Building Your Brand to Expand, Grow, & Thrive ft. Pete Canalichio

Hey, Mark. Well, here we are, another week on our roundtable.

Hey, Michelle. Yeah, it's Friday again. Awesome.

I know, I'm pretty excited about this one. We have with us a really special guest and I've really been looking forward to this particular one. Mark.

Yeah, yeah, Pete is an expert in branding. I think everybody's gonna really enjoy this and got a lot of great, great content, a lot of great ideas to cover. I think people are gonna find really useful.

So, Mark, I wanna ask you something because I was so. I, I was impressed and excited actually to see your video. Let's talk a little bit about a video that you created in preparation for this week's session. So what you did was you created this movie and what Mark did was if you haven't seen it yet, you need to look it up. It'll be on LinkedIn, but also, I believe, on our website. And he pulled together a whole bunch of brands and talked about them and I was kind of impressed. But talk to us a little bit about what you did, Mark, and what that was like.

Well, I thought instead of just talking about our guest Pete this week and what we're going to do, I thought, you know, instead of just having a static background, wouldn't it be great to have different brands in the background as I'm talking? So I just went around town and stood in front of a few signs and, you know, talked about the different parts of our session today and then I stitched them all together.

So did you have any interesting experiences along the way? I can't imagine because you had like seven or eight different brands. You're stopping on the side of the road. I can just imagine this now.

Well, I'm driving around, so it's very scientific. So I got in my car and I said, okay, I'm going to drive like for, you know, five mile radius and just see what kind of big brands I see. And I'm just going to stop and get out and do it when I see those. Those brands. So I did. So, yeah, there was one. I was in front of this Starbucks sign and I was waiting in. What you realize, and you don't know is how noisy it is out there on the road, right? Because every big sign is. Is kind of on a big road, right, With a lot of traffic and traffic is noisy. So I'm trying to do the whole video. And there's this guy in this mower down the other side of the street going up, and I'm waiting for him to go back. And then I did it. And he goes up and I'm okay, he's all done with that side. He comes over to my side and he starts mowing right next to me.

So you had to wait a while, huh?

I had to find the right spots to do it, yeah.

And this would be why you were late to that big meeting we had?

I think it was because I was doing imovie to put it all together. And that was the most amazing part, is I was actually able, as a novice, to do imovie and put. Put all those pieces together.

So I only have one question to ask you about that. When I asked you if you would please show me how to use imovie, your answer to me was, we have other people that can do that for you. Michelle, what did you exactly mean?

I'm trying to maintain my competitive edge here in our relationship.

Okay, we'll see how far. How far that goes. I think we can give it just one more minute.

Yep.

Before we get started. Hey, Pete, we. How are you doing today?

I'm doing terrific. Thank you guys for having me on today. I'm excited to share a little bit about Brandy.

Oh, gosh, we're really excited. So, Pete, didn't you recently just. I see you've got a. What's your shirt that you have on? It looks like. I see navy on there. Tell me what that is.

Yeah, it's a navy shirt I got at the Naval Academy a short while ago. My daughter Eleanor is a rising second class or junior at the Navy.

Wow. How exciting. So is she back at school? How are things going with school for her?

She's so grateful to be back. She just went back on Monday after five months. When you go into a military academy like the Naval Academy, you want to be where you're supposed to be. And she had to give up all of her summer training and she had to do online classes in the summer. She took electrical engineering and labor economics. That was her summer. And now she'll spend two weeks in her room quarantining to make sure that she is not going to be sick and get any of the rest of the brigade sick. And then probably mid August or so, they'll get back to classes. So. But she's happy. She's excited.

Wonderful.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Mark, what do you say? You think we should get started?

We're ready to kick it off. Yeah. Well, welcome, everybody, to this week's Sales Globe Rethink Sales Roundtable. Glad to have you on. I'm Mark Dinola with Sales Globe, and with me is Michelle Seeger.

Hey there. Welcome.

So let's tell them a little bit about who we are, Michelle.

So Sales Globe, we are what we call a problem solving firm for sales. What does that mean? That means that we solve your biggest sales challenges and we consult with people and with companies in areas like market, market insights and sales strategy, their coverage model, and finally what we call enablement. So how they pay their people and tools and technology to get them. And today what we're going to do is in solving the greatest challenges that companies have you heard me mention, we look at market and the economic impact that global economies have on companies. And so in solving for that, today we're going to talk about branding, aren't we, Mark?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of an exciting area. So at the studio here, Michelle, we've got these whiteboards, these rolling whiteboards everywhere. And you can see a little bit of a snapshot of one of them here. But down in the corner of one here, you got this little segment on branding and there's a ton of questions. What is a brand? How do we adjust? How do we have authenticity? How do we communicate it through our sales organization? Right.

