Branding is a funny thing; in many ways it comes down to what people remember, implicitly or explicitly.

Here’s a tip: when someone asks about a detail of your product or service, even when apparently important to them, from a branding perspective it still might not be an important piece of information.

It is only if you can relate it directly to your existing brand position.

If someone buying a Volvo asks about gas mileage, the answer is only important if the salesperson can relate it to Volvo’s position as selling safe cars.

Why? Because other auto makers are going to win the battle of gas mileage. If the sales person takes the bait and tries to suddenly sell on mileage, they’ve lost their brand, lost the sale, and lost their mind.

Here’s the rule (once you have a brand position that works): answers to questions are important only to the degree they relate to your brand positioning. If the answer to a question doesn’t relate, then the information isn’t important. Don’t confuse sales tactics, which often lose sales, with branding strategy, which must be maintained at all times and at all costs.

You have to be careful to “manage” what someone remembers the next day or week. If it isn’t your best positioning, you lose!

If your brand was developed with an explosion vision rather than an implosion vision, it was done in a way that often won’t work.

In other words, development that views advertising, marketing and/or PR (explosion) as the key channels have a flawed development platform, because the dynamics of what branding should accomplish inside the organization (implosion) are missing.

Implosion, or as I call it “Density”, branding means your development process first considers internal understanding and ability for application verbally as the most important ingredients. This is a fundamentally different way to produce a brand and will create much better productivity.

The reason is, to develop this way creates “cultural confidence” and verbal ability (sales, networking, presentations, etc.) first while still leaving the explosion results (through external channels) available to pursue, only now with a better, more sensible positioning strategy.

Brands that fail usually have the following in common: the internal impact wasn’t included as part of the development priorities, so was produced (unwittingly) with huge holes in the everyday applicability.

A brand that doesn’t make sense in verbal communications won’t work broadly in the marketplace, because it won’t sync up with how the audience thinks. It also won’t be usable for the employees, and unless you sell like Amazon, without anyone speaking to anyone, the brand won’t be nearly as effective as everyone wants and needs.

I’m sort of relaxed and stressed at the same time.

Hmm.

The stress part is, I can’t believe how many people don’t realize they lose money every time they use their elevator pitch. I assume somewhere within all that boring language is a good branding idea; one that if said correctly would cause someone to be genuinely interested instead of wanting to run away.

Here’s the rule: 1or 2 concepts in less than 5 seconds.

If you can’t state your Positioning that way, using a “we are better than the competition because of this” orientation, you’re losing money every time you open your mouth.

Sorry - it’s true. Check my video on this site on elevator the elevator pitch: The Larry Phone Call

Remember: 1 or 2 concepts in less than 5 seconds, or you’re dead meat on the selling track!

No way baby! Impossible.

Oh…well, actually I am taking a vacation next week; and sorry for not posting more often recently.

I’m doing as much networking and speaking as possible, so that’s my lame excuse.

Here’s my challenge for the week, hopefully which will carry the load until I’m back blogging:

If you can’t describe why you’re different and better than the competition in two concepts or less, and in five seconds or less, you don’t have a brand yet! Those are my rules, and they work every time once you figure it out.

In a similar vein, don’t confuse “describing” what you do for branding; they’re completely different. One can and is done by all of your competitors: describing the details within your category of business. The other can’t be duplicated if developed correctly: your differentiated BRAND !!!!

See? Talk to you again the week of June 29th - have fun!

When I’m not doing my day job - you know, being a very charismatic verbal branding expert - I sometimes have the courage to try new things. These days, I’ve been trying out Bing.com - the new search engine from Microsoft.

So far it doesn’t seem to “search” as well as Google (no surprise there) but I find I’m looking forward to seeing what photo is on the home page each day. It’s the simple things, right?

Today’s is Las Vegas, showing a beautiful beam of light heading up to the sky from a pyramid-shaped hotel. When you float your mouse over parts of the page, it also gives little snippets of info on this or that. For instance, Las Vegas is the brightest place on earth when viewed from space.

Next time you’re in space, you’ll have to take a look! (Didn’t this info make your day? )

Pretty cool. Will I keep using it instead of Google? It remains to be seen. I figured I’d be back to Google in about a half day, but it hasn’t happened yet.

