With 2016 firmly in our rear-view mirror, we invite you to look ahead at the upcoming year through specially filtered Challenger Brand glasses in order to see the next 12 months in its most professional clarity.
During this traditional time of both reflection and speculation, we suggest you think beyond the standard New Year’s Resolutions – beyond eating more raw vegetables and grains, beyond taking the stairs instead of the elevator, beyond volunteering more at the local pet shelter. Time to think about Challenger Brand resolutions.
Commit now to brand-building improvements that will clarify your position, better demonstrate value to your customer and inspire your internal organization. So, for your consideration, we offer the 2017 Top 5 Challenger Brand New Year’s Resolutions:
- Listen to Our Customers – Let’s resolve to listen to our customers and prospects in order to better understand both what they need and what they expect from us. We can accomplish this through anecdotal conversations or formalized research.
- Respect Our Competitors – Let’s resolve to accept that, no matter how brilliant our business model is, there are competitors in our universe working around the clock to take our customers away from us and attract our prospects. Study what they are doing well and understand what they are doing poorly in order to improve our own results.
- Engage Our Internal Organization – Let’s resolve to genuinely solicit meaningful input from our teammates in an effort to expand our thinking, embrace our cumulative intelligence and align our entire operation.
- Clarify Our Value Proposition – Let’s resolve to speak in terms of benefits (“what’s in it for the customer?” versus listing features) and prevent prospects from ever saying, “So what.” Let’s create an effective Value Proposition by focusing on the single most valuable benefit to our customer.
- Be True to Our Essence – Let’s resolve to articulate and live up to our brand’s essence – the single word or succinct sentence that conveys our brand’s fundamental nature. Although intangible, our essence encapsulates how our brand connects emotionally with our customers as well as our own internal team members. Understanding our brand’s essence will clearly distinguish our company from our competitors and represent the emotional heartbeat of our organization on a consistent basis.
Happy New Year from all of us at Gumas and if you would like any assistance assuring successful commitment to the above resolutions, please contact us at editor@gumas.com.
Until next time…