Yes, that's right.

So we're going to dive into that today.

Yep.

And we have a very special guest, don't we?

I'm very excited about our guest today. So I met Pete a couple of years ago. He was giving a talk about his book and we're going to talk about some of those concepts today. So thank you, Mark. Actually, because you introduced me to Pete and you know, some of the things that you talked about Pete that day actually changed how I think about myself and it actually changed how we think about Sales Globe and helped us solidify our own brand, which I think you're going to talk about a little bit, Mark, today.

Right. So Pete wrote a book called Expand Growth Thrive, which is all about branding and. Right. So we went back and after we heard you talk, Pete, we went back and wrote up our brand story about Sales Globe. And it was all there. It was just a matter of pulling it together. And it was really, really meaningful. And I think it changed the way we thought. So we're going to get into some of that about brand story today. But just a little background on Pete. Pete's Naval Academy grad also came out of UNC Chapel Hill. Go Tar Heels.

Go Heels.

They can't resist.

Welcome to the roundtable. Glad to have you here today.

Gosh, it's so exciting to be here. And I'm glad that you Guys are wanting to talk about what a brand is and what branding is and really, I mean, for people like me or for myself, you know, hearing that you heard what I had to share about branding and brand story and that you took it back and you thought about it and you changed the way you did things. That's what I live for. So thank you for sharing that story. That makes it all worthwhile.

So we hear a lot, Pete, about branding. It's almost like the word innovation. Everybody's using it and it's kind of thrown around a lot. But what I wanted to start out with first is maybe kind of setting the stage. What is a brand and how should we think about a brand or branding? What is this thing?

Yeah, because wait now, Mark, when I think about it, you and I discussed this. So Pete, when we think about a brand, and I've got to guess, everyone else is thinking about this, I have these affiliations, right? So Levi, everybody knows what that is and they think about something. Apple, everybody thinks about something. So what really does it mean? Because we think about labels and we think about companies, we think about products. But tell us more.

Yeah, so there's academic definitions like Philip Kotler, who taught, teaches marketing at the best and finest universities, will give a definition. I'd like to kind of think of it this way. You know, a brand brings a number of things to mind that help you in your purchasing decisions or in your selection decisions. So they might provide certainty. You know, when you talk about the Levi brand, you know what you're going to get, or the Starbucks brand, it also eliminates risk. Right. So if I get the Tylenol brand versus an acetaminophen generic brand, I know what the difference is. Brand also is something we're willing to pay a premium for. Right. Willing to pay more for a particular brand because of all the things including the relationship I have with the brand and how the brand represents me. Right. Sometimes we buy brands because we want to tell something about ourselves. So you might be an Apple fan because of, not just because of the quality of the products, but because what it says about you. Or you might want to be an Android brand owner for the very same reason. So those are a couple of things that brands do and that's what helps us in our day to day decision making process.

So I think about a brand a lot as the logo. Right. So you think about the trademark, that's the thing. Right. But a brand can be a lot of different things like customer experience or like you said, Pete, what you feel or how you associate, but what are the different permutations of that and how can a sales team leverage that in terms of what they do? Because if I work for a big company, say I work for IBM or John Deere or, you know, a big brand company in sales, I'm not going to be able to do a lot to, you know, modify that brand. But there's got to be something I can do to build customer connection and customer affinity and create a brand for my sales team within that, right?

100%. And the point you made off the bat, which is a brand is sometimes considered a logo or trademark. When I hear that, I cringe a little bit because the logo or the trademark are the visual representation. There's a whole visual identity system that connotes a brand. Sometimes you'll just see a part of the Spencerian script and, you know, it's Coca Cola. You don't even need to see the word Coke. You know what it is. And so those are elements of a brand. And that's important from an identification perspective. If we see a swoosh, we know it's Nike, right? But the brand is all of the embodiment of what that logo or that trademark represents. So the idea of customer service is really an important part of a brand. Right? And so if you're working for a company, you want to know what that brand means, right? You want to know why that brand exists and what are their attributes and what are their equities. These are words I'm trying not to use, buds words, but words that mean what you say. Okay, When I think about the IBM brand, for example, here's what I think about then is if you're leading that sales organization, how does your personal brand and your organizational brand align with your corporate brand or your company brand? Because if they aren't aligned, either you need to change what you're doing or you need to impact the way that your company brand is portrayed, maybe reposition it. If that doesn't happen, then you're going to be out of alignment and that's going to not bode well for your success going forward.

