MODA | EXECUTIVE EATEN BY SHARKS
Building the Employee Brand – Don’t let your people, or yourself, be eaten by sharks.
Hey company! Time to build your people. Stop complaining about the millennials – build them. Stop complaining about your employees – show them what it means to communicate your brand and value. They can’t do what they haven’t been shown.
If you don’t show them how to build their own brand while communicating the company brand – eventually, they will make a mistake and be eaten by sharks. Sharks can be the media, clients, colleagues and shareholders.
Highly successful companies know that the most influential brand touch points are the people responsible for delivering the entire brand experience within and outside of the company. We have trained some of the smartest teams in the US – who were losing to competition because the message they were sending was one of incompetence or lack of care.
Company: Ask yourself.
- Do you know what your brand is?
- Do you have a brand guide?
- Have you communicated the meaning of your guide to your employees and helped them to see that they are a part of your corporate fabric?
- Or…is it all about the bottom line and the performance only model?
Did you hear about the guy who showed up in a white, wrinkled polo to meet the President? Not a good day. Your employees need to be shown how to have a strong personal brand and how to represent your company brand – every single day. The poor guy in the polo should have known better – wrinkled is not business casual and he knew he was the only person chosen to represent his entire company…a company that happens to be innovative. Nothing innovative about a white, wrinkled polo. It says sloppy, out of touch and I don’t care. Now, brand is more than image but it always starts there. Moral of the story – the CEO had to clean up their image internationally after this huge blunder – instead of bragging to the world that they were the only company chosen to discuss with the President of the United States what they are doing in the solar industry. This is what I call a missed opportunity of epic proportion and an executive that was eaten by media sharks.
Banks, service firms, law firms and every company in Nashville – you have competition. You may have the best teams of anyone in town, but you are losing market share because of the personal brands of your employees. I recently saw a picture of a bank employee in a publication in Atlanta – sloppy, sloppy and sloppy. Lost opportunity. If an employee is not trained to know what is expected of them, disaster and confusion are around the bend. It is not enough to have a brand manual in a world where brand can be decimated with one poor communication signal including behavior, presentation, speech, image, fashion, presence, email, vocal tone and non-verbal communication. Relationships can quickly dull and sales are lost. People define brand attributes differently, and to achieve consistency at all communication levels, employees must know what the brand expects of them for the company to succeed as well as help each individual reach their own goals of success personally and professionally.
We work with countless companies each year around the globe. Most companies do not realize that they have a workforce that is either building the company brand or killing it with every interaction they have with each other, the community or their clients. Don’t be the company who sends the guy in the white, wrinkled polo – ensure consistency always, in all ways.
Contact us today for more information on Personal Brand Coaching, Fashion/Image Consulting,
Corporate Seminars, Workshops, Keynotes and Brand Guides.
Email info@modaimageconsulting.com or call 615.656.4279 for more information about individual or corporate services.