Branding is often misunderstood or overlooked, especially when it comes to B2B. But, your brand is one of the most important assets of your business. No matter how great your product or service is, if your brand is weak or misguided, you’re going to have a hard time differentiating yourself in the market and connecting with your target audience. A strong brand can help you survive the roller coaster of the business world. It builds connection, loyalty, fans, and champions. It can help you win the unwinnable price war. In this talk, Jennifer will reveal how Proposify developed a brand in the early stages of the company that helped them carve out a presence among established competitors, engage employees, and create an emotional connection with customers in what can be seen as a “boring” industry. And what could all this have anything to do with secret agent 007?
Jennifer Faulkner:
Hi everyone. I'm Jennifer Faulkner. And I'm the chief communications officer at Proposify. Now, if you haven't heard of Proposify before, Proposify is online proposal software. Well, actually we're not this kind of online proposal software. We're actually business proposal software. So we help sales teams streamline the creation of different sales documents, quotes, contracts, proposals, whatever they need to help close their deal faster. And I know you what you're probably thinking. Proposal software? That's got to be a thrilling industry, right up there with exciting software like accounting, tax filing, and insurance. But to me, our team at Proposify and our customers around the world, proposal software is exciting. It's exciting because we're solving a real problem for businesses and sales teams. It's exciting because we get excited messages from our customers about how we help them improve their inefficient process, shorten their sales cycle, improve close rates, and ultimately grow their revenue.
Jennifer Faulkner:
And it's exciting because we make it exciting. Or at the very least, we make it not boring. To me, there's no such thing as a boring industry, only boring brands. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. How Proposify has created an engaging brand that differentiated us from our competitors in what can be considered a boring industry, and why developing a brand and living it is essential to your business. Regardless of your industry, regardless of the fact you may be B2B, because many people have the misconception that branding is just for B2C companies, and regardless of what stage your company is in.
Jennifer Faulkner:
I'm also going to tell you what this guy, James Bond, has to do with it all. I couldn't decide which James Bond was my favorite so I included them all. Okay, let's jump in. So first off, I'm going to assume we're all in agreement that your brand is one of the most important assets of your business. Because no matter how great your product or service is, or how exciting or boring you might perceive your industry to be, if your brand is weak or misguided, you're going to have a hard time differentiating yourself in the market and connecting with your target audience.
Jennifer Faulkner:
A strong brand can help you survive the rollercoaster of the business world. It builds connection, loyalty, fans and champions. It can help you win the unwinnable price war. Your brand can also provide a roadmap for making decisions about your marketing strategy, public relations, product and service development, customer support, communications, hiring, and employee performance. But here's the thing. To me, if there's a hall of fame award for most misunderstood business term, I'd vote for branding. So just to be sure we're all on the same page before I dive into our branding process, I'm going to lay out how I define brand based on my years of experience developing brands for businesses from a cross section of industries. So here's what a brand isn't. It's not a logo, it's not a tagline and it's not a product. These are all representations of a brand, vehicles through which to communicate the brand, but none of these are the brand in and of itself. And this is where a lot of businesses get tripped up. They'll say they want to rebrand, but all they really want is a new logo color.
Jennifer Faulkner:
Branding to me? Well, true branding is about the promise of an experience. And to be successful, that brand has to be delivered consistently, you have to create a distinct memorable impression, and you have to set an expectation. And that's why I like the image of an engagement ring to represent brand. It represents a promise and expectation. I mean, in this case quite literally, a promise of love, a commitment, a wedding, a lifetime with somebody. So do you want to know who I think has been killing it for centuries in terms of delivering a consistent brand message? Pirates. Think about it. As soon as you saw this flag, you knew who they were. You knew what to expect. Immediately, we know their mission. Wealth creation through theft and fear. We know their brand promise. We will rob you of all your riches, we'll terrorize, injure, maim, and even kill you to get it. You will fear us.
Jennifer Faulkner:
We know who their target audience is. All unsuspecting explorers and travelers at sea. And what's their brand experience delivered consistently? Well, consistently we promise we're going to overtake your ship, we're going to shoot our cannons at you, and we're going to do all sorts of bad things to get your treasures. But really, everything is about hearts and minds. The truth is it doesn't matter what people think about you or your business. What matters is how you make them feel about themselves and their decisions while interacting with your brand. Do you make them feel smart, frugal, responsible, informed, accepted? And one brand can make two people feel very differently about themselves depending on their own perceptions and experiences.