Okay, you're making me think about something and it's, you know, and Mark, you actually said the word customer experience. When we define customer experience, when we are consulting with our clients and they say we want to deliver the ultimate customer experience, it's kind of like saying we want to be authentic. Like, what does that mean? There are three things that we ask them to really think about. And the first one is like, what does your company offer, what is it that you're doing? Why your company even exists, which is a little bit different than what is it that we're doing? So who are we? In essence? So who are we? Why do we exist? And then thirdly, why will customers want to do business with us? And I'm thinking, as people are thinking about their personal brand, it seems like there's almost a parallel there.

Michelle, you're spot on. And in fact, when you tell me those things, I think, man, you must be a brand expert in and of yourself. I am talking about are resonating 100% with this. And in fact, I have one slide I'd love to share with the audience if that's okay to talk about. So you can see that I. That you were not reading my mind when you wrote. When you hear that. But I would have thought you were. So. So the first thing I ask, ask us to ask ourselves, right? When we think about our personal brand is what matters most is the following. Why you exist, right? So this is the idea, you know, so God so loved the world, he created man in his own image, right? So let's ask ourselves and answer the question, why do I exist? Then once you've answered that question, why do you do what you do? Right? So Steve Jobs said, I want to remove the barrier of having to learn, right? And we know if any of us have children or grandchildren or seeing nieces and nephews, they will grab their parents, cell phone, iPad, whatever, and just start working it, right? Because they don't have any concerns about using that device. So it removes the barrier to learn. That's why you do what you do. In the case of Steve Jobs, what do we do? Why do we do what we do? Then why should someone want to work with you? And this is true of Kathy. And he said, you know, he wants to help others, right? He wants to bring value to life. It wasn't about creating a great chicken sandwich, which theirs is great. But when we think about the Chick Fil? A brand, and I'm a huge fan, I'm an advocate of the Chick Fil? A brand, it's because of all of the experiences, right? It's the engagement with the staff, it's the way they portray themselves, it's the quality of their food, you can go down the list. And then finally, as you asked, that was a question that you asked Michelle, is why they should care about you. In other words, why should customers want to do business with you? I like this one. This is a picture of Navy seals and their job is to conduct military actions that are beyond the capability of conventional military warfare. Military capability. And you know, when you think. And there was a woman, her first name is Jessica, that was caught in Somalia a number of years ago, and she'd been there for about three months, and she thought she was going to die. She had gotten an infection. They were trying to get money from her family for her, you know, ransom. And one day in the middle of the night, all sudden, she heard. Felt hands all over her body. And this was the Navy SEALs who came in and said, we got you. We're gonna take care of you. And they pulled her out of there, and all that was left was a bunch of dead Somali terrorists. And so it's pretty cool to be able to think, okay, they cared enough about me because they raised their hand and swore an oath, and I'm an American, so they're coming after me, and you're going to save me. We may not be at that level, but we should understand why our customer should care about us and why we have a relationship with them. So I love that you shared what you did, Michelle, and I hope that some of these questions you'll start to think about and you'll want to answer these questions. And I'm happy to share this slide with your team so that you can share it with those who are listening today.

Oh, that would be great. Thank you for that, Pete. And I think we might even put that in the chat. So I'm talking to our production team right now because I think people would love that. So I've got a lot of questions around what and how, But I think this would be a great time. We just popped. We just created something that we should ask people, a poll. It would be really good, just based on the little bit of information that we just covered, to understand if people consider themselves. Do you consider yourself a brand? So all the people that are listening now let us know if you consider yourself a brand.

That's a big thought, right?

Yeah.

Because when you. When you think about it that way, you think about yourself differently, and you go, wow, you know, is everything I do consistent with what I should be doing or, you know, how I'd want to be portrayed?

Oh, boy. I got multiple brands, Mark. I got a brand for my kids. I got a brand at work.

You're full of brand extensions.

I know. It's true. It's true.

I like that answer better than mine, which was something about schizophrenia. But, no.

Yeah, I like Mark's answer better, too. So they're coming in, Mark. And it looks like, what, about 82% of people consider themselves a brand. It's still going on, but mostly are saying that they do, and then 18% do not.

I'm sharing results. There we are. I'm showing my technical brand here.

Yeah.

I am very pleasantly surprised at those numbers. That means that the individuals listening today really do have thought about. You can't just say you consider yourself brand without having to think about all these things. So I commend each of you for, you know, taking that step. That's important.

Yeah, I think that's great. So we've got 82 that consider themselves a brand.

Yeah, a lot of brands out there. Okay, so let's talk with this about what this means. So I want to talk about a few areas. Let's talk about the sales organization. Pete. Yes. So we're out there working with the customer. What kind of things can we do literally to build our brand and communicate that brand to the customer? We talk about ideas like authenticity and integrity. And there are a lot of things that are important like that during this Covid period. Right. So nothing drives me crazier than to see emails like, hey, big news, you know, great promotion, and it's all about them. Right?

