Get To work on discovering your brand position
Lesson Outcome
By the end of this lesson you'll have been through a process of talking with your stakeholders to really understand how your brand is perceived. You'll have access to templates and frameworks to help you go through this process and the findings will inform your next steps in developing your brand position
Now we will get down to the real details of what's happening in your firm and how to obtain an accurate and honest view of how your firm is showing up to others.
You'll be talking to your stakeholders about their experiences of your firm and recording the outcomes of these conversations.
In the resources you'll find guides, templates and best practice for having these conversations.
Having these conversations won't always feel comfortable but by following the framework below you'll find a process that works for you and will yield invaluable insights. You'll also learn from this which aspects of your firm's brand need to improve and where you are already doing a great job!
The CURREnt brand position process
Click the arrows in the 4 steps below to access the exercises and processes you'll need to uncover the current brand position of your firm
workbook exercise
The first task is to talk to your stakeholders.
To do this you will need to identify the stakeholders that are connected with your firm. These are likely to include the following and there may be others too...
On page 4 of your workbook you'll find the Key Stakeholders Map page - record who these stakeholders are for your firm on this page of the workbook.
Use the Stakeholder Contact Plan on page 5 in your workbook to plan and manage this exercise.
The purpose of this part of the exercise is to ensure you make a clear plan and commitment to having the brand feedback conversations. In the next drop down you'll see the questions for the meetings but in the first instance it's helpful to lay out a plan to ensure you obtain feedback from a broad range of stakeholders - including those who you believe may not be entirely positive!
You can meet or discuss your firm with the stakeholders in the way that you feel is most appropriate for the relationship you have with them.
The format you chose is less important than the outputs and feedback you get.
You may want to ask these questions as part of a regular client catch up, set aside a specific time for a video call or include in a regular internal meeting.
As this exercise is designed to give you insight. Planning how and when to engage your stakeholders will ensure you get the best results from the exercise and it is competed in a timely and efficient way.
Using the stakeholder contact plan in your workbook - go ahead and make your appointments and keep a track of when they have been completed.
To get genuine and useful information during your stakeholder engagement meetings you need to build trust and openness.
This is regardless of whether you are meeting individuals or a group.
The areas you should be seeking feedback from your stakeholders on are shown below:
To help you manage these meetings we have included three useful tools in the resources at the end of this lesson.
You'll find:
1) There are guides to templates to use to run and record information for individual and team meetings.
2) A PowerPoint template to use in team meetings
3) A best practice guide on collecting feedback.
Once you have conducted your meetings you should summarise your thoughts and reflections in page 6 of your workbook.
We will ask you to focus on the following areas:
Lesson Outcome
You will now have had multiple conversations with many different stakeholders. Using the resources at the bottom of this page you'll have had guidance on how to run the meetings, organise the conversations and how to record the feedback. You'll be going into the next lesson with a clear idea and understanding of how your brand is percieved by others both within your firm and external to your firm.
next steps...
When you have consolidated your thoughts and insights from this lesson, move on to the next lesson using the button below.