At the very core of the definition of “branding” is the word “continuity” or “consistency”; in this context, they are one and the same. It is absolutely imperative that we remember that business does not occur in staccato. For some reason, our acute inability to present a smooth, integrated solution to our customers runs starkly in the face of how they live their lives. Our mission is to ensure that there’s always a trail of breadcrumbs that leads us to our customers and back again. I often refer to this as connecting the dots or establishing (and reestablishing) meaningful connections if and when they’re needed.

Along the same lines as keeping the fires burning is the need for sufficiency. What’s the minimum acceptable level of contact, presence, interaction, and/or commitment we need to stay in the game and maintain some kind of workable dialogue and business momentum? Clearly, every company and industry is different, but these are vital questions that must be addressed and ultimately answered—preferably long before they actually need to be.

Companies that maintain consistent rapport with their customers during tough times insulate themselves against inroads that come at the hands of undercutting and undermining competitors—as well as promote a renewed sense of loyalty. As the saying goes: A true test of a friend is not during the good times, but during the bad times. When the going gets tough, we reveal our true colors—and hopefully the color we display is not yellow.

We always remind ourselves that the primary goal or role of advertising is to sell stuff, but that’s really just one piece of the puzzle. Our cardinal mistake is to forget that it is these four simple truths (or metrics) that keep us in business:

So why, then, do we seem to concentrate the lion’s share of our dollars on point 1 ONLY?

What if we’ve got it all wrong? Or what if we had the right idea all along but just went about our business the wrong way? Take the marketing and sales funnels, for example (they’re somewhat different). These tools from the classic marketing tool belt were designed to sift through an inordinate amount of suspects and prospects to extract the gold nuggets (customers) from the dirt (everyone else) by gently guiding (or sometimes forcing) them through a linear progression from awareness through action. But what if, instead of ending with the purchase action by the converted customer, we began with this action and, in doing so, focused on achieving three distinct goals:

What if, by following these rules, we were able to essentially flip the funnel and reverse-engineer future growth from a platform or foundation of current growth? What if we could use the sparks of satisfaction to generate a raging furnace of preference, precedence, and insistence?

From the few come the many: That’s the mantra of the flipped funnel. As you’ll see from this book, it can be applied to any business in any industry, as it can be applied to you and me, in both our personal and our professional lives.