Using Brand Storytelling to Align Internal Team Members

When launching a new product or starting a new company it is very important to be able to explain what you do and the benefits of your services in a one-minute elevator speech. I have found that although this is much needed, people are much more visual than we believe. Furthermore (even in this digital world) there is something brilliant about putting the visual on a piece of paper, providing not only a visual but also a tactical experience.

In one of my past companies, we were struggling to convey what we thought was a simple methodology.  We had challenges getting prospective clients to understand its significance and we had more issues with our team adopting it and levering it on a consistent basis. I worked with one of our designers and we tried multiple ways to convey the methodology – from bullseye-type graphics to simple flow charts. We ended with what I would call an enhanced flow chart with a rather small amount of text. We created a one-page marketing slick that leveraged the graphic on the front and outlined each step in text-heavy detail on the back. The results were amazing.

The first result was that the sales cycle significantly decreased, the second was that our team started to speak in terms of the methodology, and finally our team started to operationally organize themselves according to the steps of the methodology. We had created numerous process documents, had numerous training sessions, and modified our delivery with limited results. Once we created a small visual and put it on a prehistoric tactile printed document magic happened. That brilliance was ignited by the one-page marketing slick.