I interviewed Darrell to find out a bit more…
“Why have you decided to offer a Facebook Challenge?”
Firstly, the business world has changed lately and a lot of CEOs, directors, and leaders have had time to reflect on their careers and the shape of businesses they have built. I am surrounded by a lot of business leaders through networking and a common theme is that people are having to re-evaluate, reinvent, and reposition their offering. Secondly, there is a lot of talk around coming up with a winning offer and where to spend on advertising in order to get new business. People want to spend a lot of money on reinventing their ‘what’ or their ‘how’.
The key, however, to transforming your business is to be braver and go back to your DNA – your ‘you’ and your ‘who’. Why did you start the business or why did you go into leadership in the first place? Assess your hopes and dreams and what you want out of life.
The clearest way to reset your business is to look at your mission, vision and values. The MVV challenge allows you to explore the power of having all three in place. Once you know your ‘you’ it’s easier for you to engage your audience.
“One of the biggest debates is around mission and vision. What would you say is the main difference between the two or are they the same?”
Mission is essentially to do with purpose. It’s a deep question and successful people know the answer to it. They know what their mission is.
Vision, on the other hand, is success defined. What does your end goal look like? That’s your vision. You might know that your mission in life is to explore space but your vision is to land on the moon. It’s a dream with a deadline.
“What about your values? Some people might say that in this day and age you can pick whatever values you like – so why is it important to have them?”
Values make you valuable. They provide you a framework within which you can make decisions. For example you can reward and discipline against a common set of values. You can recruit against mission and vision but values ensure that you are not just chasing talent, you’re building a team with character. Values create culture. If someone’s mission is to help educate the next generation in the area of financial freedom and their vision is to give every child a savings account, a strong set of values might ensure that the vision is achieved in an ethical fashion.
“If I signed up for the challenge what do I stand to gain?”
You’ll get the tools to create your own mission, vision and values, both for your personal and business life. These tools will help you create a clear narrative for your life and your business and alignment of the two is really powerful when telling your story. Ultimately, people relate to stories as they create empathy.
The most successful brands on the planet are customer centric – that means they have empathy for the struggles of the audience. The greatest marketing strategy in the world is to care. When you prove that you care people will want to know how you add value.
In a sense, marketing is about empathy, and sales is about values, that’s why selling without caring creates resistance. Caring without selling is being sympathetic but not bringing a solution to a customer’s problem. Sales and marketing work hand in hand. Often in companies sales and marketing fight for supremacy. The reality is that when the two work together with a clear mission, vision, and values it’s a winning formula.
