If you don't believe, don't expect your customers to.

If you don’t believe in your product, if you aren’t passionate about your business, how can you expect anyone else to be?

How will you attract and convince customers to buy into you if they can blatantly see you have no faith in the service your selling?

We’ve all had the experience of walking into a shop to be greeted by bored sales assistants who look like they would rather be eating their own vomit than positively engage with you or their environment.  What happens? You leave without making a purchase and a nasty taste in your mouth…and it’s not from the vomit.

It’s one thing that you as the business owner has a passion for your business; for what it stands for and what it can achieve. But it’s vital that strength of purpose is conveyed and believed by all those other stakeholders involved in your organisation. That includes staff, the media, the public, shareholders, investors, suppliers. Ultimately anyone you are asking to make an investment of time, effort or money. 

When developing a marketing strategy for the business, one of the key aspects of the marketing mix to consider is ‘People’. How do you engage staff, communicate with them, recruit them, train and reward them? Employees are a significant extension of any brand and a huge marketing tool.

Take the recent John Lewis and Partners TV campaign. What struck me when it first launched, wasn’t the captivating creative by Adam & Eve/DDB or the impressive rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody by the school children. It was the overwhelming response on social media by the employees of the brand. The way a whole internal community was galvanized to say loud and proud #wearepartners with tweets and messages that were full of positive sentiments and pride, was incredibly impressive and emotive. This is a brand whose people truly believe in and are fully committed to the vision and the part they play. John Lewis & Partners have gone so far as to make their employees and their level of support/belief/pride part of their competitive advantage.

When I joined the media start up, Made TV in 2014, the small team of around 60 (covering four TV channels in for major cities, plus a HQ), didn’t know what the future held for these newly launched local TV channels, but what we did know was that the people who started the business had a passion to give it a really good go with the aim and belief we could be the flagship, leading brand that challenged the London centric media status-quo. It was that commitment and strength of belief that played a significant part in the business growing to a network of eight, multiple industry awards and 4 million monthly viewers in less than 3 years.  

Conversely, House of Fraser is a business that clearly lost the passion and engagement of their staff long before they were bought out of administration by Mike Ashley. How it evolves in the future will be interesting to see given Ashley’s reputation around employee relations with his other businesses including Sports Direct. Will House of Fraser’s customers, internal and external, buy into Ashley’s vision?

Internal communications can be often placed at the bottom of the pile when allocating resources and efforts. It’s easy for financial worries, deadline stresses and competition to hamper enthusiasm and distract you from the aim and goals of the business. This can leave staff feeling neglected, anxious and disengaged.

Relevant communication, honesty and authenticity are not only what paying customers expect from businesses today, but your internal ones do too. Through various initiatives from clear and relatable brand values that are intrinsic to the business, dedicated intranets or newsletters to share information and achievements, training programmes and reviews, CSR programmes, regular appreciation, mentoring or shadowing opportunities, incentives or rewards are all options to be considered which can pay dividends when it comes to promoting and selling your brand.

It’s well known that any team is only as strong as its weakest member. As the team leader, don’t let the weakest member through lack of passion and belief, be you. 

Belief fuels passion, and passion rarely fails 

Mac Anderson

Teamwork