Does your customer experience match your brand promise? Or maybe yet, do you even know what your brand promise happens to be? Our guest today is Chris Wallace, who is an expert at building continuity between your company’s branding and your customer experience. He shares with us some of his tips and suggestions to improve the connection between your brand identity and your customer experience.
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Check out the Brand Transfer Study: www.BrandTransferStudy.com
- Learn more about InnerView: www.InnerViewGroup.com
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
As the Founder and CEO at InnerView, Chris Wallace has been helping big firms take control of their brands – starting at the frontline-employee level. By innovative measuring just how engaged those customer service reps are, InnerView develops a holistic picture of brand health. Chris Wallace has been at the cutting edge of internal marketing, brand alignment, and customer experience strategy for over a decade, and is a thought leader on topics related to the importance of empowering frontline employees to keeping brands alive and well.
Beyond his work with clients, Chris has taught as an adjunct MBA professor at Temple’s Fox School of Business and has been published in the Harvard Business Review and AdAge, and he was also recently named to the Forbes Agency Council.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:00):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise companies take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And we’ve been fortunate to have some huge growth over the last couple of months of new people subscribing to the podcast. So, if you’re new here, please make sure you stick around to the end of the interview for the three key takeaways in our win-win. And we’d also like to just give a big thank you to all of you that have been listening and referring us out to others to tune in. And if you haven’t referred anyone out yet, this is the podcast to do it with. It’s the perfect episode for you to share with your networking group or other business owners that you’re connected with.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:45):
It literally is applicable to every business, large or small, no matter where you’re located. And the question that we are opening up with today has to do with your customer experience and does your customer experience match your brand promise or maybe yet, do you even know what your brand promise happens to be? Maybe that’s a place to start with first. And our guest today, Chris Wallace, is an expert at building continuity between your company’s branding and your customer experience in helping solve that gap or solve that problem. You’re going to love this interview. So, let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (01:26):
Well, so I’ll start by saying a brief description and I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. Organizations, especially big organizations build their vision of who they want to be through their marketing team. They build their brand, they build their positioning, all of that. And we have found a significant disconnect between the vision that they’ve created and the vision that other people inside the organization see, and in particular, the people who serve customers. So, we talk about ourselves as an alignment company. We’re really helping drive a alignment between the strategy and vision for your brand and the people who are talking to your customers every day. Your frontline teams, whether they’re sales, service, whatever their role is, if they’re interacting with your customer, they’re the face of your brand. So, that’s the work we do, we help bridge that gap for companies
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:17):
Really, really neat. And how do you end up doing this? It’s such a neat field in what you’re doing.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (02:25):
Well, I’m a reformed salesperson. I’m not a reformed salesperson, I’ll always be a salesperson. But myself and my colleagues have all been on the sales side of the house. And we’ve all been involved in these relationships and relationships, probably more appropriate to say silos, between what’s happening on the marketing side of the house and the sales side of the house. And we had seen an opportunity. I’d started a consulting firm, like I said, about almost 11 years ago now. And we were helping sales teams. And when we were learning where the real challenges were, we were finding that there are challenges with sales leadership, and sales management and things like that, but what we were continually finding was so many products, so many messages, so many offers, so many campaigns, the message was changing so frequently.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (03:19):
And the marketing team was almost bowling over the sales team, in terms of all of the different stuff they were pushing out. And we stepped in and said, we believe we can help get these two silos on the same page, these two groups on the same page. And we lived it for so long that we felt like it was worth taking a shot and seeing if we could close the gap.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (03:40):
Really neat, really neat. Well, and this is a topic of, like you said, aligning. So, you’re helping, and my understanding is taking this marketing messaging or your brand story and taking that and aligning it with your sales team. And you published a great article that I had read through in the Harvard Business Review about how new sales people and just customer service, they’re trained on new products, product information, but not on this whole vision, the story of the company, the brand, maybe some of the why behind things. So, talk a bit about those pain points that you see there too.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (04:22):