Jennifer Faulkner:
For example, I'm a committed Apple customer. My relationship with the Apple started back in the 80's when my dad was one of the first Apple dealers in our region. I grew up absorbing my dad's admiration and enthusiasm for Steve Jobs' vision, our family took vacations to places where my dad could attend to Apple related to conventions and Apple put food on our table, so to speak. Apple definitely made it into the hearts and minds of my family. And over the years, this connection deepened as I developed my own appreciation for all things Apple. Their design sensibility, their commitment to simplicity, and to making technology feel more human. To me, Apple makes me feel smart, creative, and cool plus there's that deep rooted connection with my family.
Jennifer Faulkner:
My husband, on the other hand? That's not how Apple makes him feel. He feels Apple is overpriced, pretentious and complicated, and he thinks people are sheep to Apple's cult-like status. He likes his very functional PC laptop, and that makes him feel smart, thrifty and nonconforming. So one brand, two experiences. Another thing about brand is they're very much like your children. You can't control your brand. You can manage it, you can influence it, but in the end, it's interpreted by your stakeholders, your customers, employees, potential employees, your investors, the media, and it'll be shaped by their personal experiences and their experience with your brand. So now that we're all in a agreement about branding, let's do a quick virtual fist bump to seal the deal and we'll move on with the story. So to give you a little background, Proposify was officially founded in 2013. We're a pretty young company, but the idea had been living in our co-founder Kyle Racki.
Jennifer Faulkner:
It had been living in his mind since as early as 2007. Long story short, Kyle wanted to create an easier way for marketing agencies and freelancers to create winning proposals. He had experienced the pain of proposal process himself as an agency designer, as a freelancer, and then as an agency owner. He knew it could be better. It had to be better. And anyone who's worked with proposals knows it can be a painful process. But when Proposify first launched, they didn't have the time or resources to invest in a full brand strategy. But fortunately, as a designer, Kyle knew how to establish Proposify's initial image positively in the marketplace. Kyle himself, the original logo design, the look and feel of the website, and all the visual elements to get things up and running. It looked clean, full, and it addressed an agency crowd, especially freelancers.
Jennifer Faulkner:
This is what the original homepage looked like back in the day. So we all grew fond of the Proposify freelancer you see sitting here having her coffee. So before I joined Proposify, I totally related to this image of a casually dressed woman working in a cafe. I had been a freelancer for several years. I dress casually. I worked in cafes. Proposals were a nightmare, both when I worked at agencies and when I was out on my own generating my own business. So this cool girl, this Proposify girl, this cool girl was getting it done and I wanted to be cool and get it done, so I totally related. But like any good CEO, Kyle's vision for Proposify evolved, his knowledge of the marketplace grew, and his understanding of who had a proposal problem and how it could be solved deepened. So what we learned is Proposify isn't just for freelancers and it isn't just about proposals.
Jennifer Faulkner:
It's about making the sales process easier for anyone who needs to create documents to generate new business. That could be directors of marketing, sales ops, sales leaders, entrepreneurs, account directors, professional consultants, and yes, sometimes still freelancers. It was time to differentiate Proposify more in the marketplace and to find a new way to connect with our target audience that would set us apart from the competition. And that's the thing I love about branding, why it's such a powerful tool for your business. In a sea of sameness where customers find it hard to discern one product over the other, or where companies just get in a feature war, your brand done right can be your competitive tipping point. So in 2015, it was time for Proposify to punch out, to create an expectation, to burrow into those hearts and minds. Otherwise, we were going to drown in that sea of sameness and get exhausted fighting a feature war with our competitors. So I was really excited to lead Proposify's rebranding process. As I mentioned earlier, developing brand strategies is something I had done in both my agency work and as a freelancer.
