Coaching your employees to be better influencers

If your employees are the target audience for your product (and even if they aren't) a lot of them will be influencers to some extent, affecting how others percieve your company/products/brand.

Two of the bullet points in a recent Branding Strategy Insider posting have led me to pontificate this further:

• To be truly successful, a brand must be based upon the enlightened vision of a strong leader and a relentless employee passion to better meet the needs of the customer.


• Don’t forget to hire, train, motivate and compensate front line employees to deliver the brand’s essence, promise and personality.

And Jeremiah Owyang also mentions this in one of his recent postings about Social Media:

• Training and entrusting employees to build real relationships using these tools

Obviously company values training/guidance/coaching should be given to your front-line staff. However companies should try to give some understanding of their brand and values to all staff. The corporate DNA goes deeper then the veneer of customer service & branch employees.