Yeah.

And I'm going, well, that's. That's not really position what I'm concerned about, but I think that has something to do with brands. So what could a sales organization do? Let's chat about that.

Yeah, so. So the first thing I would make sure if I was leading a sales organization is I would really want to understand what my brand, what my company's brand means. Right. Why does my brand, my company do what it does? If I don't know the answer to that question, then I need to go find out what that is. And then I want to make sure that my brand, our company's brand promise aligns with that, you know, that compelling mission. So once I know that, then I can organize my organization to be aligned with that. That is critically important that we are talking from the same, let's call it, sheet of music, that I'm aligned with my organization. And then one of the things that I would painstakingly put on my team, and I've got to be the first person to do this right. Is to be ruthlessly consistent. Everything I do has to represent and reinforce that brand, including the visual identity of the brand. Right. So no old logos, no old, you know, design elements. If we say that we engage with our. Our customers in a specific way, then we do that every time we don't say there's exceptions if you're not ruthlessly consistent. What I also say is everything communicates. So if you're not ruthlessly consistent, then whatever you're saying that's not consistent with that is communicating to your customer something different. And that's going to confuse your customer and may actually sidetrack them or on what you actually stand for. And that's a disaster. So those are a couple points that I would raise.

That's pretty big.

So the all. Every interaction makes a difference. And so if you kind of go through the customer experience when a customer calls on the phone, well, you know, we don't have receptionists anymore, but what the receptionist says is the first impression of the organization, timeliness and meetings. I mean, it gets down to tactical stuff, but it also gets to how we speak, how we communicate. Right. So how we speak and how we communicate should feel uniquely us, whether you know, your company A or company B. And I even think, Pete, when we talk about Sales Globe, you know, one of our brand story components is about creative thinking, creative problem solving. So we've got to be really careful when working with a client not to just try to give them an answer based on, well, here's what other companies are doing, but we have to stop and say, okay, let's talk through what you're trying to solve for. Let's go back to.

That's a brand equity, that kind of thing.

Yeah. So even, you know, how we think is important in that branding.

Can I interrupt for just a second? I want to kind of do a. This is a rhetorical question, but if I say to you, what brand do you think of? When I say my pleasure, what comes to mind?

Well, I think of, say, like Ritz Carlton.

Okay, that might be one.

Pleasure.

When you say thank you very much, they say my pleasure. There's somebody who answered the question correctly. Oh, there you go.

Somebody answered it. Chick Fil A. Do you know what anybody who knows me knows I don't eat a Chick Fil A. They know I don't go to fast food. I had no idea.

And the point I make about that is that is part of their brand characteristics or architecture. So this was a thing that Truitt Kathy really pushed our Dan Cathy, maybe after. But the idea was we want to engage with our audience in such a way that they know that we're meaningful in our response to whatever it is that we've done for them. And so he had everyone in the organization, and it took a lot of time to answer not you're welcome. But my pleasure. And so that is a brand attribute of them that is not visual. Right. It's something that's. So it gets back to this whole idea of this customer experience.

And I was alluding to Ritz Carlton. I think their thing is we are ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen.

Right.

Oh, you don't ever stay there, do you?

But. But they can't say past somebody in the hallway. They can't say hi. They have to say good morning or good evening. Right.

That's why I love it there.

And like my aunt used to say. My aunt used to say about, you know, the waiter that would come up and go, how are you this evening? She goes, does he talk like that at home?

Probably not. Just like me, he's got multiple.

That's not his brand at home. Right?

No, but, you know, okay, so a real important point that I'm hearing through all of this is it's. It starts at the top and has to resonate through the organization. Because a couple of things I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about if I'm frontline sales or even a manager, I may not know what the brand is like. I may not know what it is we do, why we do it, why we exist as a company. And, you know, like the C level CEO, cmo, they have these meetings and off sites. I've been part of them and it becomes very clear to them. But I don't know how well that resonates throughout. You know, most. I would be brave enough to say organizations, it get kind of lost. So, Pete, how can managers and leaders make sure that that message does resonate down to the front line and is consistent?

