Why Brand Training Is Essential For ALL Your Employees
Recently, we posted this article explaining how important it is for companies to train their customer service representatives to be marketers; to know all the key marketing messages so they can better represent and sell the organization. I couldn’t agree more. I’ll even take that idea one step further: Brand Training is essential for all employees, at all companies and organizations, across all industries.
There’s this perception of corporate America – especially the big companies – as fragmented and impersonal. Part of that is due to some very bad publicity from some very large financial companies in the past few years. Another part of it is absolute reality. The fact is, the bigger a company gets, the more fractured employee communication becomes. It’s easy to have a business of five employees and make sure everyone is on the same page. It’s much more difficult to do that with a company of 50, 5,000 or 50,000 employees.
Unite your employees and strengthen your company
To keep your company consistent and cohesive, you need to make sure all employees have a clear understanding of your brand. They need to know what makes your organization unique, what your message is to customers. Only then can they accurately relay that information to customers, partners, and friends and family members (who also just might be potential customers). Fortunately, imparting your employees with key tenets of your brand is as simple as instituting a brand training program. Unfortunately, that’s not always quite as simple as it sounds.
The challenges of rolling out Brand Training
We realize that this can sometimes be a difficult discussion. Longevity leads to comfort, which can lead to animosity. When you approach longtime employees with such a basic and fundamental principle, be aware you may meet some resistance. Why? Inevitably, in every business, there comes a point when employees feel they possess a type of tenure. Once that happens, it’s much more difficult to tell that person they need to learn how to “sell” the business or be a marketer. This is especially true if their role or responsibilities don’t align with that way of thinking.
Overcoming resistance through employee engagement
To overcome employee resistance, you need to be creative with your training. You need to engage employees and show them that they all play a role in your company’s marketing, that they are all brand ambassadors. Don’t just barrage them information, get them involved. Let them play a role in determining how marketing and branding fit into their unique roles within the company. Make them into marketers. Provide your employees valuable information that they will appreciate learning, and reward them for incorporating those ideas in their everyday tasks.
How Brand Training benefits your business
Your brand begins with your people. Give them the knowledge they need to represent your organization the way you want it to be represented. Ultimately, investing in Brand Training will pay off for your company in a number of ways: It will amplify the power and clarity of your message, enhance your brand perception and generate more loyal customers. Those benefits will work to boost your business in the here and now, and strengthen your brand moving into the future.