Jennifer Faulkner:
I loved educating clients about brands, leading them through the process, working with a team to develop a strategy and overseeing execution. And as a writer, I think it's the storytelling aspect of branding that really appeals to me, creating that emotional connection. So next, I'm going to take you through our actual process so maybe you can replicate it at your company or at least understand how it happens if you involve outside help. We did it in-house for two reasons. One, we didn't have a ton of money at the time to spend on a big branding process with a marketing agency. We were still bootstrapped and trying to be as scrappy as we could. And secondly, with my experience and our own designer on staff, we felt we could handle it. And I bet you can too. So first step? Brand discovery session.
Jennifer Faulkner:
So I think it's critical to have a broad cross section of representatives of a business at the discovery session. Management, sales, marketing, customer service, product developers, whoever makes up your company. Now, in my experience, sometimes clients would just send their executive level people, but I think it's important to the success of a branding project to involve different departments right from the beginning. One, it gives you a chance to mind more information about the company, and two, it helps ensure buy-in down the road because people feel part of the process. When we did our first brand discovery session at the end of 2015, Proposify only had six employees plus our co-founders Kyle Racki and Kevin Springer.
Jennifer Faulkner:
Now as of July 1st, 2019, we're at 70. But at the time with only eight of us, we decided everyone should be part of this session. And one of the things I love most about the Proposify team is that they're all super committed to Proposify and very enthusiastic. These are heart and soul kind of people. So while no one else on the team other than Kevin and Kyle had been part of a branding exercise before, and therefore had no idea what to expect, everyone was keen and excited. So we scheduled off for Friday afternoon, keeping one eye on the support queue, of course. I made sure there were lots of fun snacks, we wrestled up a flip chart and we dove in. I always like to start every brand session with a new client similarly to how I started this talk by explaining what a brand is and isn't and what it needs to do.
Jennifer Faulkner:
And this was especially important with the Proposify team since none of them had any experience in this realm and I wanted everyone to feel comfortable, informed, and prepared. So over the next three hours, we went through a series of questions that are designed to get to the core of who a business is, its values and those of its target audience. I've used this list of questions for many years as a guide for brand discovery sessions and I customize it then for each specific project and often go off on valuable tangents and dig deeper where it's needed. Now, this is just a sample of the questions that I ask. I have a full list. I think there are maybe 40 questions. If you're interested, I'll send them to you. Just email me. You see my email address there, jennifer@proposify.com. So happily for us, everyone in the Proposify brand discovery session was very engaged, sharing both thoughtful and insightful answers.
Jennifer Faulkner:
So combined with the research I had already done on the competitive landscape and our target audience, I was well armed as I went underground to work on the next phase. The sausage machine. So I can't remember exactly when I started to refer to this part of the process as the sausage machine, but for years it seemed an apt description for what happens after I compile all the information from the brand discovery and my own research. I jam it all into the sausage machine, AKA my brain, and try to crank out something fully formed and tangible. Practically speaking, this stage is where you need to look at what your targeted audience thinks now, not just about your business specifically, but about your category in general, and the problem they're looking to solve. In our case, it was proposals, the sales process, closing deals, and proposal software in general, and then comparing that with how we want them to think.
Jennifer Faulkner:
And then we have to figure out what has to happen to make the two meet. The result is to present the essence. And I'm putting that in air quotes right now, because I know that's a flaky word. You want to present the essence of the brand or what I like to call the brand code. It might be a single word or maybe several characteristics that provide a foundation for the best way to communicate the unique personality of Proposify so that it resonates with our stakeholders in tone, images, messaging, and medium. That expectation we talked about at the beginning, that promise. So this part of my brand development process is heavily inspired by this book, The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy As They Do. So author Clotaire Rapaille is a world renowned cultural anthropologist and marketing expert, and also quite eccentric dude, by the way. And he's worked with some of the world's biggest brands, Jeep, Chrysler, Folgers, Honda, to help launch products, design advertising campaigns, and connect with their target audiences.
Jennifer Faulkner:
His theories on how people think and act differently around the world and the power of cultural influences on our buying habits transformed how I approached the branding process. I can't recommend this book enough, whether you're in marketing, sales, or just up for a really fascinating read. It's probably one of my all time favorite business books. Now just a word of caution. If you go looking for this book, there is another book out right now called The Culture Code. I can't remember the author, I haven't read it. I'm sure it's a good book. But this one in particular, if you're looking for it, it's The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille. So the sausage machine stage is definitely a beautiful, frustrating and mysterious marriage of art and science.
