Doug Bruhnke And The Tag Line

I was listening to a recording of The John Adam Show on the internet recently when my friend Doug Bruhnke presented a piece on Tag lines.  He shared “Where’s the beef?” and “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” as examples of tag lines that have proven memorable and tell a story of the brand promise for the company using them.

I have been thinking about it since then and wondering, as I am sure you will when you listen to it, is my tag line a boost to the brand promise I hope I am making to my customers when I speak or interact with them.  I am ashamed to admit I have yet to find a tag line I am proud of after almost ten years in my business practice providing sales force development to small businesses and individuals.

The root of my shame comes significantly because drilling down to the roots of the brand promise is no small part of my work with my own clients and I have never before taken a serious look at my own.  I am an absolute fanatic that a business must know the value proposition of its product line thoroughly and completely by all participants in the company and they must all be expressing the same thing.  Further that what they are sharing is based on what it is the customer is buying rather than whatever it is they think they may be selling.

At an early client of mine, I went around amongst the long term employees and principals of the company and asked them what the company provided.  I was developing scripts for a sales campaign and needed to be able to whittle down the language to the quickest awareness of the ROI for the person on the other end of the phone.  I was amazed to discover no one in the company answered the question the same way and every answer was based on what they sold rather than what they thought the customer might feel is valuable to them.

The next day I dragged 100% of the employees into their conference room, brought in pizza and didn’t let them out until we were all on the same page about what the companies customers bought from them rather than what they sold.  That exercise became the foundation for the entire sales language for everyone in the company.  It was common to everyone and it focused on what the buyer was looking for. 

More importantly, every marketing piece, every sales script, every tag line, every value proposition was predicated on the language we developed in that exercise and within 90 days, we turned that company profitable.  Today, that exercise is a signature piece of the Solomon Sales System.  Today I call it the Values Inventory Exercise because the whole idea is to create an inventory of all the value a company brings to its customers.

If I understand correctly what Doug was saying on The John Adam show then, the tag line is a single encapsulation of all those values into a single short line that conveys a concentrated message of what a customer can expect when doing business with the company.

I have now done my homework and I am ready to expose my tag line for review and ridicule if you choose.  Or if you love it, you can say that too.  Either way, I will look forward to your comments and discover whether or not you think this represents me well.

“Solving the mystery of sales in small business”

Thanks for thinking about it and letting me know and Thanks also to Doug Bruhnke and John Adam for working so hard to develop small business in Arizona as well.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael D. Goodman
President
USSalesForce, Corp.
Solving the mystery of sales in small business!

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