Would you fire your sales rep if they:

• Show up to potential client meetings dressed poorly or inappropriately
• Confuse or offend prospects with mixed messaging, or say things that are completely irrelevant
• Make your prospects think you provide a product or service that’s completely different to what you do
• Give the impression that you are cheap or inferior quality offering
• Make such a poor impression that they drive your prospects to your competition?

If you are like me, the answer would be YES, in a heartbeat! And in getting rid of that employee you’d be saving yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages and lost sales.

Today, your most important sales employee is your branding. This is because prospects make 60% of the buying decision without even engaging with anyone at your company. This means they are making critical judgements purely based on what they see, which is your branding and marketing. We need to start thinking about branding in this context.

When you reread the bullet points above with your branding in mind, thinking about your website, business card, brochures, signage, social, advertising and anything else that’s in the market place with your branding and messaging on it, would you fire your brand?

Firing is perhaps a little harsh. Like with a promising staff member you can create and implement a development plan. With your brand that development plan would be a brand refresh, or a rebrand, to realign all your marketing collateral for consistent and highly relevant messaging.

Great branding should make the ideal, relevant and memorable impression on your customers at each and every client touch point. You cannot always control what will be the first brand element your client comes into contact with for your brand, creating that hard to change “first impression”. It is critical have every branded component just right and with a consistent, relevant brand message.

If your brand needs a refresh you are in good company. Great brands respond to the market and evolve to stay relevant.

Is it time for your brand to do just that?

With an experienced team of branding specialists to assist you, the process and the results will be rewarding, both for sales and company culture.