Jennifer Faulkner:
I combine facts with feelings and then try to produce a tangible representation. So step three. I suppose since the last step involved cramming everything into the sausage machine, this stage might more accurately be called the sausages, but I thought brand code sounded a little more professional. So if we refer back to our original definition of brand being about the promise of an experience, what could possibly represent Proposify's promise? What could be Proposify's brand code? How about James Bond's Q? For those of you unfamiliar with the character of Q, he runs the research and development department. He's the genius inventor who creates all the cool and critical useful gadgets that helps James Bond save the world and sometimes himself. And when I thought about it, our customers and users are very similar to James Bond.
Jennifer Faulkner:
They're out in the field, chasing opportunities and leads, taking risks and trying to complete their mission of closing deals. Meanwhile, Proposify, like Q, is behind the scenes developing the technology to empower them to close those deals faster and safely complete their mission. And that's key. That behind the scenes part? That's key when developing your brand. You, your company should not be the hero. Your customer is the hero. If you start positioning yourself as the hero, then that delegates your customers to the sidekick or a damsel in distress. No one wants to be a damsel in distress. No one wants to be Robin in the Batman story. Instead, you need to position yourself as Alfred maybe, Batman's trusted advisor who will guide your clients to success.
Jennifer Faulkner:
Positioning is critical and your position as a company should never be ahead of your client. So the newest Q, played by Ben Whishaw, you see here, is young, tech savvy, he's focused on results, and his whole purpose is to help 007 be successful. Modern Q is rocking some geek chic and he's got a wry sense of humor. He's very much like the people who work at Proposify. So here's why I felt Q was Proposify's brand code and represents our promise of experience. So one, Q helps Bond out in the most crucial times. And I mean, is there a more crucial time than when you're trying to close a deal? His cutting edge technology has saved Bond's life more than once.
Jennifer Faulkner:
He's dedicated to ingenuity, innovation and helping Bond complete his mission. And when I looked at some of the comments that came into the branding session with our team about what Proposify does for its customers, it reminded me exactly of what Q does for James Bond. We use innovation and technology to help our customers complete their mission, we save their asses, we are their secret weapon. And those last two statements, we save their asses and we are their secret weapon, they were based on real quotes from our customers. So this is exactly how we want people to feel about Proposify. So next, comparing words that came up during the brand discovery to describe Proposify with my perception of the personality of Q, I developed a list of attributes and statements that contextualized those attributes in relation to Proposify. Simple, refined, sharp, design-focused, Zen and witty. So simple, refined, sharp, design-focused, zen, and witty.
Jennifer Faulkner:
So next I developed two statements that summarize Proposify's brand promise. One external, how we view our promise to the outside world, and one internal, what's our brand promise to the company? So the first one, using our expertise in technology and sales, Proposify is the secret weapon that makes it easier and faster for our customers to complete their mission of closing more deals. And then internally, as a team, we are the secret weapon that helps Proposify achieve its mission of innovation, growth, happiness, and world domination.
Jennifer Faulkner:
Finally, we brought Q to life through a Proposify filter. So meet P. This is the embodiment of the Proposify brand and everyone's new proposal BFF. This is actually a local actor, a musician from our city here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Ian Sherwood. And he brought P to life in our first explainer video, which we shot in 2016. And we just recently shot our second explainer video a few weeks ago. You can see the full length video on our website, Proposify.com, on the homepage, but we have a quick hit to give you a sample of how we brought P to life.
Speaker 2:
Does your sales team suffer from Proposalitis? Does anybody know where that case study is? These poor sods, they need to shorten their sales cycle, increase their close rate, but putting together a winning proposal takes so much time. Thankfully, there is a cure. Proposify is the online business proposal software that's revolutionizing the proposal process, from creation to close, giving your team the competitive edge they need to close more deals faster.
