Story Telling Creates Your Brand

“The art of storytelling is not just to entertain kids. It can revolutionize your companies’ brand, and in turn make your brand the story people tell.” – Ted Amberg

The idea of telling a story to get a brand message across may seem daunting. But you simply need to answer a few questions to get started. Those that tell the best story will most often win the business. Ask yourself the following questions:

 

·       Why did I launch the company in the beginning?

·       What problems did we help solve for our customers in doing so?

·       Why are we passionate as a company to serve this market?

·       How do we stand out from competitors, and what truly makes us unique?

·       How do we want our customers to feel when they work with us?

·       What are we the absolute best at that we set the bar ?

Take a few minutes and write out the above questions and answer them as honestly as you can for yourself. Do you see a trend? Do you see some areas that need improvement? Do you see where you can grow and create better customer loyalty possibilities?

 

Remember the old saying, “People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.” The best branding experts realize this and use it to their advantage. Effective branding is moving past the mere functionality of a product or service and creating a sense of loyalty and emotion in your customer base. There is a reason that brands such as Harley Davidson have their customers literally tattooing the company logo on their skin. It’s not because Harley makes great bikes, it’s because those customers feel a sense of bond with the company and other customers, in the sense of a tribe. And that’s powerful branding.

Anyone can throw a lot of money into an ad campaign or a marketing push. You can do the same, and you’ll likely get some customers out of it. But when another company comes along with a “shiny new toy” or a lower price, then they will leave you faster than a toupee in a hurricane! You must instill a sense of loyalty in your customers to keep them around. Brand loyalty is competitor insulation. Understand  that it’s not about your services and products. It’s really about the story you convey to your customers and the problems you solve for them. That is key.

 

“People don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill bit. They want a quarter inch hole.”

 

–       Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School Professor

Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.

How Do Your Customers Actually Feel?

From the desk of Ted Amberg:

Having a crystal clear understanding of HOW you want your customers to feel will help keep you on track towards making your vision a reality. Having a true vision of that will change everything. Because when you focus on the way you want your customers to feel, instead of what you want them to buy, it will translate into huge rewards for both of you.

The values that you create and utilize in your business are what reinforce the vision for the business, shape its culture and direct what behavioral patterns it has. These are the things that allow a customer to connect and build the important trust and loyalty a great business must have. Values are the common ground on which the company and its customers can unite.

In the book The Fortune Cookie Principal, by Bernadette Jiwa, she sums up the definition of what a true brand is perfectly. She says, “Let’s think of a fortune cookie as a product. The cookie is a commodity, the thing that is exchanged with the customers for cash. Remember, the customer is not actually buying the commodity; they are buying the benefit it delivers. They are buying the joy of breaking the cookie open and sharing the fortune with others at the end of the meal.” So, while you’ve got to make a good cookie, the best that you can, it’s extremely important to make the fortune (the story) good too. You need to give people a reason to not just hire you for your services or buy your products, but buy into your brand.

“Find the right products and services for your customers, not the other way around…”

 

–       Ted Amberg

You can have the best vision and brand ideas in the world. You can have a great story that will captivate all who hear it and create loyalty and customer satisfaction like never before. But if you don’t have leadership in your company and a team that will convey that brand message every single time they interact with the customer, you could be sunk. Every single person in your business from you, to the delivery driver, to the sales rep, and everyone in between, must play a role in helping tell that story.

Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.

 

What Business Are Your REALLY In?

“Ted Amberg understands how to uncover the truth of what a business is vs what it once was.”          – Jacob Bracovey, NCA All-Tech

 

What business are you in? If you ask this simple question to a hundred people in our industry, you will get lots of different answers. There are many examples of businesses that thought they were in one business and changing times said otherwise. Here are just a few:

The railroads. For well over a century the railroads stood as the single mass transportation provider for both people and products across the United States. Then the airplane was invented and very quickly became a solution that was far quicker and cheaper than days on a train. Even products began being shipped by air for faster, more convenient deliveries. Most of the major railroad companies no longer exist. They thought they were in the railroading business. Had they realized that they were in the transportation business, they may have been able to adapt and evolve to changing times, and perhaps evolved into air transportation. After all, they already had a huge network of customers, suppliers, and they understood transport, logistics and time schedules. All they needed to do was switch the mode of transport.

What happened to video rental companies? Companies such as Blockbuster and other mega retail rental chains were caught completely off guard by startups such as Netflix and Redbox. They thought that they were in the brick-and-mortar video rental business. Had they been able to adapt and realize that times were changing and customers wanted quicker, simpler methods for picking up movies (like no late charges), more of them might have survived.

Phone book companies, magazines, newspapers, and more are currently on notice to a rapidly changing landscape. It will take creative thinking and understanding of what their customers truly want and need to evolve and stay in the game.

So… What business are you really in?

Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant, entrepreneur, magic trick creator, and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.

First WHO. Then WHAT

One of my favorite business books is called Good to Great by Jim Collins. In it, he emphasizes that having the right people in the right positions before implementing any new visions or strategies, instead of the other way around, is crucial. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but it allows for the individuals already in place to make the necessary changes if the company suddenly needs to change its vision or direction. Having the right people “on the bus” as Collins says, allows the best people to strategize, debate, and create together when envisioning where the company (or bus) needs to go. In other words, when you start with the who, before the what, you can easily adapt to a changing world.

“Ted Amberg has a way of building trust and loyalty within the teams he builds. I believe that is his “secret sauce” that generates success, even over the marketing and sales efforts. Good teams build empires.” – Jim Rollings, Industry Consultant

 

Great vision without great people is irrelevant. If you hire the right people, they will exhibit level five qualities themselves. Equally important is removing the wrong people from your bus as soon as you know they don’t fit. Too many people wait too long to get rid of a “cancer” that plagues the company. Do it now, and do it fast. Collins writes, “Those that build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It’s one thing above all of the others; the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.”

 

The fact is that in good hiring environments, and bad hiring environments, the companies that keep their eyes out for the best talent, and continually keep this search up, are the ones that end up with the best teams. Always, always, always, be looking for stars, while at the same time, be mindful of potential “cancers” within your own organization.

 

Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.