Why This Whole Branding Thing Is Driving Me A Little Bit Crazy

Branding, schmanding.

The next person who tells me they want to “brand” their business may actually get a hot iron emailed to them. Somebody out there is spreading the ugly rumor that branding is a worthwhile marketing investment for contractors. It’s not.

First of all, branding isn’t bought. It’s earned, over a long period of time, with regular installments of market credibility. It’s actually kind of rented. The public and their perception are the brandlords, if you will. They can raise the rent, kick you out, or hail you as the greatest. It’s pretty fickle stuff.

Your manufacturer is into branding and “protection of the brand” because they’ve earned it over many years and millions of dollars. Sometimes that protection is well-placed; sometimes not.

Every now and then, I’ll speak with a distributor about doing a seminar, and they’ll want to see if the manufacturer might co-op the fee, which is fine. But when I get a call to “make sure that my material doesn’t conflict with the brand”, I feel like they’re referring to some mote-dwelling, ill-tempered monster that feeds on people who might dare forget to curtsy in it’s presence. Those calls are usually fairly short.

I’m not disrespectful; but there are two issues at stake here. Am I to come speak to a group of business owner/ dealers who need marketing help to keep their phones ringing at some fiscally sane level… or am I speaking to protect an inanimate ghostly perception? Sorry, I market to people, for people who have mortgages and payrolls.

And I also “get it” about the brand. It deserves respect.

Carrier’s blue oval means something, Maytag’s name conveys something, Dave Lennox stands for something. And those things, dear readers, are what the brand “is”. If quality slips, or competition beats them up, it is said to be “erosion of the brand”. Wall Street and Main Street both take notes. Cadillac would be an example of one who “had it”, then lost “it”, and is now steadily regaining “it”.

And if I use the word “it” in quotation marks one more time in this article, I deserve to be branded in some non-public place, which might start a new trend in body art.

My point is that, as a small business, you don’t need to spend money to “brand” yourself for crying out loud. You need to spend money to get phone calls (Direct Response). Then you need to make sure that customer never leaves you (Retention). And to fill in the gaps between those two, fill it with credibility (Publicity marketing) and professionalism (Image advertising). You want to pepper in highly repetitious TOMA ads, which are the nearest thing to a branding ad I’ll ever recommend. You want to be known and recognized, away from the pack of pretenders who are copying everyone else.

Once you earn legions of customers, and have exposed yourself repeatedly to your market through ads, publicity, trucks, vans, outdoor signage, and the cumulative reputation among your public, you then have a brand. Yes, you, without millions spent, or the silliness in pursuit of the largely ungraspable.

The worst thing you can be in your market is unknown. People pay more for a known company or brand than an “unknown”. People have “seen your name” or have “heard of you” often equate this presence with “quality”. Hopefully this concept has been ingrained in your marketing mindset by this point.  But remember, your skills, customer service, quality, and value are ultimately what “brand” you.

Final bit of advice:  If someone tells you need to spend money “branding” your company, please run away.  And should you bother to return, please bring a mental health care professional.  Your “friend” obviously needs the help more than you need his business “sense”.

Your Role is Calling

Recently, my wife and daughter went to a four-day college orientation out-of-town. Funny, when I went to college, there was no such event, so I signed up for disorientation, in which I got a double-minor.

Regardless, their absence meant that my son, dog Harry and I were left to fend for ourselves. My wife - who majored in "Being Able to Find Everything In the World" and "How to Turn On Major Non-TV Appliances" - even left us with lists. This included a few ridiculous things.

First up: Remember to feed the fish. That is so dumb. I mean, nobody sprinkles fish food in Lake Michigan and the fish there seem fine. They're fish. So I crossed those losers off the list.

Another one: Water the potted plants. Right. Like something's going to happen to them in 106 degree Alabama heat. If they can't take it, they need to move to Iowa or become fake or something. Another chore gone. The next one was more worrisome.

She'd written down something about laundry and dryers and lint screens that I breezed over. That's because of a previous terrifying encounter with the washing machine. See, I had expected it to have only the essential buttons to do its job: On. Off. That should be enough, right?

Noooo. It had settings for Delicates and Spin speeds and some reference to a Pre-rinse. Are you kidding me? Pre-rinse? Is this so your delicates can get used to the water temperature first? I'm convinced that all of these buttons actually do exactly the same thing: 1) Water 2) Soap 3) Slosh around. So, from sheer intimidation, laundry got crossed off, too. Man, this is getting easier!

