1. Analyze

Now that 2012 and the holiday season is behind us, take time to analyze your business over the past year. What went well? Which areas were the most profitable? Make a list of the accomplishments you are particularly proud of and think about how each part of the process made it a success. On the flip side, did you have any failures? Remember, failures are not always negative unless you don’t take time to analyze and learn from them. Write these down as well and determine how they could have been handled differently to form a positive outcome. (If you have staff, steps 1-5 would be a good team discussion and team-building exercise.)

2. Strategize

You’ve identified successes and failures and profitability and losses over the past year; now what are you going to do moving forward in 2013? Set goals based on your company’s strengths, key profit centers, market research and potential and the strengths of individual team members. (Of course, we’d recommend that these goals also be on target with your brand. And if you don’t have a brand make that a priority – see step 3*.) Encourage your team to jot down professional goals and once you’ve identified them, do what you can as a leader to help them attain their goal even if it’s outside of their current role. A competent, passionate employee can be your best strategy!

3. Prioritize

Start prioritizing your goals starting with your big goal. Smaller goals will usually come to surface as you start planning the tactics of your bigger goal. Prioritize the necessary steps for each goal determining how to make them become a reality. Create a timeline for each goal. In doing so, you are more likely to stay on task and you might also discover some overlap among your collective goals, thus making you more efficient in the execution.

* All strategies and priorities should be brand-based. A brand will not only make your business appear professional, it will shape your organization’s culture, consumer perceptions and act as a plan to drive future marketing tactics.

4. Organize

Being well organized makes you more efficient and helps reduce stress. Whether it’s cleaning up your desk, sorting through hundreds of emails or keeping better files, being organized now will save you time later. Consider setting aside 5-10 minutes a day to organize your workspace. You will be more prepared for upcoming tasks and have a clearer vision of project details.

5. Socialize

Being social is probably one of the most important resolutions. Part of being social is being a good communicator. Communicate first and foremost with your team to generate trust and camaraderie. Schedule an occasional lunch, happy hour or organize a company party to energize and engage your team. Then get out there and socialize with the rest of the world. As my wise business partner always says, “Make your world bigger, not smaller.” Don’t just socialize with anyone or any group, however – be selective about the groups you surround yourself with making sure they are positive and rewarding.

It’s the design that sells our friend’s cupcakes and, ironically, hardly ever is she questioned about the taste of the cupcakes themselves. What is perceived as beautiful on the outside is presumably delicious on the inside. The same goes for the design of your brand. Oftentimes, your company’s logo design is the first expression of your brand to be observed by a potential client; and, it’s the only element of your brand that can create a visual impression. The other parts of your brand, including your logo and identity, help foster an emotional connection. The client might not know anything about your business, but good design will lead them through the front door of your business or onto the next page of your website.

Design seamlessly transitions clients past the first step in the decision-making process without them being cognizant of the conversion. This is something all successful brands have done; and, the most successful brands have delivered on every other aspect of the brand promise including how they made you feel when you walked through the front door, the follow-up phone call, or the card you received wishing you a prosperous year.

Good design makes your company appear valid. Have you ever visited an online business that had a poorly designed website? Chances are you left immediately and moved on to the next site until you found one that was believable and made you feel comfortable making a purchase or placing a phone call. Poor design should never be the obstacle of your company’s brand because it affects all other deliverables. You may have a great product or service, but the customer will have a difficult time understanding or buying into it if your appearance doesn’t reflect what you offer.

A cohesive, well-designed brand will help eliminate confusion, generate new business and give you an opportunity to tout your product or service, which you may have otherwise been reluctant to do. It will also help support your brand story and then encourage you to live your brand both internally and externally. Without design, your brand is just a traditional yellow cupcake with white icing. That might not sound all that bad, but it’s surely not going to stand out among your competitors.

Still sleep deprived from staying up late and watching the Olympics. This time it was the track and field events with one of the features being Lolo Jones in the 100-meter hurdles. She finished fourth, just missed being on the medal platform. Leading up to the Olympics, she went very public about her personal beliefs relative to remaining a virgin until she married. Last Sunday, the New York Times ran an article about her pre-Olympic hype surpassing her athletic talents.

