In some Advice businesses there can sometimes be only one brand ambassador and unfortunately it’s usually the business owner. Why unfortunately? Because when you say how good you are and what a wonderful job you are doing it can be perceived as negative or untrue but when someone else tells your story and talks about the good work you do, it’s seen as really credible. We call those people brand ambassadors.
Brand ambassadors can come in various guises, for example, your staff, your Centre of Influences, your clients, the various business development managers you deal with; a variety of people. I wonder how well you would rate them on a scale of 1-10 in terms of them being a brand ambassador for your business?
It still amazes me how many staff of Financial Advisers don’t actually get what an Adviser can do for a client – I know scary!
Let’s focus on the employees and how we can help them become better brand ambassadors.
Firstly they need to understand the value of a Financial Adviser. Instantly there are two ways to achieve this.
- They become a client or at least go through the advice process.
- They get to understand and hear the good news stories and one of the best ways to achieve this is through your weekly meetings. It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, constant regular communication with staff is critical for many reasons – this is just one of those. Consider having an agenda item, good news stories.
Keep them fully informed about what it is you are doing for clients.
Encourage them to seize opportunities throughout their day and weekend as they interact with lots of people and talk about the great work the business they work in is doing.
Encourage them to share the positive stories on social media. Have they ‘liked’ the company FB page? Do they have a Twitter account as well and retweet your Tweets? Do they share your posts on LinkedIn too? The social media interaction and sharing is a simple way for them to become a brand ambassador.
Don’t assume that your staff are already brand ambassadors. Sometimes we get too wound up in the day-to-day slog of work that we can forget about all the great things that are happening for clients. When someone asks, “How was your day?” they may answer, “It was so boring I had so much paperwork and follow up stuff to do” rather than, “It was great, we helped a new client with their finances, they were a mess before they came to us now we’ve got it all sorted!”
You get the idea!