I wonder if Google is nervous.

PS. I’m off on vacation starting the 22nd - yes, I’m counting the days!

How often do you rethink your business model?

I’m not suggesting you do this exercise and fundamentally change your business with the changing winds. I do, however, find it’s worthwhile to step outside yourself fairly often to make sure you’re doing the right things to grow, targeting the right people for prospects and networking partners, and offering product or services in a differentiated way - a way that continually needs monitoring to be sure your brand is strong.

One of my pet peeves is when I feel like I’m so busy being busy that I lose sight of whether my strategy is working. How about you?

I used to take every Monday and call it my “planning” day. Now I’m too busy, but I don’t like not having it in place to take a look at what I’m doing and what I’m accomplishing.

The way I figure it, over time if we’re even 2% off direction - what doesn’t seem like a big deal day-to-day will significantly influence how well we do in the long run.

Seems simple, right? But as we know, simple isn’t always easy.

I’m always impressed with rapidly developed media that’s effective, such as for video blogging.

It’s the coming thing, don’t you think. Here’s an example of a video blog from Frank Damelio of Target Intellect that happens to be about me, following a workshop of mine Frank attended. And here’s the company’s web site below:

http://www.targetintellect.com/

As you can imagine, I’m always interested in unique business models, and this is one. An educating company specializing in such topics as Persuasion, Executive Persona, Magic (yes, magic!) and Superior Selling Strategies, among others.

If you combine a compelling product (and the ability to describe it) with great networking and some generosity, you’ll probably find yourself succeeding.

It’s like a multiplying effect - communications times networking times generosity ! Hmm…I think I’ll trademark that!!

And for being patient with this post, here’s a Dilbert for your pleasure.

Some philosophies I’m aware of say, “everything we do is ’selfish’”, meaning, we’re always acting on our own motivations.

Fair enough.

Me? I think selfishness is mainly a neutral concept, neither a virtue nor a vice. In other words, for example, it’s OK with me if, when I do something others might think is selfless, I’m also totally aware that for one reason or another I still got something out of it.

It might be that I think I’m a good person. Will someone try to convince me that’s not a significant thing to get in return for doing something for someone?

Anyway, I bring it up because I feel this idea often clarifies our own motivations, and leaves us not wondering if we’re being used (which would be our own fault anyway…but that’s a story for another day).

Why do someone a favor? Why take the time to help someone if they aren’t paying for it? Why introduce people to others and then not worry if you’ll get intros back?

I say, it’s not because we’re 100% giving (I don’t even like it when people act like they are); it’s because we’re trying to be certain kinds of people, because that’s the best way to live and breathe and do well, whatever that might mean to us.

Am I making sense? Or, am I prattling on and on just being selfish?

When you meet people, do you wonder if you can sell to them or if you can partner with them.

One is a short term thought; the other is a long term thought.

I prefer long term.

You can tell by the look on someones face if they have short term thinking syndrome. They’re usually sweating and have rather large eyes. They stare at you wondering if they might make a sale.

I hate that look. I run the other way. It’s one man’s opinion - mine - but you should go for long term partnerships when you have the chance. You’ll make more money that way (and ironically, probably quicker), and won’t still be begging for business in five years.

Today’s has been a somewhat moody rant, but it feels good every once in a while, don’t you think?

When I brainstorm on something, I’ve realized I come out with completely different results when I use a pad and pen (or pencil ) as opposed to “thinking” on my laptop.

I assume this is because the pace is different, and if you’re like me, your brain races ahead and depending on whether you have a pad of paper in front of you or a laptop, one of them meets you natural pace more effectively than the other.

I usually “think” on my computer, but for the sake of good brain-storming technique, I’ll sometimes use pad and pen - especially when having a diffucult time figuring a problem out. It’s amazing how different the experience is.

On a pad, it feels more like making a model, and then being able to step back and look at it objectively. Do you find this to be true?

My point is, when you’re trying to figure something out, even in this technology saturated world, sometimes you can make a breakthrough by going back to manual techniques…like an actual pad of paper and writing things out rather than typing.