Check out the post race interview aired on the Today Show the very next morning.  Because we write about brand, and not sports or peoples’ lifestyles, here is the issue. Lolo Jones is a world-class athlete, attractive and led a hardscrabble life leading up to the Olympics. She has a great brand story to tell, and given that she performed honorably, there are opportunities for her. Lolo, get an agent that understands personal brands, and if have one already, get to work breaking it down to a personal brand essence that marketers will understand and embrace.

The rapid emergence of social media, both business and personal, has created an environment whereby it is very difficult to protect the brand sponsors. Sophie Woodrooffe’s article, “Brands winning big at London Olympics” in RAGAN’S PR Daily  is a good read if you are wondering how social media and brand usage can or cannot work together. It does take preparation.

Whether you want to grow the business by casting a bigger net into new markets or you’re building a very niche business, applying the mentor concept to your business will bring results. Your primary mentor should be your business partner. If you have a small company, it could be the co-owner. If it is a large corporation, and you are responsible for a product line, partner with an associate within the product group. You can have more than one mentor. There are options available to you beyond your immediate organization for developing mentor relationships. Join associations where you can connect with other like-minded people. Stay connected to your industry and to thought leaders, but make sure you are fussy about the wagon to which you choose to hook your star.

Now, let’s insert brand into the picture. Your brand essence document can become a metaphor for one of your mentors. As you discuss business opportunities and challenges with your business partner, make sure you use your brand as guide to evaluate new products, markets, new employee hires and all of the options you are considering. Make your brand be another partner at the table.

Working on the business is more about the future of the company. To be a futurist for your company, you need to shake up your routine and become an explorer.

Successful companies have an explorer mentality that takes them on a journey to find new products, new markets and new customers. Be curious – take time to smell the flowers – which was the philosophy of a 1930’s professional golfer, Walter Hagen. He thought it was important to take the time to look around, to enjoy life. Use this philosophy to help you slow down and do the strategic thinking about growing the business and how you are measuring up against your brand promise. While you are taking the time to think about the business, add focus. Take the time to stare at the flowers. Look for the details. Call your smallest customer and your largest customer and chat with them about the products and services you offer. This is not a sales call, this is about picking their brain for new ideas. The large customer will be grateful and the small customer will remember you forever.

Take apart your competitors’ products to see how they work. Drive down a new road. Talk to your newest employee and ask them where the company should be headed. Read a book outside of your business zone; you’ve probably read enough business books. To get you in the exploration mode, make the next book you read be the biography of a great explorer – Sebastian Cabot or Giovanni de Verrazano – or read the history of the Brooklyn Bridge. This was an engineering fete that the world claimed could not be done. Many experts predicted it would fall into the East River. It is an amazing story of a famous German engineer, John Roebling, and the city of New York together exploring a way to join New York City and Brooklyn.

Brand is also an action item. It is everything you do. Suppose you are a clothing retailer. You probably spend advertising dollars promoting the merchandise you carry and seasonal sales events, which all set a tone about your stores. Whatever the tone, it should be reflected when a customer crosses the lease line. If not, you have created a disconnect in the buying process. A very interesting specialty retailer is Rockler Woodworking and Hardware. Their brand is they have everything for the serious woodworker – hardware, accessories, specialty lumber, tools and finishing products. They deliver on their brand promise by always having a wide range of products on sale in the store and online. They demonstrate this in their quarterly action-packed circular that features sale items that range from a silicone glue brush for $3.95 to a table saw for $1,995. It screams, “We have everything.” And when you walk in one of their stores, it looks like they have about million product lines. If you never take advantage of their sale items, you still know that when you need a crucial tool for your project, like a router bit or measuring device for cutting the perfect dado, Rockler is the place to go.

Medical device companies, though restricted to some degree in their marketing by government regulations do a great job of living their brand. Their expertise is obviously expressed in their high tech medical devices that save lives. It is also expressed in their highly trained reps that provide technical advice to the physicians.

Regardless of your industry or product category, disconnects in the marketplace are brand killers. If your advertising makes a claim about a certain type of customer service, and that service is not available, you have created a brand killing disconnect.

You may have established your brand in the marketing or strategic planning department, but it will not work unless you take it to the streets. Every person that you employ and everyone that touches your product before it gets to the end user needs to be educated about your brand and held accountable.

The most exciting and attractive people live life to the fullest. They seem to create a real buzz about them. Make sure you live your brand to the fullest. You will get everyone buzzing about your company, from employee to consumer.

