Create enthusiastic brand-driven employees and create more sales!
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Many brands lack enthusiasm in their culture which can actually be reflected in the bottom line. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” Typically on the job, people have a basic energy level which is one of acceptance. Acceptance just means that you’re content with your position but excitement about it is, in many cases, non-existent until it's time to go to lunch or meet your friends in the break room. This is the level at which most businesses operate. Successful, evolving companies must operate at a much higher level.
Here are some key considerations for building a culture of enthusiasm…
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Assess how well your employees
understand your brand and therefore what they’re getting behind when they come
to work each day. By assessing their understanding,
you’ll discover where gaps exist between your understanding and theirs. Brand confusion, or just a lack of understanding of your brand can be a factor in compromising the level of enthusiasm in the work environmnet.
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Act on
your newly obtained brand insight. Now that you’ve gathered some
great intelligence about the level of understanding of your brand internally…you
can take steps to closing those gaps in understanding. The goal is to be able to
accomplish two things:
1) Articulate exactly who you are as a company, why you exist and what makes you different.
2) Back up what you say with proof. If you can’t prove, for example, that your technology, process, service or what have you is better, then your people won’t be able to get behind your company as passionately as you would like.
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Review all of your communications to see
how well they fit within the brand you wish to convey. Look at
your website, printed pieces of all types including any fliers your branch
managers, LO’s or other sales reps are handing out…everything. Make a commitment
to bringing them all in line with the same look, feel and language that
reinforces your brand. Establish policies and procedures with respect to future
communication pieces not developed by the corporate office so you can monitor
and approve them.
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Celebrate
your brand! Create a company-wide event that’s fun and engaging
where you will unveil a new brand essence statement derived from your initial
research and subsequent meetings.
Lead up to this big unveil with excitement so you can rally everyone and get everyone's support behind it. This new brand essence statement must clearly articulate who you are, what makes you different and why you exist so that all of your people understand what you’re about and know what they’re getting behind when they come to work each day. The unveil must be company-wide to build excitement, camaraderie and a sense of team. What it CANNOT be is a memo distributed to employees by email and hangs in the break room. It requires your engaging, dynamic personality and enthusiasm…live, in-person! -
Make sure
your people understand how their individual roles play a role in moving the
company vision forward and outward into your target audience.
Employees who understand their purpose in a company are proven to have much
higher levels of job satisfaction.
Essentially there are 2 touch point categories with your target audience…primary and secondary. Primary touch points are sales people, your receptionist, website…anyone or anything that has direct customer contact. Secondary touch points include loan processors, IT department, bookkeeping…all the people who work “behind the scenes” in addition to the technology that makes it all work smoothly. These people have a very important role because without them doing their part, everything else falls apart.
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Look beyond the internal brand
launch. Launching your brand and getting everyone marching to
the beat of the same drummer is important. Equally important is sharing with
everyone your vision for the future! Many brands focus on the here and now…they
hit a certain level of success, become complacent and fail to evolve further
which eventually leads to their demise as competitors surpass them.
Be sure to have a vision for the future. Then, get your people involved in moving that vision forward by establishing what we call “momentum groups.” Momentum groups are designed to lead charges in specific areas. For example, you might have one momentum group established that has the responsibility of improving communications with business referrers and the borrower throughout all steps of the loan process. A part of this could be integrating an application that can be downloaded to the iPhone that’s customizable. Or, depending on your vision, may need to be built from scratch according to your exact specifications. Another momentum group could be established to assess all marketing piece, purging all items that don't fit and updating others.
Make sure everyone gets involved in pre-determined momentum groups. This will engage them with your brand directly so they understand their work has a direct effect on the company and how the company could even potentially change the market and raise audience expectations! Setting a new standard is the holy grail, right?
way in driving an enthusiastic
culture at your company.Unfortunately, not all will follow suit. There are those that may breed cynicism about whether or not you’re really going to change because “nothing ever changes around here,” or some may simply not accept the change because they would rather not be challenged to do anything different than they have been for years. Watch out for these people and take action with them immediately. Great things are happening and if they don’t want to believe it or take part in it for whatever reason, they will create their own little set of misguided “talking points” that they’ll share with other employees over lunch, in the break room and at other venues, possibly even online. So just cut ties with them as soon as you find them if you don’t think you can bring them around. If you don't, they will hurt your new brand right from the start.
If you are committed to a change in culture and creating one of true enthusiasm, then your commitment must be unquestionable. The enthusiasm you express will infiltrate the ranks of your company. Be sure to take advantage of opportunities to praise accomplishment, encourage feedback and let your people know that you’re open to any new, great ideas that meet with the company vision.
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