How to Build a Brand that Sells

Why and How to Create a Great Brand for Your Outsourcing Company

Does Brand impact selling your Outsourcing solution?  Easy answer…yes.  People will develop perceptions that become your Brand.  The harder question is who will define your Brand: you or everyone else?   And will it help, or hinder sales?

Brand: The Buyer's Perspective

At its very essence, a well-defined and known Brand insures the buyer against needing to know everything before they buy and insures against risks after buying. These Brands also begin the sales process prior to the company walking through the door.

Brand: The Seller's Perspective

For sellers, Brands educate buyers and reduce the impact of price on purchasing decisions. Better known firms – Exult, Accenture, IBM, EDS – continuously exact greater margins than lesser-known competitors.  These companies get an extra dose of “permission” that others don’t.

We distilled several themes common to Brands that sell:

The Three “Permissions” of Well-Defined Brands

Clients give these firms greater:

1.      Access. Executive schedulers use blunt rules like, “Have I heard of this company?” to determine who gets in the door.  Companies with more familiar Brands get more access than companies with Brands no one’s heard of.

2.      Scale. For Outsourcers scale is vital.  It’s core to making money.  Clients place greater trust in well-Branded firms and let them scale beyond their existing capabilities. Lesser-known firms don’t get the same permission to extend themselves. Well known companies make RFP short-lists even when they lack experience. 

3.      Room to Recover. Even large firms make mistakes. The difference between when a lesser-known company stumbles and when a well-Branded company fails comes in the permission to recover. Well-Branded companies get permission to restore confidence.

Building Outsourcing Brands: A To-Do List

So how do you get started?  Here are a few stepping stones:

1.      Be Deliberate. This requires thinking about what you want your Brand to be when it grows up. It requires introspection, objectivity, time, and vision. Your plan should have:

A.     3-5 sentences expressing the essence of the Brand – not just the company’s offering.

B.     A vision of the Brand five years from now.

C.     The plan to change or enforce popular or misleading perceptions.

2.   Be Iterative. Implement over time. Be sure to:

A.     Pay attention to the small as well as large efforts.  Steward the Brand with guidelines defining its core principles like key messages and look and feel.

B.     Share the plan with employees. Missionaries and morale are vital!

3.   Be Consistent. Make sure the 3-5 sentences expressing your Brand are on the tip of your tongue and in any written materials.

Conclusions

Building a Brand that sells means creating a self re-enforcing loop defining your Brand incrementally and through each sale.  By being deliberate and iterative you make the kinds of incremental improvements in your Brand that position you to receive the three permissions.  By following the to-do list above, you will begin to build a lasting Brand that will sell.