Twenty twenty is upon us so brands should encourage their staff to act as ambassadors for their business – in fact, they should be considered a key communications channel. If your sales team doesn’t believe in a product or your brand idea, then they can’t effectively sell it.
Many businesses do not engage their staff in this way, I know you’re not surprised. They may have highly efficient internal communications operations that isolates HR whose main purpose is to hire and fire, communicate payments over the holidays, review performance and what else?
It is a no-brainer not to attempt to use company staff to promote your organisation and its business regardless if you are a small company or not. It isn’t rocket-science but let’s be honest, how many of us include these people in campaign planning or media at all, let alone include passes to your own events?
Most employees will find out about a product at its launch or be targeted with Zuckerberg’s annoying ads on D day with photos where everyone else was invited but them. Engaging the whole workforce in advance prior to the day of the launch should come with little or manageable expenses so company employees are hyped and excited to be a part of the new brand creature so they can authentically promote it, not just the sales team.
Sales execution is easy to plan but hard to pull off so it requires engaging all your team – a serious challenge if you have staff in multiple locations with different work patterns and varying access to computers and mobile devices, although to get the best results it is worth it.
Get in the business of engaging early, I mean at developing the strategy for the business sort of stage – to give people a real opportunity to influence and buy into the plan. And then keep the conversation going, inviting all to share ideas for new products and propositions, and to feed forward on how those on the market are really going.
Before a big campaign, it is definitely worth investing the time to brief everyone, so they talk about it with confidence and, dare I say, excitement to their customers, friends and family.
Importantly, this will help ensure that the brand experience you are selling is matched with reality. We all know how frustrating it is talking to an employee who has no clue on company products. It is the employer's role to fill them in on this secret.
Whether you are selling products or services, brands need consumers to make a purchase in a competitive market and in the midst of this economic uncertainty – brands have to milk every last bob from all the communication channels available to them.
So, alongside the traditional and modern channels, let’s pay closer attention to our staff, make them part of the dream as a matter of course because outsiders think of them as the point of contact and because of the importance of seamless communication with consumers, to address and resolve their issues, it’s clear why engaging employees this way is such a crucial part of any organization.
