Brand voice and tone guidelines · Marketing
Six people answer your customers and the business sounds like six companies.
Our brand guidelines page covers the logo, the colours and the typography, with a short note on voice inside it. This page is that note taken seriously, for businesses where most of the brand a customer meets is a WhatsApp message.
Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.
In one paragraph
Brand voice and tone guidelines is a written rule set for how a business sounds in words. It fixes the vocabulary, the phrases to avoid, and how the tone moves between a new enquiry, a delay and a complaint. GullySales writes it from your team's real messages rather than from adjectives.
Your buyer rarely sees the letterhead. They see a reply from the front desk at nine at night, a quotation email from a rep, a caption written by somebody's cousin, and a payment reminder from accounts. Four voices, one company.
The fix is not a personality invented in a workshop. It is your own manner, written down with examples, so the person who joined last Monday can sound like the business without being corrected for six months.
Who it is for
This is written for you if these sound familiar.
- Clinics, hotels and showrooms where four or five people answer the same WhatsApp number
- Owners who rewrite every message a team member drafts and want to stop
- Businesses handing social media or content to an agency that keeps sounding like a different company
- Family firms where the founder's way of speaking is the brand and nobody has ever written it down
- Teams that have just doubled in size and lost the manner they had at six people
Not for
It is not the right fit if.
- A one-person business, where the voice is you writing as yourself and a document adds nothing
- A company without positioning or a name settled yet, because what you sound like follows what you are for
- An owner who wants a PDF to change forty people's habits with nobody reading the messages afterwards
The problem
Does this sound like your business?
What owners tell us on the first call, in their words.
“Every person here writes differently”
One reply opens with Dear Sir and closes with kindly do the needful. The next is three words and a thumbs up. The customer reads both in the same thread.
“We sound rude when we are busy”
Short answers written under pressure land as curt, especially in text with no tone to soften them. The reply that costs you an order is usually the one typed in four seconds.
“The agency's captions do not sound like us”
A freelancer with no guide writes in whatever voice is popular that month. You reject drafts you cannot explain, which is slow for everyone and never gets better.
“We cannot say no without sounding defensive”
Refusing a discount, admitting a delay or raising a price are the moments the voice matters most. Most teams have no agreed wording, so they either over-apologise or go silent.
What we do
Everything that is included.
Each deliverable, and what it gets you. Nothing here is an extra.
Four or five voice traits with examples
Each trait written as a pair: what we say and what we do not say, taken from real messages of yours. Adjectives alone are useless, because nobody knows what friendly looks like at 9pm.
The word list
What you call your own products, services and people, spelled one way. A clinic that says patient in one place and client in another has two brands. The list also names the phrases to retire.
Tone by situation
How the same voice sounds on a new enquiry, a follow-up, a delay, a complaint, a price revision and a refusal. This is the part a new joiner actually uses.
Language and script rules
Which languages you reply in and who decides. Whether Kannada goes in the Kannada script or in Roman letters. How Sir and Madam are handled with a customer half your age.
Rewritten message templates
Your own recent threads rewritten to the guide, ready to paste. Templates written from scratch get ignored; a rewrite of yesterday's message does not.
A one-page card
The traits, the word list and five example replies on a single page for the counter, the phone and the reception desk. The full document stays for the people who write longer things.
A brief for outside writers
A short version for agencies, freelancers and printers, so a caption or a brochure arrives close enough to sign off the first time.
First-month review
A sample of real messages read against the guide after it lands, with the corrections given as examples rather than as a scolding. A document with no follow-up changes nothing.
How the result is measured
- Customer messages sampled against the guide
- Drafts returned for rewrite before publishing
- Templates in use, by channel and by person
- Complaints and escalations that mention how something was said
- Time a new joiner takes before replies need no correction
Recorded as a baseline before work starts, so every later report has an honest comparison.
How it works
How the work runs
The work itself, in order. How an engagement starts, from your brief to a written scope, is set out on our method page.
- 1
Collect what you actually write
We read a month of real enquiry threads, quotation emails, reminders and captions. The voice is already in there, along with the four versions of it.
- 2
Sit with the owner and two staff
One conversation with whoever built the business, and one each with the people customers speak to most. The person at the front desk knows things the owner has not heard.
- 3
Draft the traits and the word list
Short, with a say-this and not-this pair under each. You argue with the draft, which is the point of it.
- 4
Rewrite the real messages
We take the threads from step one and rewrite them to the guide, so the team sees their own words improved rather than a stranger's examples.
- 5
Hand over and review
The document, the one-page card and the outside brief go out together. A month later we read fresh messages and correct with examples.
Where this fits
Three pieces of sales work, in this order.
This work sits inside sales process design, at stage 0, foundation. The audit comes before it, and sales management keeps it running.
Step 1
Sales audit
Find where deals are being lost and what to fix first.
Start here if you cannot say where orders are lost.
Step 2 · you are here
Sales process design
One written way to sell, from first enquiry to repeat order.
Start here if every salesperson sells differently.
Step 3
Sales management
A target, a review routine and someone who owns the number.
Start here if the team has targets and no routine.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
Is this not just a style guide for writing?
We already have brand guidelines. Do we need this too?
Will our team actually follow it?
Can the voice be different on Instagram and on a quotation?
What if the owner's way of speaking is the brand voice?
How is this priced?
How long is the contract?
How soon will we see results?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
By industry
Brand voice and tone guidelines, written for your industry.
Related services
Often bought with this, or instead of it.
Read before you buy
- How to write a press release that a local editor will printA press release built for a district or city editor: the headline, a first paragraph with the news in it, a named person and a photograph, and the habits that send releases to the bin.
- Website copy that sounds like you: how to brief a copywriterWhat to hand a copywriter so your website sounds like you: recorded calls, quotations, complaint emails and a one-page voice sheet, plus what to ask the writer for in return.
- What goes into a brand guidelines document an SME will actually openA ten-page outline for a small firm's brand guidelines: logo use, two colours, two fonts, how the company writes, and a page of things never to do, with a way to test it.
Your next practical step
Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.
Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.