It's so important for this purpose to be communicated. Right. So when you were talking about that, Michelle, I was thinking, okay, every website, home, company website, should have on there its mission and purpose and potentially sometimes its vision as well. But that is the first place. So if you're a manager, maybe you go there and you look for it. But I would say consistently for senior management, the goal should be for them to communicate to their teams. You know, here's why we do what we do. And you have permission, if you see that we're not doing that, to call it out. Not to, you know, to call anybody, put anybody on report, but to actually elevate the level of the quality of what we do. Because if we're being inconsistent and we don't know it as leadership, then we're not serving you well. So we're going to praise you we're going to reward you for letting us know when we're not doing what we say we're doing. And then that's got to. I hate this word. That's got to pass. I was going to say cascade. I did say that's got to pass. Down from, you know, the C level to the director level, to the manager level, to the troops. Right. And they've got to feel like everybody's walking the talk and that it's okay that they actually are rewarded when they see something that's off kilter and it gets fixed, you know, that that should be a positive for them.

What if we have to go bottom up as a sales organization? Meaning, okay, the brand is not really. I mean, the big brand is clear, but the why and all those really important points are not well articulated by the company. But I've got a sales organization and I've got to create some kind of brand experience, a customer experience with our customers. I can't wait for marketing to figure something out. You know, I know best because I'm in front of them. What's the importance of the sales team establishing that brand in front of the customer as an interpretation of the big brand? If that big brand is not really clear?

I think that shows good leadership, truthfully, as long as it's being communicated to the peers, to your CMO and to your CEO and coo. But to take that initiative and make sure that your brand promise is aligned with your company's, you know, ethics and character and essence. If you're doing that, then you are taking a leadership position and then that can be adopted by the rest of the organization and they should buy in at least with what you're doing and what you're trying to solve for and feel good about it. And then, you know, you can always pivot from where that is to a correctional change. Right. We're not talking about a 90 degree change. We're talking about a 5 or 10 degree change. I think if I had a chief of sales, head of business development who was willing to do that, I would see that as very much a positive. And of course, then it's got to be consistently driven throughout the organization. But great idea.

So I would love to talk about this idea of brand story, because that's something that really. And you started to talk about that a little bit, Pete, in the slide that you were showing. And maybe we could talk about it at a couple levels. Brand story for the company. And maybe we can get into personal brand after that. But we know that stories are compelling. And if I can tell the story of my company and why we do what we do and why my team does what they do, that's very powerful. But kind of walk us through how you should do that, how you should think about that, because I think that's one of the most impactful things that I learned from you.

Appreciate that. One of the things that I do when I get a new client and I help them define this is I ask them to give me the names of the individuals in their organization. And I mean that in a broader, broad sense. Right. So that might be senior leadership at the company, that might be key customers, that might be key suppliers, key end users. If the product is going to a different person than the customer. And I asked permission to interview them, and I will ask them the question, tell me about the story of XYZ brand and I will take all that information in and then I will synthesize it, and then I will give it back to the client and say, here's the story we heard. Tell me where the gaps are. Tell me where you learned things that you didn't know. Okay, now we've defined our story. That's the historical part of our story. And what I want to emphasize here is the story continues, right? So what we do every day and who we do it to is just as important. But what I say is, you know, the job of marketing is to bring, you know, this is a little bit of a. Kind of a metaphor, but is to bring individuals to the dance and its job as sales, to get them to dance. So a good marketing organization will tell the story of the company and to tell the story of the brand. And if they do that well and they tell it to the right target audience, where that target audience is waiting and ready to listen, then they're going to hear that message and then they're going to engage the organization, and that's where sales can come in. And hopefully they're in a very good place to be able to define specifically the needs of that individual or that organization. Now that marketing's done its job, but it's all about telling the story to the target audience, where they're at.

So you're going to get the story that is kind of the de facto story that people know, the customers know, the market knows, and it's very possible that's not going to be the story that you want them to know.

It's possible, yeah.

You're going to have to adjust that story and you're going to say, okay, well, that's not who we are or that's not how we want to be seen in the market. So we would be kind of, maybe, I don't know if it's rewriting the story or if it is making sure we bring that story to the front because we never were doing it consciously before.

Right. It's a great point, Mark. If you don't define yourself in the marketplace, the marketplace will define you.

Great point.

Great point.

Yep, yep.

So, yeah, please continue.

Yeah. So you got to be very proactive about it.

If you.

In your book, you talked about this idea of storied companies, storied brands that have a brand legacy and the importance of that. And, you know, you've got a lot of big brands out there that have that legacy. But what if you don't have a legacy of brand as an organization or as a sales team? What do you do with that? You got a lot. You got a short story versus, you know, an epic novel. Is there less value in that? Or how do you approach that?

