What's up brand builder! Stephen Houraghan
here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video you're gonna learn how to run
a brand discovery session so you can
gather the critical info you need to
build strategic brands and convert your
prospects into clients as you do it.
now if you want actionable brand strategy tips
and techniques to grow your business then hit
the subscribe button and the notification bell as well
and you'll be well on your way now if you're
coming across the term brand discovery
session for the first time or you want
to understand it a little better well
then check out my other video what is a
brand discovery session where I cover
exactly what a brand discovery session
is including the different session
styles and the primary and secondary
goals I'll leave a link for that video
in the description below now before I
dive into how to run a discovery session
let's just clear up the goals of the
discovery session and I covered this in
the last video as well the primary goal
of the discovery session is
understanding you need to understand
everything about their business and the
environment that that business is going
to live in and the secondary goal is to
show expertise and empathy so that you
can build trust with your prospect now
this doesn't mean that you talk all the
way through the discovery session in
fact you want to be talking only around
about 20% of the time and allow your
prospect to talk about 80% of the time
and the best way to do this is to ask a
lot of questions now if you're asking a
lot of questions you will be
demonstrating authority you will be
gathering that information and your
prospect will see you as an expert now
there are a number of different styles
for discovery sessions you could be in a
conference room with 20 of the c-suite
if it's a larger company or you could be
in a one-on-one session with the
business owner if it's a smaller
business and that could be over the
phone or via videoconference and
anywhere in between in terms of these
styles but whatever style you decide is
right for your agency it doesn't really
matter again
the overarching goal here is to gather
that critical information so you can
develop a strategic brand and to earn
that trust with your prospect so that
they convert from a prospect into a
client me personally I like to take
a two-pronged approach to the discovery
session and that's by breaking it up
into phase 1 and phase 2 now phase 1 is
the preliminary discovery now this is
where the leadership team and the
strategist work together and
collaborate to uncover all of that
critical information so here the
discussion is between the two and it's
really important here that the key
decision-maker is involved and what
you're going to cover within this
session is everything about the business
in terms of its operations and its
industry everything about the people
that they're trying to attract the
primary audience the existing customer
the ideal customer then the competitive
landscape who are the direct competitors
the indirect competitors and then of
course the goals of the business the
goals of the overall brand and the goals
for the project itself now the answers
to these questions will paint a picture
of what a market landscape looks like
from the perspective of the leadership
team but it's also important to remember
that the leadership team aren't
necessarily branding strategists they're
not necessarily branding experts and
their area of expertise lies in
delivering a solution to a certain
problem so it's important here not to
make any assumptions yes it's important
to gather the information from their
perspective but don't assume everything
they say or everything they believe to
be true and that is why phase 2 is so
important so what is phase 2 well phase
2 is advanced discovery so what you're
doing here is you're taking the
information that you've gotten from the
business leadership team and you're
confirming the information that you've
gotten you're confirming those
assumptions and beliefs to be true and
what you're also doing is you're
uncovering new information that you can
potentially use for the development of
that brand new information that
might uncover opportunities or
weaknesses of your competitors that your
leadership team didn't know so the
combination of these two phases are
really important here you're getting the
information from the prospect from their
perspective and it's important to have
their perspective and a clear
understanding of their beliefs but it's
also important to go further than that
and gather more information from the
market as to what the accurate landscape
looks like because it might not
always be aligned so
what you should have on the back of
phase two then is a much deeper
understanding of the landscape and the
conditions a much deeper understanding
of who the audience is of who their
competitors are and what their
weaknesses are and hopefully they should
throw up some insights as well so what
does a successful discovery session look
like well you could sum that up into a
single word and that would be clarity if
you have a clear understanding of all of
the information needed then you have the
perfect conditions to go on and develop
a strategic brand for your clients so
it's really important to take that time
now there are four categories of
questions that you need to make sure
that you're asking to gather that
critical information and those
categories are divided up into business
audience competition and goals if you
understand all four of those categories
and ask questions around all of those
categories and make sure that you follow
those answers up with research then you
should have the conditions and you
should have the ingredients to go on and
develop an effective brand strategy but
I would love to hear from you as to how
you go about running your discovery
sessions do you break it up into
multiple phases like I do or do you do
that in a single sitting I'd love to
hear any challenges that you might have
if you're new to discovery sessions let
me know of any questions that you have
in the box below I'll do my best to
answer all of those if you like this
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I said please let me know in the
comments below any challenges you might
have until next time brand like a master
and I will see you in the next video!