Over the 4 days, our hygiene slipped a little. Language got coarser. Movies more violent. My dog started smoking and stayed out once till 2 a.m. with no explanation. We attempted to subsist on Pringles and mustard, but this got old quickly. At the point when I considered a goldfish and dried camellia salad, I knew we were in a maelstrom of maledom.

About midway through the trip, I received a phone call from my wife. After I told her we were fine (though smelly, starving and bearded), she mentioned the airports were insane! The rental car people tried to double their rate without warning. The driving, the navigation, and the loading and unloading of their luggage were such a hassle.

It occurred to me that these were all things I'd have handled if I had been with them. She followed up my thought with, I wish you were here.

Me, my son, the dog, the fish and a few crispy plants all repeated that phrase to her. Awww, says the clearly-moved audience. But it's true.

We all have our roles, jobs, specialties. We play our part on the team. When you don't play your part on the team, the team fumbles, falls or fails entirely. When a team member is out, that absence had better be felt or somebody ain't that valuable. Oh sure, I'm a fan of cross-training to cover gaps, but it takes a trainer to do it, which is another gift entirely.

In our business, you can take the team connection to individuals and entire departments. Their cooperation and mutual skill sets must mesh. But do they?

Seeds of Contention

Does your Accounting department assist the Sales department or feel they're a bunch of irresponsible overpaid babies?

Does your Web Marketing department assist those in traditional marketing or feel they're outdated has-beens trying to resurrect the Stone Age?

Does your CSR assist the technicians or get sick of constantly having to make excuses for their tardiness, sloppiness and callback rate for which the CSRs indirectly get blamed?

And lets go ahead and get brutal here: Does the boss assist all the team members in letting them do their jobs well or does he eternally represent task interference and complaints on minor things while taking home a major paycheck?

Do you have cooperation or contention? And have you ever asked? I'd consider either question as among the most valuable a team leader can ever utter.

True Confession Time: About a year ago, Hudson Ink embarked on a new product/service line. As is too often the case in my Ready, Fire, Aim mentality, there were some teething pains. Skill sets were still forming. Roles were unclear. Some feelings got hurt. A door or two got slammed. There were tough conversations.

Yet in the depths of this learning curve and from our different vantage points, a shared destination loomed into view. It's as if we all began taking turns at the wheel. One did the organizing, another the technical, another the marketing, another the sales funnel, another the customer service.

Respect restored. Roles refined. Goals defined. It was beautiful.

Midway through the year, I encourage you to look at your company goals. Are you getting closer or farther away? To what team are your employees assigned, and do they have the talent and drive to reach their goals? If they're merely ineffective bystanders giving you the false comfort of everything's okay as you glance off the iceberg, put them in a rowboat. If they're willing to make the tough choices and either admit or stretch their limits, then keep em.

No matter what, your role is calling.

The 7 Proven Steps to Empower More Referrals

Andrew Leslie is a man they don’t make anymore. Hard-working, Cajun born, duty driven. If the deep caramel skin (that’s about as smooth) and the tell-tale accent reeling quick witted tales didn’t make you question his age, his overbooked work ethic would.

Though he’s just days from an age 65 retirement, I’d suggest cardio training if you tried to keep up with him. I’ve seen his personal shadow almost give up in frustration.

He had a full time career with J.R. Smith, helping assemble a few million specialty plumbing products, then moved into receiving, spanning as he told me in his thick accent,  “23 years, 5 months, 2 days and about 6 hours… or thereabouts.” Andrew is rarely without wit or supporting evidence.

Yet his “other” full time job was being a father to son, Eric, who’s with the Federal Railroad and daughter Rachelle, vice president of a bank. Andrew also unhesitatingly calls his nieces Kerry and Kimberly – both business owners – his “daughters” since they raised them as well. His wife, Eva, was equally active, but Fibromyalgia and Arthritis had other plans, enlisting Andrew as supportive caretaker for the last 14 years.

And his other full time job was lawn maintenance. He probably did other things, but I am getting tired of listing them all. Yet atop all this…

He was our lawn maintenance guy. Did it by himself too. Pulled a neatly-crafted and packed trailer behind his trusty silver Dodge Ram truck. Weed eaters, blowers, and a Snapper Mower than was more an extension of his hands and feet than a separate machine.

Many a Saturday, I’d see Andrew, turning a zero radius circle around one of too many of our tall southern pine trees with the fluidity of an ice skater (yet thankfully in khaki instead of spandex). Where he willed, the Snapper went.

