What’s your name worth to you? Our guide to building profits
Businesses with good brands and reputations make more money because they retain customers longer, attract better employees and sell more, at a higher margin.
Brand is what you say about yourself – signage, marketing material and websites. Reputation is what others say about when you are out of earshot and is mainly built up from people’ experience of you.
So, what’s your name worth to you?
Your brand and reputation is the way you deal with customers, respond to problems, treat your employees and the way you strive to under promise and over deliver.
Here’s how to earn more by getting your brand and reputation in shape.
Want to be seen as an ‘expert’? In which case how do your employees demonstrate that expertise when working with a customer. Do your marketing materials back this up?
Want to be seen as ‘efficient? Then do you get things right, first time? Do you finish jobs on time and is paperwork sorted properly?
Want to be seen as ‘trusted’? Does the main contractor have to waste time chasing your business and employees to get things done?
Want to be seen as ‘professional’? Do your buildings, vehicles, signs and stationery look right? Do your drivers cut people up on the road and are your employees smart? What’s it like for visitors when they arrive at your reception?
Of course, price is vital too, but ‘cheap’ isn’t the same as ‘value’ and the race to be cheapest can lead to insolvency.
Brand building helps your bottom line. Long-standing customers are well aware of your brand values, but prospective customers will only know you from what they see and hear about you. And so to earn more, you simply set about making sure your business’s brand and reputation stands for the right thing and then make sure you are getting the message over every way you can.
Your Streetwisesubbie Brand Building checklist is below.
1. Recognise that every business has a brand and reputation – yours included
2. Work with your management team and employees to understand what that brand really is, and what you really want it to be
3. Make a list of your brand values
4. Think about how your existing customers benefit from these brand values
5. Choose what you believe is your strongest brand value and then decide how this best benefits your customers
6. Make this strongest brand value your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). It’s more than likely the one key thing that differentiates you from your competitors
7. Work out where you live up to these values, and where you don’t. What needs to change to make sure you are walking the talk
8. Now, think about the types of prospects you want to reach. Are you happy simply working for Contractors, or could working directly for end-users be more profitable?
9. Identify your real prospects and list them. You may have to source them through, say, ‘Top Service’, or ‘ABI-Barbour’, both of which are StreetwiseSubbie partners, or through a mailing list owner
10. Plan a programme of communications to these prospect businesses. This could be by telephone, post, email. However you reach them, sell them your benefits!
And don’t forget, if you can’t do all this yourself, then StreetwiseSubbie is their to help, now. Just give us a call!
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