Yeah. I’m going to give you an analogy. I’ve been using an analogy lately to describe this. And the way I think about it is the marketing and training teams inside of an organization, there’s a new product or some new message related to something you’re bringing to market. It could be, like I said, a campaign, could be a new brand position, or it could be a new product or service. When that information starts to flow in one direction. And the analogy I use, it’s like, when my son was younger and before he could really speak his mind, which he certainly does now. If I want to feed him his vegetables, I want to feed him his peas, I want him to eat those peas. If I turn around the can of peas and I show him the nutrition label on the back, and I try to explain to him why it’s in his best interest to eat it and I give him all the facts.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (05:15):
If I expect he’s going to eat that because he’s got all the facts and it’s right there in black and white, I’m fooling myself. We all know that he’s not going to eat the peas as a result of that. You got to dress it up. You got to build that story around it. You got to make it interesting. You got to sell it to him in a little bit different way. And I look at organizations and I feel like in a lot of cases, the information that’s provided from a training team or from the marketing team, oftentimes looks like a nutrition lead. And it’s not really the story behind it. It doesn’t compel the person who has to go serve that customer to tell an interesting story.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (05:50):
It’s fact, it’s information, and the assumption is they will take it and turn it into a story. But marketers need to reach a little bit further into this process and help craft that story and help craft it, based on the perspective that their sales and service teams are going to have in serving the customer.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:08):
That’s really interesting. And so, when I’m thinking about that and applying it, how do you go about, in this part of your research, but I’m just curious, and maybe you could talk about how you measure this, or how do you identify this, even in your own company. We have business leaders of all shapes and sizes that tune into our program, but I’m wondering, and I’m just wondering for me, okay, Chris, this sounds great, but how do I kind of figure out where I stand or how this all works?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (06:40):
Yeah. So, when we started an InnerView, we built a tool called the Brand Transfer Study. And it’s quite literally named. The Brand Transfer Study is a frontline insights tool. And what we do with it is instead of asking the frontline teams what they know and doing it as a “knowledge check,” check to see if they read the back of the label, we’re not concerned about what they know. We’re concerned about what they think, what their attitudes and perceptions are. So, think of it as, it’s almost the analogy would be a market research tool.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (07:11):
We’re taking a market research process. Instead of asking the customers what they think of your brand, which most companies are doing already, we’re asking the people who serve your customers, what they think of your brand. What do they think is working well? What do they think is compelling about your offering? Where do they think you’re strong or weak compared to your competition? Coming back to an organization with some very rich detail and very rich data around what the frontline teams perceive to be your strengths or weakness, and ultimately your story. So, the Brand Transfer Study is really our tool to identify what the gap is between the vision and the corporate office, and then what’s happening out in the field.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (07:52):
And I would think, given your world with franchising, which we have some experience with that, getting that message out from the core home office out to franchisees and getting them to embrace the message and then their teams to embrace the message, it’s really important. Brands and a franchise business are extremely important.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:10):
Yeah. Well, and I’m glad you made that transition, because that’s exactly where I was going. So, perfect. And I’ve been a franchisee, where I’ve had the… It’s oftentimes a one direction, sometimes where it’s coming from corporate to be implemented by the franchisee. And then as the franchisee, you’re having your frontline employees and staff implement it. So, it’s this really interesting flow of information. And even as a franchise consultant, I’ve worked with hundreds of franchise brands over the years. And it’s very interesting to see the challenge that comes back and forth with one way, oftentimes, one way communication, the good brands do it well, where they have communication going both ways. But talk a little bit about that on the franchise side and what you’ve seen and how that can be effective.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (09:07):
I mean, in many cases, when you purchase a franchise, business franchise opportunity, you’re buying a brand, that’s what you’re buying. You’re buying a brand in a box. I mean, I’m oversimplifying. But you’re buying something that has taken and crystallized a vision and done such a good job of crystallizing that vision they’re able to package it up and get other people compelled to say, rather than starting this business myself, I believe that what they’ve built gives me a great headstart to go take advantage of whatever market you’re in.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (09:41):
