Business Brains: Does YOUR business have an attractive personality?

Every business strives to develop its own unique brand, but many business owners are still unaware that a brand encompasses far more than just the products and services the business offers.

A brand is essentially the personality of a business and the success of that business depends on how likeable the personality is. From the efficiency of the systems and processes you set up, to the attitude of your staff and the consistency of service you offer, your brand translates directly into the customer experience.

By developing a successful ‘personality’ your business will be able to represent itself and effectively demonstrate its ethos, values and beliefs, and expertise to both current and future customers. It is essentially the life blood of the business and will have the single greatest impact in the marketplace.

Ultimately, every business has a personality – the question is whether it was created intentionally or accidentally. If you don’t create a personality for the business yourself you can be assured that your customers and the marketplace will attribute one to you …… but will it be the one you want?!

Critically this hinges on reputation, service and values (as well as the quality of any products) and how those translate into customer experience. So you must work on the culture and attitudes at the centre of your business to ensure they translate and seamlessly connect into behaviours that are viewed externally.

For example, having a clear appraisal and performance process which really engages your people will lead to individual goals being fulfilled and key objectives and targets being achieved in line with your Business Plan.  To truly engage people within your business they must identify with your values and beliefs, understand where the business is going and feel an integral part of it – so that they can then represent your business personality effectively.

As a business leader you need to consider whether the people who are currently ‘selling’ your services and ‘products’ are representing your business personality effectively. If they are not, you could lose business. And even if those people are good sales people and customers are happy to ‘buy’ from them, unless they represent your brand personality as you have defined it to them, you could still lose business if those individuals leave your company and the customer feels more loyal to them than to your business.