Why knowing what’s said about your brand behind your back is so critical to your success. Part II
Invite every employee to participate.
As a leader, one of the most meaningful things you can do during the rebranding process is to invite your employees to participate. Whether they’re completing a survey or being interviewed, it demonstrates interest in their experiences and opinions about the company.
For larger organizations, gathering input from every member of the team can seem daunting, especially if your footprint spans all four corners of the country, or overseas. This is where surveys can play an integral role. Our methodology includes asking every employee the same questions touching on topics such as your vision, branding, business segments, challenges and opportunities. It creates space for them to share their thoughts on their time and where they feel most comfortable. Surveys can also make it easier to discover alignment, misalignment and areas where deeper probing is needed.
Simultaneously, we often recommend conducting one-on–one interviews with your company’s “Mars Team”. In its simplest form, these are the people you would choose to send to Mars to open another location. These should be individuals from different areas of your business who know enough and who have some skin in the game but who will also be honest and challenge norms if they feel there’s a better opportunity for your brand. Like the surveys, these interviews consist of a series of the same questions to help bring meaningful insights to the forefront. Unlike the surveys, they allow us to ask deeper questions to clarify answers or explore certain topics beyond the initial response.
Determining the number of one-on-one interviews depends on the size of your company, how it’s organized, the objectives of the project and who leaders identify as being part of their Mars Team.
Key considerations:
Give some thought to who would be invited on your Mars Team. These people care about the company and where it’s going.
Consider categorizing employees by department. Their answers could be influenced by the area of the business they work in. This serves as a lens to consider as insights are pulled.
Survey every single employee, even interns. The more information you can collect, the easier it can be to find valuable insights, including challenges and opportunities.
Ask your customers to share their experience.
When we ask clients for a list of customers who would be willing to participate in a brand assessment, it’s almost always followed by a deeper conversation about who and how many should be invited. Like internal interviews, there is no ideal number. It really comes down to the size and complexity of your business (multiple business segments, different departments, etc.), the goals of the project and budget. It can also be influenced by touch points such as retail locations, call centers, online engagement tools, etc.
Your brand architecture is an important part of deciphering who and how many customers to engage. If your business segments work as separate entities, it may make sense to interview several customers from each segment. If your business operates more as a branded house, the pool could be smaller. After discussing your brand architecture, we often lead the conversation to identifying customers who are not your biggest cheerleaders. Or at least not all of them should be.
In its purest form our job is to bring together these insights to paint the clearest picture of your brand today so that we can help design the clearest path forward to the brand you want to be in the future. Interviewing a mix of customers who have been exposed to your brand and the people within your company at varying levels and touchpoints is critical. By talking through the criteria for identifying the customers to be interviewed, it becomes easy to land on a comfortable number that will provide the input needed.
Key considerations:
What are the touchpoints in your sales process? Do you have customers who have been exposed to most of these?
Do you have longevity with any customers?
Have you had to nurture any relationships? Maybe a few of your customers have had to work through challenges with your team.
Have you received feedback from any customers? These might be the easiest to engage but again, they shouldn’t all be major cheerleaders for your company.
At pivotal moments, rebranding is the most effective way for leaders to signal significant change. Are you at a pivotal moment? Drop us a line, and we'll be in touch.