Risk & Business Magazine Branch Benefits Consultants Fall 2016 | Page 24

TURNING A COMPANY INTO A BRAND

Turning A Company
Into A Brand

BY: JOHN DiJULIUS
PRESIDENT, THE DiJULIUS
GROUP

6 Things Customers Cannot Live Without

W

e all have a company or
two that we can’t fathom
life without. What are
the few companies that
you would be extremely
upset if I told you, “You can no longer do
business with them, ever again”? When I
ask my audiences this question, besides
some favorite local mom-and-pop shops,
certain brands always get mentioned: Apple,
Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Amazon. Think
about what these brands have done and what
they consistently do to make customers
so loyal, to make customers feel that they
cannot live without these brands. That
is power. That is brand loyalty. The more
people you can make feel like they cannot
live without your brand, the closer you are
to making price irrelevant. Here are the six
things that turn a company into a brand that
its customers cannot live without:
1.

Great service, great products

2.

Consistency

3.

Ease of doing business

4.

Employee evangelists

5.

Education, not sales

6.

Personalized experience

1. GREAT SERVICE, GREAT PRODUCTS
This is a given. It is the price of admission
that your service or product better be darn
good. However, this is typically not even
listed in the top three reasons why people
love a brand. A company is in trouble if
it is relying on its product or service to
differentiate itself in the market. Today,
every product or service is eventually
commodified.
2. CONSISTENCY
This cannot be overemphasized. More than
anything else, customers want brands to
be brilliant at the basics. Forget the bells
and whistles; just be consistent, reliable,
accurate, and friendly in every interaction.

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Don’t make it dependent on which employee
your customer deals with or which
production facility your product is made.
3. EASE OF DOING BUSINESS
See Amazon. See Zappos.com. See
Nordstrom. Amazon is the easiest and
most convenient company for purchasing
products, from one-click shopping, to
returns, to customer support. Companies
like Zappos.com and Nordstrom have very
customer-friendly return policies. Bring it
back in a year; you don’t need your receipt.
Does your company have policies and rules
to make interactions with your customers
more convenient for them? How easy is it
for a customer to speak to a human being?
How easy is it to find a phone number on
your website? Is your customer’s buying
experience convenient for you or for your
customer?
4. EMPLOYEE EVANGELISTS
Great brands have employee evangelists who
advocate for two things: what they do and
what brand they do it for. Shop at Teavana
Tea (owned by Starbucks). Its employees love
the product, love helping and discussing
the benefits of different types of tea to
their customers, and they love working for
Teavana.
5. EDUCATION, NOT SALES
The best brands teach its employees to
educate customers and not to sell to them.
Consider my personal experience with
Apple. I love technology, and the moment
something new is released, I have to have it
(the worst thing a consumer can do!). When
Apple released the iPad 2, I ran to the Apple
store to upgrade. When the Apple employee
asked me what I wanted, I said, “I currently
have the iPad, but I want t