So, I think that just the very nature of it makes the brand important. Now, for the people that are back at the corporate officer, the franchisor, they’re in a spot where the brand is their baby. And everybody on, they want to maintain some sort of consistency. That’s how you’re going to grow. So, we look at it as, I’m building a brand transfer study as we speak for a franchise business. And they operate in 43 states. They have 10,000 plus frontline team members that they’re out there supporting their customers every single day. And we are going to give them that feedback loop.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (10:24):
We’re going to build that feedback loop where the frontline teams can really give them a glimpse into what’s happening, for lack of a better phrase, the trenches every day. Think about if you’re the franchise head office, the corporate office, I mean, think about how valuable that would be to really understand what is happening out there. What do the conversations with customers sound like? What is the perception of what customers want, what they need and how we deliver on that?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (10:52):
It’s just a voice that most organizations are not listening to right now. We give them a very simple tool to do it. So, I would think in the franchise space and we’re going to see it with this example, we’re going to be able to help them really understand how to take their brand from what it is today, to hopefully distill that brand message even more and get back out to their field with hopefully really compelling messaging and materials to help them carry that message forth.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:19):
Great. Well, I love this study you’re doing. So, now you’re a client with these 10,000 frontline employees, working through their franchise system, they get this data. Now, how do those insights and information that you’re able to gather, how can that help improve just the overall customer experience?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (11:38):
So, customer experience is the key here. Ultimately, it’s the customer experience. And I think that the key here is to define some terms. So, when we think of brand and customer experience, brand is the promise that the organization is making to their customers. Brand is the messages, it’s the value proposition. It is truly the, we are saying we can do this for you and this is why you should do business with us. The customer experience is the process and the strategy that goes into keeping that promise. That’s the actual delivery of the brand promise, is the customer experience.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (12:15):
So, in the instance of the organization we’re working with, they’ve been in existence for, it’ll be 40 years next year. 2022 will be their 40th year in existence. Handful of years ago, they started a process of really trying to understand what was at the heart of their business. What was at the core? What made them unique and special? And they got some good feedback from their franchisees and the people in the field, but they never want the distance with it. So, we’re going to help them go the distance, or we’re going to help them flesh out this concept of what is it that truly makes us unique and different.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (12:55):
And think of it as we’re going to help them build an internal brand refresh. We’re going to help them, I don’t want to say revamp, because they’ve got a great brand, but give it a fresh coat of paint. But do it in a way where we’re taking who they want to be as a brand with that promises and translating it into the behaviors that the teams that serve customers every day should be exhibiting. So, that idea of brand is the promise and customer experience is the delivery of that promise, the delivery happens through behaviors. So, if you’re not translating your brand vision into behaviors, you’re not really giving your people the direction that they need to actually be consistent with your brand every day. It’s not just about what you say.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:33):
Right, right. Absolutely. Well, as you’re describing it, it makes me think of this extreme situation, like that TV show, Undercover Boss, to a certain extent, where the CEO from this large franchise brand goes to a local franchise location or branch and visits and hangs out with the frontline employees. And you’re doing this just in more of a research capacity and getting a far greater sample size. You’re getting lots of data from lots of data points and able to analyze it.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (14:05):
So, I love that analogy. I don’t think that there’s a better analogy to describe what we’re doing. I often talk about how, when people from corporate, and oftentimes we work with marketing teams, but when people from corporate go out into the field, the same thing usually happens every time. They come back to corporate and they’re filled with energy and anxiety and frustrations and ideas. And they come back and they say, “Well, I heard this, we got to be better at this. Well, I heard that, we got to be better at that.” And they’re hearing these things in one off bits and pieces. And it’s so powerful because they get to see it through the eyes of the people who are in the trenches every day, serving the customers. So, it’s really energizing for people, and probably more appropriate, eyeopening.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (14:54):
It’s really eyeopening for them. We’re giving them that point of view and that feedback loop all the time. It’s scalable, it gives everybody a voice in the process, it’s not just what branch they happen to visit that day. It really helps them become better leaders. It helps them reach their customers better. And ultimately, it helps them better design. We’re not in this to try to help people redo their brands or to rebrand their organization, we would rather see the better connection between the brand and the customer experience. So, identify ways that your brand is breaking down from a customer experience standpoint and fill those gap. But if you’ve got that information on an ongoing basis, it’s much more scalable than going and doing write outs.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:37):