No, no, there's not. Because typically the story of a young organization is the story of its founder. And if we think about some organizations today, you know, Oprah Winfrey's O Organization, we know her story. So the O organization may not be that old, but we know who founded it. Or if we look at Elon Musk and we think about SpaceX, which is space exploration. Right. Or Tesla, which is the name of one of the inventors of electricity. Right. We know who he is and what his purpose is, and that's around a sustainable world. So we can go back to the founder and we can look at the story of the founder, which helps drive the story of the company. And so there's a little bit of a combination there that you can use where the founder is leading the company, and so that can be part of the story. But truth be told, there could be a great, great product like GoPro. That company has not been around a long time, but, boy, have they made an impact on the world. Right. Because there was the founder, I assume, I don't know this for fact, who was so wanting to capture what she or he was doing and couldn't find a way to do it, so they solved the problem themselves. That's a great story, even though that story is only 15 or 20 years old.

So I want to step back a little bit, because when we talk about the story, it's really part of five elements that are what you call your lasso model. Would you talk to us about the lasso model? And Explain each of those to everyone who's listening today.

Sure. Thank you for the question. So lasso stands for lateral, addictive, storied, scalable, and ownable. When I say lateral, I mean can the brand move from category to category? And I talk about, in my book, a brand expansion point. That's the point of which the brand connects emotionally with the consumer, with the end user. So in case of Coca Cola, that might be around happiness. So what categories reinforce happiness for the Coca Cola brand, that is the lateral movement. The second one is addictive. Right. We all know addictive brands. Many of our coffee brands are both physically and mentally addictive. We love them for what they do for us. Right. And if you think of maybe an online game that you play that you keep coming back because it is consistently surprising and surprisingly consistent. So that's consistently surprising and surprisingly consistent. It's got elements of what we expect, but then it's always something fun and new that brings us back. That's the addictive part of it. Then storage, which we just talked a little bit about. The next one is scalable. And scalable doesn't mean always to grow, but it actually may mean to shrink. Right. Scalable is a merger. I call it like a merger and acquisition. You're merging the brand in one sector into the growth of another sector. So scalability is around who we are, knowing our target audience and knowing what we should be to that audience. So I try to take it outside of the term of typical term. And the last one is ownable. We have the very sense of ownability. Right. That's, oh, well, that's a trademark that's legally owned by my company, or that's a patent, which is legally owned by my company, or trade secret, which I know and no one else knows. And everyone asks, well, what's a trade secret? Well, the secret formula is a trade secret. Coca Cola markets it beautifully. Right. We're not going to tell you what's in there, but it's amazing. And you can find out all about it at the World of Coca Cola. But for ownable, a lot of times the organizations outside of the company or the employees themselves feel like they own the brand. Right. This is our brand. If you're a franchisee or a licensee, or maybe you're just a consumer who loves a brand and doesn't like what the company is doing with it. Especially today with the connected economy that we're in, companies will hear only too loud and too quickly what they're doing wrong when they do it wrong. So the Ownability part is, how do we think about a brand? Is it something that consumers have a part of ownership in the franchisees, the sales organization, for example, so we can direct the leadership of the brand by our own ability?

Gosh. Well, you're giving me things to really think about there, Pete. But one thing I'm thinking about is am I addicted to my favorite brand? I have a Spanish designer that I love in clothing, Desiquala, and I'm beginning to worry that I'm addicted. Anyway, I check their website all the time. There's always something fun. It's spontaneous, you know, I mean, it's the one few places I.

How many. How many stores do they have in the US Setting? About two stores in the US Very few. So the scary thing is that I think Miami, Dallas, maybe a few other places. But when Michelle walks in, they all know her, she lives in Atlanta.

It's not good. All right, so we've got a lot of questions that came in, and I think we need to take time for some of these questions. So the first one I'm going to ask you this is someone who's like leading a company, right? So a small company, it looks like in consulting, potentially. And it looks like. And so here's the question, Pete. How do I maintain consistency in my brand voice? So I'm a founder, I've got a brand voice within my salesforce or others in the organization. So in essence, how do I ensure that the people stay on task with the message and their actions and the things that they do?

Great question. That is an important thing absolutely to consider. It starts at the top, Right. So as the founder, are you walking the talk? Are you being ruthlessly consistent in the way that you live the brand? And then are you communicating that brand to your organization in a way that they are clearly understanding what it means? And when you say your organization, it's got to be the whole organization, right? So that may be you talking to your direct reports, or maybe you talking to the whole organization, or you have some way of doing that and then rewarding them for the consistency and not punishing them when they're inconsistent, but calling it out and using it as an example of an opportunity to get it rectified. And I mentioned the example before with old logos being used or potentially maybe saying things in a way that our company would never like. For example, if Dan Cathy were to walk into a Chick fil a and said, thank you very much for that sandwich, and the employee said, you're welcome, that would be an opportunity for him in a very gentle way to show that individual. What we say here is it's my pleasure and here's why we say it. So those are some of the things that that individual could do.

