We’ve reached the next and very important phase in this journey in developing your business’s DNA Competitive Advantage… This is when we start to bring everything together!

What we’ve been doing so far has been developing a new way of thinking, a new mindset , getting you to move from behind the counter or your desk and see life from the customer’s perspective.

It’s all about them. Help them first. Be in their world first, and you’ll benefit from that.

If it is all about you, they won’t care what you have to offer.

But here’s the challenge: you need them to care about you and to do that, they need to like you. And they’ll like you if they feel you have their interests at heart.

They’ll like you even more if they share similar values and philosophy. This is in particular regard to why you’re in business in the first place beyond financial results (we covered this off in my second article “Exploring Your DNA Foundation”).

 

BE YOUR BRAND BY DEFINING ITS PERSONALITY

You can’t make this stuff up – you have to be authentic. You have to be your brand! How you do this is by defining your brand personality. How to do this? Look at the brand personality diagram to the right.

This brand personality diagram is a visual reminder of your brand’s characteristics. It serves as one of the main benchmarks for your business decisions around maintaining your business’s reputation through all of the interactions you have with your customers and stakeholders.

Each category represents a personality characteristic which you want your brand’s reputation to be built on.

Read carefully the following about how to fill out each category with the characteristics of your brand.

• The essence of the brand (Internal Perspective) – This is the core of what your business does; it is the benchmark on which everything is judged. Find 1-3 words maximum.
• Brand experience (Customer Experience) – At each and every touch point, the experience the customers have leaves them with the same emotional feeling each time. Again, 1-3 words maximum.
• The way we work (Internal Perspective) – These values govern the way everyone who works at your company is expected to behave. Find a maximum of 6 values.
• Why should a customer choose the brand? (Customer Perspective) – Captures the reason why customers would choose to your brand over other brands. Use 20-25 words maximum.
• How should we support the brand? (Internal Perspective) – A brand is a living and conscious identity where all stakeholders play their part to ensure the brand stays relevant for existing and future customers. Demonstrate how they can contribute to supporting the brand. Max 6 actions.
• How does the brand make the customer feel? (Customer Perspective) – At its heart a brand only truly exists as a perception, a feeling. Negative or positive feelings are very powerful drivers in purchase decision making. It is very important that customers have positive feelings (5-8 maximum!).
• What does the brand say about the customer? (Customer Perspective) – Why do customers choose to purchase one particular brand as opposed to another when they’re both very similar? The reason is by association, it’s what it says about them, the values they hold, how they want to be seen and what they want to be known for. 5-8 perspectives maximum.

This model is designed to help you capture your thinking and then edit your ideas down to a single word or simple statements that are bold, compelling, and “ownable” in terms of how you want you and your staff to behave as your brand.

Before you start, refer back to all the work we have done to date. The information you have already developed will provide you with most of the answers for each category. Or it will provide the reference material for you to be able to generate the answers for yourself.

The last thing to remember – enjoy doing this!

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Michael Major can help you explore and leverage your inherent competitive advantage. Follow his articles over all of the 12 issues (this is article 8 by the way), answer his questions and email Michael on connect@7degree.net for feedback. If you send answers for all 12 issues you can be one of four people to win a free half day consultation with Michael.