Jennifer Faulkner:
So once we had articulated the emotional attributes of the brand, the next stage was to interpret them visually. We were lucky enough to have a really talented in house designer, Steve Huntington, who based on my brand brief created an evolved design aesthetic for Proposify that is fresh, friendly, stylish, and doesn't look like any of our competitors. This is what the new homepage looks like. So I won't go into the details of Steve's design process in this talk because it's not my area of expertise, but if you're interested, I can send you a blog post where he talks about how he did it. So results. Results kind of sounds like an end. And as we talked about before, a brand isn't a finite thing. It should always be evolving and growing to match the values of your company and your stakeholders.
Jennifer Faulkner:
But one of the most heartening reactions for me was how our team reacted to the idea of Q as the Proposify brand code. It was really important that I develop something that they could relate to and feel proud about. Having your team on board with your brand is critical to any success. And thankfully our whole team loved the concept of Q slash P and totally understood the analogy. The strongest proof of this was when, not long after we revealed the brand code, we were in a team meeting and we were debating something or other and we were just going in circles it felt like. And finally, one of our developers said, what would P do?
Jennifer Faulkner:
And that settled it. We knew how P would react to the situation we were talking about and so we did that. And in the three-plus years since we've rebranded, we've injected the essence of P and what he represents, our brand code, across our company in our marketing, in the software. It's also a great way to introduce Proposify to new hires as I go through the story of P during onboarding. Fortunately James Bond is fairly universal so regardless of what country a new hire might come from, they usually have a frame of reference. And I love the look on their faces when they make the connection between Q and Proposify. Now, I should be clear here that it's not always about showing pictures of P everywhere. It's about communicating that essence of P, that brand code, communicating the promise, setting up the expectations, and then delivering it consistently. The language you use, the tone and style, the images, our company values, our product roadmap, how we recruit and hire, it all has a hint of P. These are our values. Here's some aspects that are in our marketing and our website.
Jennifer Faulkner:
This is some website copy here. Some images from our blog. P makes us not boring. P makes us fun. And we give a lot of credit to our brand for our growth and success over the last few years. From a little seven person company with less than 1,000 customers trying to get attention in the big SAS galaxy, to today, having 70 employees and growing, almost 10,000 customers and growing, and being considered one of the top proposal solutions in the industry. Now there's no doubt we have a great product with a kickass team behind it, but how do you get people to notice your product when you and the competition look and feel roughly the same with roughly the same features? In the sea of sameness, our brand has helped us stand out. We get a lot of positive, fun feedback from our customers about our brand. In their day to day of interacting with boring B2B brands at many levels, we offer something different, something they can relate to, something that builds an emotional connection.
Jennifer Faulkner:
And that emotional connection is what it's all about, even if you're in B2B. Especially if you're in B2B. It drives me nuts when people think you can't put some personality in B2B brands, that it all has to be staged and professional. But here's the thing. We don't turn off our funny bone or hearts or curiosity when we go to work. We're not humans only when interacting with B2C brands and then the rest of the time we're basically emotionless robots. Now, maybe fun, or having a slightly goofy guy with a bad British accent isn't the right approach for your product or service, and that's okay. You can still find a way to bring personality and emotion into your brand in a way that connects with your stakeholders.
Jennifer Faulkner:
And if there's an opportunity for effective branding anywhere, it's in B2B, because so many companies are doing a crap job of it. Let's look at some of these stats from marketing week. B2B customers are more than twice as likely to consider a brand that shows personal value over business value because buyers perceive little difference in the business value that different suppliers can offer. Also, only 22% of buyers said that B2B ads tend to move them any further through the sales cycle toward an actual purchase, whether it was reaching out to the company or signing off on a deal. And finally, B2B brands fare better with customers when they use emotive rather than rational marketing messages.
Jennifer Faulkner:
Now, so I hope this story about how we approach branding at Proposify inspires you to think about your brands potential to impact your company's growth. If you have any questions for me, or if you'd like me to send you a copy of some of those questions I asked in the discovery session, just email me jennifer@proposify.com. I'd also love to hear about your own branding stories and experiences. So just before I go, I guess the last thing I would ask is for everybody to promise to be more like pirates. Make interesting brands. No more boring B2B brands. And let's pinky swear to be interesting B2B brands. So thanks so much for listening to my talk and I hope you have a great experience with your brand.
