Questions Brand Leaders Must Ask Themselves

A sale is not a sale until the gear is in the customers hands, until then its marketplace impact and destination are under the control of your dealers and distributors. Place the customer, the end consumer, at the center of operations. The customer is always right, a partner isn’t.

In this era of elevated reputation risk, random acts of sales not ‘doing what you say you are going to do’ will undermine credibility and integrity with partners and consumers. Robust, executable standards are required guidance for effectively delivering your intentional Customer Experience.

With consumers living online and retailers striving to keep pace with their expectations, proper technology selection and systems integration are crucial to survival. Pressure, hype and ‘shiny objects’ are the false drivers of more time and money lost. As data is the new oil, coming of age digitally is merely table stakes.

An intentional ‘team’ of Internet Authorized retailers will optimize online revenue, minimize pricing instability, support unauthorized seller suppression and deliver a consistent brand narrative. YOU are accountable for where your gear ends up.

It’s no longer ‘we need to be wherever the customer wants to buy’ it’s ‘we need to be where WE want the customer to buy’. Execution is the new distribution; more revenue, more control, more engagement and reduced operational costs from less retailers.

Direct to Consumer (DTC) brands are reshaping retail with business models built on demand creation and sell-through by executing an intentional, meaningful customer experience at every touch point. There’s a new method of valuing retailers and deploying resources based on their customer experience intentions and capabilities.

With retailers juggling hundreds of brands, handing information off through intermediaries believing it is uniformly distributed, appropriately received, and organizationally digested is really no communication at all. Communication must be unfiltered, targeted, frequent, consistent, and direct from the ‘mother ship’ if it is to even begin delivering the intended impact and utilization.

Commoditization from loss of founder’s passion, emotion of brand heritage and brand narrative by a culture riding on brand equity can be transformed.  Evangelizing an intentional, meaningful customer brand experience will cultivate a sustainable, long-term brand equity culture across the organization and partners.