By now, most of us realize the importance of branding for a business. It helps current and prospective customers identify your product or service. Branding also helps establish your business’ presence in a crowded world. Few books explore the “why” behind this logic, however. That’s where A Winning Brand: How to build a Powerful, Personal Brand in Today’s Modern, Digital World begins. The book explores the reasons every business (and really every person) needs to invest in sharing the best version of its brand with the world.
What is A Winning Brand About?
The wisdom behind A Winning Brand came to Kraig Kleeman at one of the lowest points in his life. He was experiencing a medical crisis and struggling through the relationships in his life. At the time, Kleeman didn’t have a social media presence.
His luck would change when he changed his strategy. Kleeman transformed into a new brand, “The World’s Greatest Cold Caller”, leveraging his skill in cold calling. As he started to promote the value behind his new brand, people took notice. They started calling him “The World’s Greatest Cold Caller” and Kleeman never looked back. The more value he offered as a sales consultant, the more clients he had. The more clients he had, the more they told others. He had successfully become a winning brand.
This cycle of success is what every business should strive for. Many businesses, however, miss the mark. They focus too much on why their brand doesn’t work. They don’t consider the value that people derive from that brand. The value people derive from your brand is the key asset, not the fancy graphics or pretty colors. That is the point Kleeman is making. Business owners need to invest in value before they consider any other aspect of the brand.
The value of your brand is created when you understand the two most important parts of a brand, the promise and the customer’s perspective. Kleeman’s book starts the process to help readers add even more value to their planning
Kleeman, known as The World’s Greatest Cold Caller, is a sales consultant, author, speaker, and the host of Kraig Kleeman TV, a YouTube channel featuring sales instruction. Known for his love of rock and clothing featuring a peace sign, he created a unique brand and sales system, which serves as the foundation of his techniques today. Kleeman’s system, the Must-React system, has been credited with helping sales professionals earn millions in revenue. Kleeman also used his skills to develop a million-dollar company, Express Direct, from scratch.
What Was Best About A Winning Brand?
A Winning Brand is a great read that really reinforces the need for reflection and experimentation with your branding. Many business owners assume that branding is a once-and-done process. It’s not. Branding, as Kleeman emphasizes, again and again, is a story, an evolving story. Evolving with that story requires reflection and bold experimentation. Without reflection and experimentation, your brand is at risk of losing relevance, value, and ultimately, profit.
What Could Have Been Done Differently?
“A Winning Brand” dismisses the assumption that you have to be a certain type of person to have a brand. Kleeman would disagree with this perceived barrier. We all have a brand and we establish (or destroy) that brand with our everyday actions. To address this reality, the book does a great job of helping to connect personal branding goals with the social media channels — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. — most appropriate to amplify them. This approach could be extended a bit further, however into other aspects of the business. For example, what kind of customer service, etc. best amplifies a personal brand?
Why Read A Winning Brand?
If you are a business owner in the first stages of creating your brand or in the process of refreshing your brand, A Winning Brand covers the essential planning questions you need to address. Once you’ve completed planning for your brand, A Winning Brand also details social media strategies (particularly on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) for transforming those plans into a functional strategy. Learning to build a winning brand position for your business (or your own personal brand) is one of the key takeaways from this book. It is not enough to build a brand, Kleeman’s book suggests. Branding in the always-connected, always-moving world requires a balance between evolving your brand’s message for your audience and staying true to the values that you want to follow for the life of your brand.
This article, “A Winning Brand Requires Telling a Never-Ending Story About Your Business” was first published on Small Business Trends