three outcomes for participants:

Connection: The activity links participants to a peer group. They get to meet new people, build relationships, and have fun with others.

Contribution: The activity provides participants with meaningful outcomes. There’s a clear “why” to doing the activity, and participants feel like they’re achieving something through their efforts.

Recognition: The activity is visible and participants gain recognition through their efforts. This can be delivered personally through a simple thank you, or through public acknowledgement of their contributions. Regardless, the activity delivers a small badge of honor.

Connection, contribution, and recognition helps the activity become the connective glue of the community. They transform mundane projects and tasks into Small Acts of Participation.

Activate Your Community with a Small Act of Participation

To activate your community focus on one central activity.

Small Acts of Participation are unique activities, because they bind the organization’s mission with a visible activity. The activities can vary widely from organization to organization:

Peer mentoring group
Make or build something
Achieve a certification
Share an idea or message
Work towards a goal or project

You can find countless ways to engage people in practical activities, but what matters is the experience participants gain. When you bind an activity to the mission of your organization it can engage people in unexpected ways. This is the central idea of how to grow a community.

What do you think?

What’s Your Rallying Cry?

A rallying cry can be like a lightning rod for your team. It harnesses and focuses their energy, and guides them towards the things that really matter.

Rallying cries are often easy to spot. They masquerade as the slogan or tagline of a company:

Nike says, “Just do it.”
Apple wants to “Think Different.”
OnePlus is committed to “Never Settle.”

Each statement is proudly proclaimed in the organization’s branding and marketing campaigns, but its true value is felt internally. The slogan guides behaviors. It frames the brand, and clearly articulates what the company represents.

This is the power of a brand’s rallying cry. It guides an organization to greatness.

Here’s to the Crazy Ones

A rallying cry is more than a tagline. It has a deep meaning for the organization that transcends marketing and sales.

In 1997 Apple launched its slogan, “Think Different.” The slogan became a rallying cry for the brand, and it still guides the company twenty years later.

Think Different was launched with an ad called “Here’s to the Crazy Ones.” The narrator speaks over a series of photographs of time-honored visionaries — people like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Edison, and Alfred Hitchcock. He says,

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

The script is the perfect accompaniment to Apple’s rallying cry, because it articulates Apple’s vision and ethos.

Focus On What Matters: Never Settle

OnePlus is a challenger brand in the mobile phone market. It designs and manufactures low cost Android smartphones, what it calls “Flagship Killers.” The goal is to deliver an uncompromising smartphone at a reasonable price.

OnePlus’s vision is captured in its rallying cry, “Never Settle.”

When OnePlus launched in 2014, buying an Android smartphone felt like a game of chance. Carl Pei, cofounder of OnePlus, explains, “Many products look good on paper, but just don’t deliver a good day to day experience. Being such an intimate part of our lives, a smartphone shouldn’t just feel amazing the first week. It should keep bringing you joy a year on.”

Pei acknowledges that the smartphone market has evolved rapidly in the past three years. He says, “There are no bad smartphone products anymore, and it’s a great time to be a consumer.” But that doesn’t mean OnePlus should settle or give up.

Never Settle as a rallying cry empowers the brand, and it helps the team to define what’s next.

A rallying cry provides certainty in a rapidly changing market. A startup cannot compete and win by mimicking the giants of its industry. It has to take big risks, break rules, and find new ways to create success.

A rallying cry is more than clever marketing. It’s a matter of survival.

What’s Your Company’s Rallying Cry?

The most effective rallying cries capture the vision and ambitions of an organization. It’s a simple, pithy statement that’s packed with meaning.

But before you start working on the words, shift your focus internally. The first step in developing your rallying cry is to clearly understand and articulate your organization’s vision and ambitions:

What does your organization believe?
Why do you do what you do?
What impact do you and your team want to achieve?
How do you want your organization to behave?
What will be your company’s legacy?

Developing a rallying cry is a process of exploration. As you explore your company’s vision and ambitions look for words and phrases that articulate those ideas.

It may take some digging, but you’ll know it when you see it. The phrase will vibrate. It will engage both your head and heart, and it may even make you feel uneasy. That feeling is ideal, because it demonstrates you are speaking to a truth about your company.