Yeah. And you use this phrase, it really stood out to me, about creating an agile frontline workforce, or just having a frontline agility. And it just made me think, I recently read a book that really focused a lot about change management and really focusing on change, agility. And would you just talk a little bit about what that means and how that might apply to a business?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (16:07):
Yeah, really good points you picked up from the article, by the way. I’m really glad you had a chance to read it. So, the agility piece is, I had a call earlier today with some advisors to our business. And one of our advisors, who’s a very smart man. Actually, he’s at Harvard Business School. He brought up a point and he said, “There is a Hawthorne effect reality with your tool that we can’t ignore.” And what he means by that is Hawthorne effect is if you shine a light on something that improves. And if you put attention on something, it automatically improves, just by the fact that you’re putting attention on it. And where he was going with this is just the simple fact of asking your frontline teams for input is an empathetic approach. Listening is the ultimate act of empathy, trying to understand them and trying to understand their point of view.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (17:03):
Well, if you’re listening, you’re opening your people up to change. You’re opening up their minds to, okay, well, maybe change will come from this. Well, you have to act in order to continue to keep that trust. But to your point, this is ultimately a change management tool. The Brand Transfer Study is a change management tool for marketers, as they are bringing new messages to market. And we look at it as, building that dialogue is such an important first step. And if you did nothing other than ask, you’re already building that link and opening people’s minds up. Which if you want to move quickly and you want to make adjustments on the fly, hearing them, showing that you’ve heard them, responding to them, and getting this virtuous cycle going, you’re going to change a lot quicker if you’re doing that then if you’re just continuing to push new messages out.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:56):
Yeah. That’s phenomenal. Phenomenal. Well, and I’m just curious if in past work or with past clients, have you been able to see that companies who have, I don’t know how you’re measuring this specifically, but companies that have, let’s say their frontline staff is better informed on the story or the narrative or the brand messaging. If those companies perform better, versus companies where they have the technical knowledge, but they’re not tying the pieces together. Do you have any information that you can share on that?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (18:33):
When I have full information on that, that will be the cover of Harvard Business Review when I get all of that together, which we’re in the process of doing. But I can answer that at a more micro level and at a more specific level. Which is, we have found that when you start out with a brand transfer score, because there’s a score that goes along with it, when you start out with a team that is misaligned, we don’t just tell you that you’re misaligned. And that’s very key. We don’t just say, “Sorry, you’re misaligned, go fix it.” We are pinpointing the different attributes of your brand and your value proposition that are either reaching your team effectively or not reaching your team effectively.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (19:13):
So, it becomes a GPS of sorts, to really pinpoint, okay, this message is not getting through. Our money back guarantee is just not something that people are believing in or that they’re talking about, it’s falling short. We’ve got to beef up that message. So, we have shown that if a team starts misaligned and we can take those individual messages that are not getting through to them and we can amplify them in a smart, strategic way, and targeted way, then we can drive better adoption and better adoption means better results. So, we have taken clients misaligned through the measurement process and the diagnostic, all the way through to improve the message, improve alignment, improve sales. We’ve seen that play out all the way through.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:01):
Yeah. As I’m thinking about it from my own business, and really what you’re thinking about is if you’re able to get your score and then assess where you’re aligned or misaligned and then make adjustments and corrections and start seeing those adjustments being made, that’s really the most critical thing I would imagine.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (20:22):
Yeah. And I have a point here that’s probably going to be music to the ears of a lot of the people that you have listening, especially in a franchise business. I’m assuming that many of them are struggling to find and keep people. That seems to be the most pressing challenge of our current day for business owners. And what we have found is that not only are you going to reach customers better if you deliver this message, but I’m going to break this down in very simple terms. If you ask an employee, what makes the brand that they represent, and them in many ways, it’s a reflection of them, what makes the brand special? What makes it unique? And then they tell you that. You build messaging to reinforce what they told you.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (21:13):