How does that translate into the people part, Pete, in terms of, say, recruiting or knowing if you got the right people on board? Because I could see an organization, maybe a sales team that has a very clear brand, yet somehow they ended up with somebody who just doesn't support that brand in terms of how they act, how they speak, how they communicate.

Yeah, that is a really important thing to make sure you do right. Hiring the right individuals. And that may be in the interview questions, the people that are actually doing the interviewing. How about in the assessment process before you even get these individuals into the organization? But it's going to take some real measure of intellect, I think, to say we've got to bring into this organization people that believe in our why. And so you've got to test for that. And a lot of times what I do in my interview process, it's not foolproof. But typically history will be the best representation of the way somebody will act in the future. So I'll ask some specific questions. Give me an example when you did A, B and C. And then I can see whether or not in their example, if they actually behaved in the way that I would want them to behave if they were part of my organization. And if they're not, well, then that's just a clear cut reason not to hire.

And if you've got a brand that's well known, say somebody's going to interview at Starbucks or at Coca Cola, they presumably understand that going in. But I have to think in terms of developing brands at least. One thing that we look for is, is to make sure in the interview process you're being clear about what your brand is. You know, this place isn't right for everybody. Here's what we believe. And making sure that that person really understands that there's a point of view here. This is not just a job. And so then I would want them to respond to that and listen to how they're responding and look for that alignment. Yeah. And then the tough part too is when you have people in your organization on your sales team that don't align with your brand, what do you do with them? How committed are you to your brand message or the integrity of your brand? And is it grounds for moving them out of the organization? And a lot of organizations that are really brand focused and purpose driven will move people out.

Yeah. James Collins wrote Good to Great and he talked about, you know, getting the right people on the bus in the right seats. And if they're not in the right seats and the right people, then you've got to move them out.

Yep. And sometimes that can be a challenge. So we just set up a challenge for sales organizations because you're making me think about a story, Mark. A client that we had several years ago, and it was actually their top sales manager who they ultimately did let go. But they did because he just could not fit in with the brand and the messaging and what it was that the company was setting out to achieve. And that was a bold and a very difficult move. But I'll tell you what, it made a big sense statement, and it actually did end up increasing the morale of the other people in the organization.

Good point. Yeah. It makes a statement, increases morale, so it strengthens the organization. And then, you know, the fear. And I remember that story that they had was they were going to lose revenue because that person was leaving and they have, you know, he has control over these customers. Well, what happened? Nothing.

Yeah, I mean, we always think something's going to happen there, don't we? All right, listen, we got a lot more questions here. So the other one is around social media marketing. So how can I best leverage that to communicate, presumably my company and maybe I would guess personal brand as well. And then really when you think about social media, gosh, I guess we're talking about B2B. But you know who the end user might be? I'm not sure. What do you have to say about that, Pete?

Right. So great question. I would want to know who my target audience is. And sometimes, and you mentioned this, you alluded to it, target audience might be our customers, but they also might be our consumers or end users. I use Coca Cola a lot because I'm a former Coca Cola employee. I got recruited to Atlanta to work for Coca Cola. Our customers, we had these relationship with our bottlers I mentioned to talk about ownership. Right. Then we had our customers who were the big grocery stores or the big restaurants. Then our end users were our consumers. Right. So who is it we're talking to about the brand? And the message is the story, but it has to be tailored to that specific audience. And where are they? Where are they listening to our story? Where can we find them when we tell our story? Where are they going to be? So in social media, if I'm talking to my end user, I want to talk to that person or that consumer where they're at what social media platforms do they want to hear from me? From, for example? Right. If they are, let's say it's a B2C brand, they may not want to hear from me on LinkedIn because that's where they think about their business. But they may be a Facebook user, they may be an Instagram user. So I need to talk to them there. What if they're my. They're actually my target audience, they're my customer? Well, then I may want to talk to them on LinkedIn or. Or another social media platform appropriate for them. Or I may want to get outside of social media in general and talk to them through some other mechanism, like through talks like this or through advertising, radio or television or whatever. But we have to understand who the target is and how do we communicate best where they want to hear from us.

That's good advice. I think we have time for just one more question. We've had more. I'm sorry, we'll end up sending these over to Pete and we can get answers for you. But here's a good one. What is the best process to follow and how do I start thinking about creating a portfolio strategy? So when I'm creating a portfolio strategy, what's a process to follow and where can we start?