Share Your Rallying Cry

I’d love to hear from you. Send me a tweet or a note with your rallying cry. What phrase is guiding your team to greatness?

Great Brands Are the Same but Different

Great brands stand out by being the same but different. That tension is what makes a brand interesting yet credible.

Differentiation is a balancing act. If your brand is too similar to the competition it gets commoditized, but being too different can be even more detrimental.

Think of products and services that are before their time. In 1999 Sony released two portable digital music players, the Memory Stick Walkman and the VAIO Music Clip. Both offered similar functionality to the iPod, but neither achieved market success.

Sony was two years ahead of Apple in digital music. The iPod was released in October 2001, and it is heralded today as the product that transformed the music industry. Even though Sony brought products to market sooner, it failed to transform the digital music category because of timing:

Consumer resistance. In 1999, consumers hadn’t fully embraced MP3s and digital music. Music was primarily purchased on CD from brick-and-mortar stores, and the idea of ripping music onto your computer hadn’t become a thing yet.

Immature technology. The technology Sony used in its devices wasn’t ready for primetime. Portable storage was expensive and limited. Sony’s devices could only hold 20 or so songs, not much more than a CD or cassette.

The iPod, on the other hand, had a timing advantage. David Aaker writes in Brand Relevance, “Steve Jobs recognized that there was a window of opportunity for the iPod. There was a need, the competitive entries were seriously flawed, and the combination of Apple technology and new hardware options created an opening.”

Part of the genius of Steve Jobs was his ability to get the timing right. This ability enabled him to bring to market transformative new products that were widely understood.

Notice the language Apple used to introduce the iPod and iPhone, and make them appear to be the same but different. The first iPod let you carry 1,000 songs in your pocket. The first iPhone was an iPod, a phone, and the internet in one device. These phrases were designed to convey meaning based on what consumers already understood.

The iPod and iPhone were transformational products, because they were brands that were built at the edges. They were the same but different, and everyone had to have one.

Differentiating your brand at the edges has three elements:

1. Innovation

No one ever grew a remarkable brand by doing what everyone else does. It requires innovation to stand out. This can be in the creation of new features or capabilities, or solving unrecognized needs.

Innovation doesn’t have to be transformative to differentiate your brand. Yes, we admire companies like Airbnb, Tesla, and Uber for transforming industries, but look at the innovators in your industry. Chances are they are innovating, but at a smaller scale. You can see their innovations in customer service, marketing, or how they challenge industry conventions.

2. Context

Language is an essential ingredient to effectively differentiate your brand. Your customers need to understand how your products are different, but also how they fit into their lives.

You can provide context to how your brand is the same but different by applying similes and metaphors. For instance, Steve Jobs made a blunt connection between the iPhone and BlackBerry in his 2007 launch speech. He said, “When you get a message, it will push it right out to the phone for you. Same as a BlackBerry.”

Customers were led to understand that the iPhone does the same things as a BlackBerry, as well as many other things that a BlackBerry doesn’t.

3. Timing

As stated above, timing is essential. Introducing innovations too soon or too late can be detrimental. The edges provide context to recognize if the timing is right for your customers, your company, and technologies.

Differentiating your brand never stops. The edges are redefined each time a company innovates and pushes convention. This means you are constantly competing and pushing the boundaries further and further.

The challenge is to always stay connected to the present. Push too far, and you lose. Don’t push far enough, you lose. It’s a balancing act, but your brand will stand out if it’s perceived as the same but different.

What Do You Want?

The first question in creating a business strategy is deceptively simple. What do you want?

Creating a strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. The process only gets complicated when you put the cart before the horse, and focus on what you can or should do:

“We need to do a better job on social media.”

“We need a new website.”

“We need to add a second shift in the plant.”

As I discussed in Three Levers, a long list of priorities overwhelms the strategic planning process and hinders performance.

To streamline your strategy development start with the most important question. What do you want?

Clear Thinking Drives Results

Richard Rumelt writes in Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, “Strategy involves focus and, therefore, choices. And choice means setting aside some goals in favor of others. When this hard work is not done, weak amorphous strategy is the result.”

One my clients is an industrial distributor, and their 2017 goal is called “Never Late.” Never Late is their rallying cry. The objective is to eliminate late deliveries.