You say, this is what I think makes our company great. You reinforce that messaging, if in fact, it’s true. You reinforce that messaging and you’re telling that story back to them, you’re convincing them more and more and more, one, that you care to hear what they have to say. And two, that their point of view is not only valued, but it’s right. Their point of view is something that’s important in the message you’re delivering to customers and the service that you provide, guess what happens, the more you tell them that story, tell them back the story that they told you, the more convinced they are, that they work at a great place. The more convinced they are, that the work they do matters. The more convinced that they are, the more excited they are to serve customers, because it’s like putting wind in the sales of a sailboat.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (22:00):
If you’re constantly pumping wind into the sales, it’s hard not to feel good about what you’re doing. So, that’s where the whole loop comes in. It becomes a great retention tool, and we’ve proven this with clients as well. We’ve worked with a branch based business before, local offices, and we did exactly that. We told the story back to them, and what happened? We told it to them so they were reminded of it. They did it more, their customers were happier. They were happier. They performed better and they stayed longer and all of that stuff just continued to perpetuate forward.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:31):
Interesting, really interesting. Well, it makes me wonder about some brands that certainly seem to do very, very well with retaining staff, especially you think of brands that are talked about often in the news companies, like a Chick-fil-A for example, where you have these franchise operators. And then you have these oftentimes part-timers that they’re not there for the long haul. They’re just here for a season of life or a short time period. And as you’re describing that, it makes me wonder, you see happy people, happy customers, and it’s this upward spiral that is growing on through that.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (23:09):
The franchise company we’re working with right now, when I was explaining the brand transfer study process to them, I actually presented to their franchise conference a couple weeks ago. And they said, “Make sure you touch upon the benefits of employee retention out of this.” And they really are significant. They knew that was going to be the thing that would get people’s attention. And employee retention’s a tricky thing. This doesn’t necessarily mean, like your Chick-fil-A example, if they stay for 20 years, but in a lot of these businesses, if they stay two, three, four more months, that’s a big deal. That drives up your profitability significantly, and it’s just another example.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (23:50):
It’s another opportunity to show your people that you care, you care what they have to say, you care that they feel good about where they work. At the end of the day, that’s really what this is. It’s a way to make them feel good about what they’re delivering to the customer.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:02):
Yeah. Absolutely, so true. And it’s a great point for any company that’s dealing with part-timers or just a temporary place for people to go. If you can take your turnover from six times a year to five times a year, or from five to three, or whatever the number might be, that’s significant. That is a significant impact on that business.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (24:26):
For sure.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (24:28):
Well, Chris, this is a great point for us to make a transition. We ask every guest before they go the same four questions. So, the first question we like to ask every guest is about a miss and have you had a miss or two in your career, in your journey as you’ve gone through building your business, that you can share and something you learned from it.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (24:51):
So, we all have. We’ve all had misses. Excuse me. So, a handful of years ago, my business partner and I decided to merge the original firm that we started with another company. And let’s just say that didn’t go the way that we had anticipated, and didn’t go the way that we would’ve liked. Probably not so much of our doing. We joined a situation that was starting to spiral out control before we showed up, so to speak, and we ended up taking a hit as a result of doing that. But I will say, just like any other entrepreneur will tell you, that miss gave us the opportunity to step away and look at six, seven, eight years of working together and what we had heard from clients. And if we had not gone through that process, the Brand Transfer Study wouldn’t exist today.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (25:53):
And that has truly become our secret sauce, our differentiator, and something that is truly unique in the marketplace. And major brands are now using this for how they bring products to market, how they measure their customer experience internally. So, we’re proud of that. So, one door closed and another one opened, so that’s what you have to do as an entrepreneur. You have to roll with it. You don’t have any other choice.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:16):
That’s right. I love it. I love it. Well, the next question is about a make. So, the other side of things, has there been a make or two that you could share?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (26:27):
A make, I would say that probably the biggest make was my before mentioned business partner. I just started my firm and she and I had been coworkers previously. And through a corporate merger situation, we both found ourselves looking for other opportunities. I started a business and she sat on the sidelines for a little while, and calling her up and saying, “Why don’t you come have lunch with me? I know you’re thinking about getting back into the workforce, why don’t you come have lunch with me? And let’s talk about I’m doing, I want you to meet some people.” And asking her to that lunch and what it has turned into, in terms of the partnership that we’ve had for the last, it’ll be going on nine years next year, that was a make. So, having the foresight to bring somebody on who could truly multiply the impact that we were having, make me better, make our team better, that was a big make.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:27):