And if our yard wasn’t enough, he had the neighbors to the left. And the right. And two doors down, plus the next one, and a couple more he’d hit on his way home. Master of efficiency, he had to “disengage” from one customer who was well off the route. “I had to tell her the drive was too much for an old man,” he said to me once, adding “She wasn’t all that darn nice either.” I laughed, but he wasn’t done. “I truly hope she doesn’t move to a yard that’s more convenient.”

You can tell by the ‘connection’ to customers that if Andrew got one job, he’d get all the other ones he wanted, where he wanted, at the price he said. Shopping was over. Why?

Because Andrew’s referrals were so enthusiastic you’d half question if there was some pyramid scheme of sudden riches coming to the referring party.

He got jobs – at will – in our neighborhood of yard-crazy people (historic neighborhood in the deep south, need I say more?) that is regularly patrolled by the ‘big’ companies. Their postcards were tossed, their TV commercials rendered us blind, the radio ads made us deaf. All we knew when prodded was, “Andrew does our yard,” usually recited like unwavering, slobbering robots. And we were.

Until Andrew retired from us.

Finding his “replacement” will be in word only. Oh sure, the “new” guy may have a little more bounce in his step, some more “moderness” to the approach, and potentially more eagerness for additional clients. But he ain’t gonna be Andrew, and that’s a fact.

The beauty of Andrew’s legacy, only briefly shared herein, has a marketing thread of fascination for me in that he scored 100% of the jobs he wanted, sans price-shopping.

Here’s how he did it -

1.     He “Advertised” his work while doing his work. A neat truck, parked out front, with good well maintained equipment was better than an interstate of billboards. If you’re NOT doing this, plus yard signs, and/or parking pylons, and/or door hangers, and/or windshield signage, how are the neighbors to know you’re ‘endorsed’?

2.     Focused, targeted marketing efforts. Andrew controlled his jobs instead of the other way around. Sure, he could’ve gotten jobs in multiple inconvenient locations, but he focused on a particular customer, in a particular area, and “owned” that area. You think neighbors don’t talk?

3.     Pricing insensitivity. Andrew could price a job efficiently since he had to move his truck a few feet, spreading the ‘windshield time’ over the adjacent yards, where others had to quote from a ‘rate sheet’ that unwisely assumed a trip charge regardless of relative proximity. Smart. Yet, his increased efficiency went into his pocket, not ours, because he followed these steps! Double smart.

4.     Established a Referral chain. Each new job came with a blessing and endorsement from the previous. This was the ‘first step’ in a three step process that followed with…

5.     Asked a simple question of the potential referrer: “If I introduce myself to your neighbors, is it okay if I tell them that I do your work?” Who’s gonna say ‘no’ to that? No one did. Thus the near simultaneous 3^rd step…

6.     Qualified Introduction: Andrew would introduce himself as being the lawn maintenance professional for and wondered, “I love this area and these great lawns. If you’re looking for someone to take care of it, I’d be honored. The said it’d be okay to call them to ask anything you’d like about my service.”

Generally a phone call would ensue, which began the blathering, which ended in “SOLD!” Even if no phone call ensued, the “implied endorsement” was good enough. (Remember this when you blanket an area. Your trucks, signage, follow-up calls, radius mailings are all implied endorsements.)

7.     Regular re-endorsement and relationship building – We got an invoice monthly, sometimes with a hand written note (bill stuffer anyone?) and a Christmas card every year. It’s the small stuff that can make the strongest glue. His regular recontact even in the months we didn’t see him regularly, reinforced his presence, our loyalty, and the subsequent discarding of competing effort. This is massively important. If you’re not ‘recontacting’ clients, they’re not as much ‘yours’ as you hope.

If Andrew had been a “company” of more than one, I’d have recommended all the above, but suggested using media to broaden the message. Thus, my advice to you is to “multiply the effort” through media and “multiply the results” as well.

The message remains the same…

Your referrals will not “just happen” in the numbers you could get if you “made them happen”. Andrew made his happen. You must target, ask, follow up, and perform as promised, then repeat. If you do this for 23 years, 5 months, 2 days and about 6 hours… or thereabouts, you can grow your referrals and retire happy too.

Happy retirement Andrew. Me and my overgrown yard already miss you.

Questions for You:

■ What “ACTIONS” do you take to ensure that one customer leads to many?  I’d suggest a 7 step follow up procedure, beginning on the first day following a new customer contact, spread over the next 120 days, with 2-4 ‘programmed’ contacts until they moved, died, or told you to go away.

■ What “SYSTEM” is in place to make sure the actions don’t get “forgotten”? This is a biggee. Our “Endless Referrals” program is designed to be just that, putting a single person in charge of this (should take 20 minutes a month) to enact.