This isn’t an easy goal. The company has more than doubled in size in three years, and their on course to double again to $40 million in the next two years. As a result, they’re busting at the seams. They’re outgrowing their warehouses, their systems, and their capacity.

Never Late is a strategy to improve the company’s efficiency and capacity, but it also emphasizes what the company wants. Never Late means “never disappointing a customer.”

When we started the strategic planning process the management team carefully considered the question, “What do we want?” By the metrics they were strong. The management team had clear revenue objectives, but what they really wanted was less tangible.

At the planning session the CEO said, “I don’t ever want to disappoint a customer again.” This declaration became the thrust of the strategic plan. We considered how the company delighted its customers, how it let down some customers, and what it did brilliantly.

As we worked through “What do you want?” it became clear. Growth that harms customer service is unacceptable. We had to bolster operations and logistics first. Everything else could wait.

By clearly framing what they wanted, the leadership team created a focused strategy that is delivering tangible results. The entire company knows what it’s trying to achieve, and everyone can see the progress week by week.

Clarity Requires Honesty

“What do you want?” should be a simple question, but it gets complicated. It’s easy to question or doubt if what you want is really what you want.

Your “want statement” might not seem big enough, ambitious enough, or glamorous enough. It might not be aspirational or motivating. But that doesn’t matter.

The key to creating a good strategy is to be honest with yourself and your team:

What do you want?
Why do you want it?

Answer these questions first, and the strategy will follow. You’ll know what you’re working towards, and you can develop the plan to achieve it.

What do you think?

We’re here and always happy to chat. Feel free to Contact Us with any questions, comments or ideas.

How to Generate Referrals: Network High

A good referral makes selling so much easier, but how do you generate referrals more predictably?

Everyone wants more referrals, whether they’re from customers, centers of influence, or partners. It doesn’t matter the source. What we want is to be connected with potential customers at the right time with a warm introduction.

Generating referrals can be quite haphazard. The traditional approach to referral marketing is through networking: luncheons, events, coffee dates, and calls. And with social media, you can connect with even more people.

The challenge is connections are cheap. Not all people are good sources of referrals. You might meet people who are really nice and interesting, and they may even be connected to your industry. But that doesn’t mean they will ever generate referrals for your business.

Most networking is a waste of time. Attending networking events and meeting lots of people rarely generates the results you’re looking for.

To generate referrals consistently and predictably network high.

Who Will Spot a Need Before You?

Networking high is a very simple idea. Who are the people or companies that know about a customer’s need before you?

For instance, two of my most effective referral partners specialize in mergers and acquisitions. They refer clients to me for branding and marketing strategies in two situations:

Companies that are being packaged for sale.
Companies that are completing a merger or acquisition.

A M&A is an important moment for branding, but networking to find these opportunities is unproductive. Rather, I network and have strong relationships with a few people that know about these opportunities, because that’s their business.

Networking high is based on the Influence Curve — a model to understand an organization’s influence in a buying continuum. Your best referral partners are the ones above you on the Curve, because they’re the ones that can spot an opportunity before you.

A Simple Strategy to Generate More Referrals

Ask two questions to generate referrals consistently:

Who are the companies or services that come before us?
Who are the companies or services that follow us?

You want to look both up and down the Influence Curve. Your source of referrals are above you. For instance, an architect comes before a contractor, and a landscaper comes after construction.

When you map out the types of services that come before your services you can focus your marketing efforts. A few good referral partners above you on the Influence Curve will outperform a thousand general connections.

As an effective networker, you also want to give. Who are the people or companies that follow your services?

Working below you on the Influence Curve has two benefits:

Better customer experiences. You can serve your clients by guiding them to the right partners they need to grow their businesses.

Givers Gain. Generous networking always pays for itself. Partners below you on the Curve may not reciprocate in referrals, but they may offer you something even better. It’s the magic of reciprocation.

A Referral Is Golden

A good referral makes life so much easier, because you start everything off on the right on foot. You are connecting with a customer at the right time with a relevant need, and you are being endorsed by a trusted partner. You really can’t ask for a better situation.

Referrals are your best source of customers, and the process doesn’t have to be haphazard. Network high to generate referrals more consistently.

Who knows about a need for your services before you? Find these people and companies, and develop them into relationships. The people above you on the Influence Curve will be your best referral partners.