Great, well, you just used the word we like to ask next, which is about a multiplier. So, it may be the same answer here. But we always like to ask, we get a really broad cross section of multipliers that folks use to grow themselves, grow their business. We get a really diverse response here. So, has there been a multiplier or two that you’ve used as you’ve grown throughout your career?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (27:50):
Yeah. We’ve had a series of advisors that we’ve worked with over the years, people who know us, like us, and want to see us be successful. And I mentioned some earlier, gentleman by the name of Dr. Frank Cespedes, who’s at Harvard Business School. We read a book that he wrote called Aligning Strategy in Sales. Pretty straightforward, pretty needed, Aligning Strategy in Sales. The book was about the struggles that organizations have from the time that they build their vision, to getting it downstream to the people who actually have to monetize it. Because at the end of the day, you got to sell something or nothing happens.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (28:28):
And we read that book and we were blown away at the simplicity, at the clarity. It was not academic in nature, it’s very practical. We reached out to Frank and said, “We’d love to have a dialogue with you. We think that we,” as Frank says, “Pray in the same church.” And here we are, we were talking to him this morning, seven years later. And he has been an advisor, a confidant, a friend, an inspiration to us. And we’re truly blessed to have him in our orbit. So, I’ll go with Dr. Cespedes as my multiplier.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:03):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And the last question we like to ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (29:13):
I’m going to give you a very personal answer. Success to me is that I get to find myself in a position where before I get too late in my career, or too far into my life, that I’m able to stop day to day work, and I don’t want to say “retire,” but spend most of my days or more of my days giving back, volunteering, really investing in a community, whether it’s the one I’m currently in now or a different one. But I’m just a big believer that I’ve been fortunate to achieve some things in business that I didn’t necessarily ever think that I would. And I’m looking at it and saying, you get to a certain point where you don’t start to count it in money, you don’t start to count success in money, in dollars.
Chris Wallace, InnerView (30:01):
And I look at it as, success for me is the sooner I can start spending all or most of my day giving back to a community in meaningful ways, both through time, monetarily, things like that, that’s how I’ll measure whether or not I was successful.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (30:19):
Incredible. Well, Chris, as we close this out, is there anything you are hoping to share or say that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Chris Wallace, InnerView (30:27):
I don’t think so. I’m not only passionate about what we do, but I’m passionate about how what we do applies in the franchise marketplace. I really think it’s a unique place where our value might be even greater than in some other segments of the business world. But one thing I would just share is if anybody’s interested in learning more, brandtransferstudy.com. We have our website, the company website is innerviewgroup.com, but brand transferstudy.com. There’s some resources on there. There’s a great explainer video about our process. If anybody’s interested in learning more, please contact us through that site.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (31:05):
Chris, thank you so much for just a fantastic interview. And let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one comes when Chris was talking about what so often training looks like for customer service professionals, sales reps, and others that are interacting with your customer on the local level. And he talked about how training is so often similar to a nutrition label. I thought that was just a fantastic takeaway. So, don’t let your training just turn into a nutrition label for your sales team or for your customer service team to take and implement.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (31:48):
Takeaway number two is when he talked about the definition of a brand and a customer experience, and he said, “A brand is the promise that organizations are making to their customers and the customer experience is the process and the strategy of keeping that promise.” Extremely well said. And take away number three is when he described what’s helped him be successful. For multiplying his success is finding a great business partner and finding a great mentor. A great business partner and great mentor. I thought that was wonderful.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (32:24):
And now it’s time for today’s win, win. So today’s win, win, comes from when Chris was talking about translating your brand into behaviors. And if you’re not giving your team the ability to succeed, that’s a problem. So, make sure that you are translating your brand vision into behaviors and helping make that feasible from your marketing and branding and vision, to actual implementation directly into that customer experience. And so, that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (33:06):
And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise our business or take your franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.
