Align Your Business Goals to Multiply Your Success.

How to coordinate your branding, marketing and sales efforts toward a singular vision.

Are your branding, marketing and sales efforts properly aligned? You must carefully and deliberately combine these influential aspects of your business with specific purpose and measurable outcomes. Many leaders don’t clarify with their teams how branding, marketing and sales should work together. But it’s a must! Once individual roles and goals are defined, everyone can pull toward the vision and execute with focus.

Here are some things to consider:

Branding:

Are you clear on your potential customers? Are you narrowing who will buy your services or talent? That clarity is crucial. Sometimes you need to brand for a niche group of customers, not to the entire market. Be clear on who will buy as well as what buying language they speak and understand. Then craft your written, spoken and visual messages appropriately.

Marketing:

Are you tying your marketing to your brand so the connection is clear? Do the two look alike and send the same messages? Every aspect of your communication—web content, social media, news releases, etc.—should move together and be smoothly synchronized. From there, you can create tools for your team to use during sales presentations.

Sales:

Do your sales tools match up with your branding and marketing efforts? Your toolkit should contain pieces that complement one another. Pull out these two pieces for this customer, a different pair to suit a different one. From PowerPoint slide sets to elevator speeches, all of your sales tools should be mined from branding and marketing research.

When you are intentional about your business development and carefully arrange all of the moving pieces, you will see real improvements.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Naming Your Business.

Avoid common pitfalls like double meanings.

Starting a new business is one of the most exciting moments in your career, let alone your life. There are a thousand details to address, so it’s important not to get carried away with your enthusiasm and overlook potential problems.

Your business name is a particular area in which to take care, because it’s such an integral part of your company’s identity. For many customers, it will be the first thing they see. Perhaps you came up with what feels like the perfect name without really thinking it through, or perhaps you’ve struggled to find a name and will just stick something together at the last moment. Either approach can be hazardous because there are many things that can go wrong with a business name.From unintended double meanings to unavailable domain names, you need to make sure to avoid the many possible downfalls that your business name can face. To help you, check out this new infographic with some sound business-naming advice.