Emotional Branding

The CEO, whose $10-million business is based in Rochester, N.Y., devised his emotional branding pitch during the early days, when he was Printing Methods' principal salesperson. When he called on clients, his West African cadence served as an icebreaker of sorts. Prospects almost always asked, "That's a strange accent. Where are you from?" Olotu says. He was happy to field the question. "I tell them that I'm from Nigeria, that I went to London and studied printing, that I came to America in 1980, then went to the Rochester Institute of Technology and got a degree, and became a citizen in 1992," Olotu says. "I tell them all of this so that they can see that I know what I am doing."

Veronica Rose, the electrician based in Queens, N.Y., says that she is always egged into sharing her history with potential customers of Aurora Electric, her $5-million, 25-employee business. "I'm a novelty," she explains. "I'm six feet tall, I have long blond hair, and I can tell you what size turbine you need."

Having been in business since 1993, Rose has boiled down her life story into a two-minute sound bite for sales prospects. But for her the purpose of painting a vivid picture of her life is to then turn the tables. "When people ask me about my background, I ask them about theirs. If my price is the same as somebody else's, and they feel I've taken the time to know them, I'm the one who's going to get the job," she says.

Marina Inez Poropat, CEO of Intaglio [#71], a printing and graphic-design company based in Los Angeles, has also found that her customers want to get a good sense of who she is. Back in 1991, when she bought the company, her first sales prospects were particularly interested to know how a woman as young as 28 years old came to own her own business. "People were always shocked at how young I was," she says. "Just to have a female owner in a male-dominated industry was weird for some people, but youth was the biggest thing and the toughest thing for me."

"People don't expect a manufacturer who's doing well in New York City to stay in New York City. People usually move away to Texas or Florida."

Because of those factors, Poropat never went the emotional route. In fact, the entrepreneur was so afraid that people would stereotype her business when they met her that she briefly considered having no title on her business cards. When potential customers asked her about herself, "I would sidestep!" she says with a laugh. "I would say, 'Tell me about your company.' " Now that Intaglio has grown to $2.2 million, Poropat could reassess her options and start describing herself and her company in classic pluck-and-luck terms. But still she avoids revealing much about herself. Why? "I've never sold that way," she says. "I don't see the business as being an extension of me. I see it being the result of a vision I had to deliver services. So I sell the idea that I have a team behind me, an entire organization that's going to take care of you."

John Alan Laurie, president of Jack Laurie Commercial Floors Inc. [#21], a 52-year-old company in Fort Wayne, Ind., that was founded by and named after his father, also sees more value in projecting a sense of scale than a sense of intimacy. Laurie, a Harvard Business School graduate who previously worked for Procter & Gamble, took over the company in 1995. The business's positioning then played on themes of familiarity and longevity. Laurie's father's story was the stuff of family and local business lore. "My dad drove around in an old Chesterfield cigarette truck with one helper," Laurie says. "To have his last name attached to the company means a lot because people who buy services like to deal with an owner."

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: "I physically go over to the airport, to the facility-man-agement offices of each terminal, and stop in to see what they got on the desk and ask if I can help with anything. I can be in constant contact with my potential customers ... the squeaky wheel always gets the oil."

While the family brand provided a superb competitive advantage in Fort Wayne, however, Laurie had the ambition to expand regionally. Thinking strategically, he made the hard decision to junk the paterfamilias from his company's identity. In the seven cities in which he's opened stores in the past four years, Laurie does business as a franchisee of DuPont Flooring Systems, licensing the name of the large manufacturer. "I don't know if I could have gotten into other cities if I didn't use the DuPont name instead of Jack Laurie," he says. "It would have taken too long to ramp up profitability and sustainability as we built brand awareness."