Your prices create definite perceptions in the marketplace. Good marketers know this and employ very shrewd pricing strategies. It has been particularly difficult to develop a pricing strategy during the last three years due to tough economic times. Of course the temptation has been to lower the price to increase revenues. Not always a terrible idea if there is sufficient profit built into your equation, and there are other reasons for the price reduction, such as an over supply of goods.

Beyond simple revenue development, here are a few issues to consider as you examine prices and set your brand-building price strategy.
• Consistently cutting prices and offering deals trains the marketplace to wait to buy until you offer the next deal. However, there is a positive side to offering deals on a consistent basis. It can be a pricing strategy that says, “Something is always on sale,” which can build retail traffic. Be careful about it, and be very strategic. Remember, there is a big difference between something is always on sale verses everything is always on sale. Choose carefully.
• Establish a pricing structure that delivers profitability that will enable future growth and new product development. Every business and every product has a life cycle. In this world of high tech, the life cycles get shorter than just a few years ago. Product improvements and replacement have become a fact of life. Businesses grow because they keep getting better.
• Consider your value proposition. You want your customers to believe that they are receiving something that is equal to or more than what they are paying for your products. The strongest value propositions consist of two elements. One element is the product or service the customer receives. Very simply, it’s what they get. The other part is how the customer feels when they use your product. This is all about emotion, which is the strongest link people have to brands. Make sure you have both “get” and “feel” in your value proposition.
• Keep your competition close. Know their prices as well as your own. Analyze why their prices are either higher or lower than yours. As you do so, evaluate their brand – including product quality, distribution, advertising, customer service, market share and reputation. These factors will help understand how fair your prices are in the marketplace.
• Targeted pricing throughout your product line needs to be very strategic. For example, if you have a very broad product line and the competition is vigorous only in a few of your product segments, this is where you can be aggressive, especially if it means capturing business for the rest of your line.
• Geography is worth considering. Certain areas of the county are more price sensitive than others. This is true if your product is freight intensive, or you need to meet the price of products like yours in a certain area to be competitive. But be careful as to not violate Federal Trade Commission guidelines on discriminatory pricing.

Price is an important part of your brand. Make sure it matches up with a strong value proposition.

The key employees in your organization, at one time or another are required to convince others of the merits of their ideas. Think about the old-fashioned suggestion box located in the factory. The suggestions most often embraced and utilized by management were those suggestions that worked, had benefits to the organization and were convincing. For example, insert an extra inspection step at a key point in the manufacturing process and there will be fewer product rejections in final inspections, thereby reducing manufacturing time and saving money. Very convincing indeed. Or consider the IT department that suggests ways to better manage data, saving time and money, and requires employees to make changes in the way they enter data. Because IT is asking people to change work habits, they have a selling job to do, and it better be mighty convincing because most people have a resistance to change.

And who best to do the convincing? It would be the IT department because it is always better for the person with the idea to present their own work. The IT department knows all the benefits of the new system (to the employee, the company and the customers), they are confidant it will work and they know how to make it work. IT should tie all they know about the new system into the organization’s brand story thereby making it relevant to all the stakeholders and consequently more acceptable. This assumes that IT and everyone else in the organization knows the brand story. If not, top management needs to get busy and present their own work – the brand story they’ve developed.

Effective selling requires training and successful organizations invest in training their employees from all departments how to sell, or at the very least how to make effective presentations. This brings us back to the sales department, which, in most cases receives formal sales training. As a rookie sales rep, I constantly received sales training that included territory management, cold calls, presentations, product knowledge, closing the sale, etc. What was missing in most of the sales training was the brand story. Telling the brand story in all selling situations adds value, makes the pitch relevant to the prospect and provides better results.

Effective selling is energizing. Ever see a sales person who just made a sale be anything but happy? Create a sales training program in your company for all your key presenters and make sure it includes your brand story.

A good example of a corporation’s respect for the important work that employees do is expressed in GE Aviation’s current ad campaign. You can view the long version of the campaign in a YouTube video from GE Aviation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySwp12Rp8Jk.

In our first installment of the 7 rules for building successful brands, we recommended a brand audit. Here’s another reason for a brand audit. Determine your brand promise to the customer and make sure everyone in your organization is acting it out. The culture of respect will grow and you will have an organization focused on success.