Okay, so portfolios. When you think about a portfolio, there's kind of two basic examples. You have a branded house or a house of brands. What do I mean by a branded house? If we think about the Marriott or the Hilton brand, all of the sub brands underneath it have the word Marriott in them or Hilton in them. That's a branded house. House of brands is a collection of different brands that are underneath another company. So. Or underneath a company. So Procter and Gamble has a host of brands. Right. Tide is an example of it. Magic Eraser is another. And the list goes Drift is another. Each of those brands has its own brand management team, its own brand architecture. And so there may be some commonalities that are important that go across the brand. Things like, what is the purpose of our company? Why does our company exist? All the brands should align with that purpose. Purpose. But individually, they're hitting different target audiences. For example. And I can't rattle them all off the top of my head, but I know for Procter and Gamble they have six different versions of laundry detergent. One of them, for example, is for infants, infant care. Of course we know Tide is. Which is kind of the basic king of all the laundry detergents, but there's five others, including the one for infant care and and each of them has a different target audience, a different positioning statement, brand position, different brand architecture. So we need to understand that and then just make sure that the elements of who we are as a company, our brains align with us.

Okay, that's really good advice.

Very good.

Yeah. So I think that's all we have time for, Mark.

I think so. Let me ask one more question, if I can go.

Okay, everybody, we're going to go.

The last question I want to ask is just with all this, Pete, and we alluded this a little bit earlier, how do we convert this into thinking about your own personal brand, your personal brand within the sales organization or within your company? Because your personal brand also attaches to your career. Right. And where you're going to be going in the organization. So maybe if you could leave us with any thoughts on that?

Sure. I think it's so important to think of ourselves as a personal brand and understand. Answer the questions that I asked before. Right. Why do we exist? Why do we do what we do then what we do and how we do it and why should people care about us? That's some heavy thinking. If you answer those questions, then you will be in a very good position to represent yourself. We were joking earlier, Michelle, about how you are a different individual in your life. But I am sure it is more like Mark said, it is different extensions of who you are. And in extension, like Coke, Diet coke, Vanilla Coke. Right. We are the same person. We should be the same person in our, in our personal life as we are in our professional life. And I'm sure you are. And so that's an important part because as I said earlier, everything communicates. Right? So if you're acting differently on social media in your personal life than you are in your professional life, that's going to communicate something. And believe me, the people that want to hear it or need to hear it and the ones that you don't want to hear it are all going to hear it. So we have to make sure that our communication is aligned with who we are and what we're about. And then we have to be ruthlessly consistent in the way that we represent ourselves. And the last thing I like to say is attitude is everything. I would hire a C level person with a great attitude over an A level person with a poor attitude every day and so bring the right attitude to what you do and that will change the world.

So just asking that first question I think is a game changer of who am I and what do I want to represent or what do I Represent, Right. And a lot of us don't think about that. I've got a job, I got a career. I do my thing, I go home, you know, whatever I do. But I'm not thinking in terms of who am I and what's my purpose? And then how should I represent that to the world?

That's really powerful and very important.

Was gonna say I spent a long weekend thinking about this and I came away with. My personal mission is to encourage others. I know that that's what I'm about. So every time I try to engage with somebody, that's what I try to leave them with. So it was really important for me to figure that out.

All right, so we're launching another poll question. I know we're over time, but this is just too interesting. And this is, do you know why you do what you do? And we've been polling people who are saying, yes, keep this open. So we are. And let's see, what have we got? It's coming in, Mark.

A lot of people know why they do what they do, but a lot of people that don't is increasing.

Yeah, well, they're really thinking about it at first glance. You know, it's a tough question, but we are about, you know, 70, 30, kind of like the payments of an account manager.

Mark.

There you go. 73% know why you do what you do. Okay, that's, that's a good start. And so that, that's some, some great ideas to leave us with, so. Well, Pete, thanks so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. It's been a great conversation and we thank you for your, your time.

Really fun today. Thanks so much. We just want to remind everyone who is on, on today that you can register for next Friday. Sorry, not next week. Our next session is August 14th. Oh, gosh. Okay. We got two really good sessions ahead coming up, but story based analytics with Mark Dinolo. I think I know who that guy is. He sits right there. Anyway, please be sure to register for that roundtable. Please be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you would like any of information that Pete has shared with us again, we've got a couple slides that he is happy to share with you. So we'll put you in contact with Pete. And Pete, we want to thank you so much for sharing some of your time and your thinking with us. I know that it was certainly valuable for me and I hope it was for everyone else today as well.

Thank you guys so much for having me today. I found it a pleasure and I look forward to answering those questions that didn't get answered today, so please share them.

Well, it's our pleasure, Pete.

Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay.

All right. Enjoy your.

Thank you all.

Thanks, everybody.

And, oh, don't forget to connect with. With us on LinkedIn as well, so. And connect with Pete. You're available on LinkedIn also, so thanks again and everyone. Have a fantastic weekend.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.