How to hire me through SEBRAE in Alagoas, Sergipe, Pará and Tocantins

People often ask me how to hire me without paying the full price of a consulting project. The answer is SEBRAE, the Brazilian agency that supports micro and small businesses. I am an accredited brand consultant at SEBRAE in Alagoas, Sergipe, Pará and Tocantins, and in each of those states there is a route that lets a small company reach me with part of the cost covered by the institution.

This article explains that route, state by state. It is where I work through SEBRAE: the places, the programs and how to ask.

How hiring through SEBRAE works

SEBRAE has no brand consultants on the payroll. It accredits outside professionals and hires on demand, when a company it serves needs a specific service: creating the brand, positioning it, organizing the communication, planning the marketing. The owner goes to the branch in their state, explains the need, and SEBRAE calls in a consultant accredited in that field. In several programs the company pays only part of the price. The rest is subsidized.

Program names change from state to state. Three of them apply to my accreditation: SGF, Sebraetec (TEC) and Sebrae Consult.

SGF is the supplier management system, the register of consultants and instructors. Through it come the consulting projects, workshops, talks and courses the branch hires directly, inside its own programs.

Sebraetec is the innovation and technology services program. The company picks a solution from the catalog, design and visual identity among them, and SEBRAE covers most of the cost. It is the most common route for creating or rebuilding a brand with institutional support.

Sebrae Consult is the individual consulting program at SEBRAE Sergipe: hours of consulting with a specialist, bought by the company with a subsidy.

SEBRAE Alagoas: TEC and SGF

Alagoas is my base and where the relationship with SEBRAE started. The DIGIT@MEI workshop, on digital marketing and branding for micro businesses, was born at SEBRAE Alagoas. So was the book Encontre um MEIo: it came out of the classes, the questions that kept repeating and what I saw missing at the counter.

I work in person in Maceió, in Marechal Deodoro and along the coast, and I serve the rest of the state remotely or in groups. I have run workshops in Maceió and Barra de São Miguel, and spoken in Murici, in Capela, at the Neon event in Delmiro Gouveia and at Alagoas Summit.

Through SEBRAE Alagoas there are two routes: Sebraetec, for subsidized brand and design projects, and SGF, for consulting, workshops and talks inside the branch programs.

SEBRAE Sergipe: Sebrae Consult

In Sergipe I am accredited through Sebrae Consult. It is individual consulting: the company buys a package of hours with support from SEBRAE Sergipe, and we work on the positioning, the brand and the marketing plan of the business, in person or remotely.

SEBRAE Pará: SGF and TEC

In Pará the accreditation runs through SGF and Sebraetec, and that route produced the most complete territory projects of my career, all of them with SEBRAE Pará as the client: the Parauapebas food route, with a guide and restaurant descriptions; Rota Carajás, with positioning, brand and the official destination site; the brand of the Serra Pelada destination, with a site, content and a book narrated by Serra Pelada itself; the tourist map of Conceição do Araguaia; and the Origens project. It works for individual consulting, for collective projects across a territory and for subsidized visual identity.

SEBRAE Tocantins: SGF and TEC

In Tocantins the format matches Pará: SGF for consulting, workshops and talks hired by the branch, and Sebraetec for brand and design projects with part of the price covered by SEBRAE Tocantins.

What I do through SEBRAE

These are the services micro and small companies hire from me through SEBRAE Alagoas, Sergipe, Pará and Tocantins, with part of the price subsidized:

Visual identity: name and logo built from the positioning, checked for registrability before the first sketch, with a brand manual and files for every use. Through Sebraetec this is the design and visual identity solution.

Brand positioning: defining what the brand sells, who for and why anyone should prefer it. Personality, values and the promise the brand will keep every day.

Video production for social media: script, shooting and editing, with the brand speaking in its own voice and with something to say.

Branding consulting: managing the brand once it exists. What it does, says, stands for and delivers at every point of contact, so the memory left in the customer's head is the one the company wants.

Marketing consulting: planning content, advertising and selling from the positioning. What to publish, for whom, on which channel and with which goal, with the price and the target defined.

Innovation consulting: mapping what the business can change in product, process, service and sales channel in order to grow, and turning that into an action plan that fits the routine of someone doing everything alone.

Talks: at events run by SEBRAE, city halls and trade associations, on brand, positioning, marketing and entrepreneurship, drawing on the books Marcas da Empatia and Encontre um MEIo.

Digital marketing workshops for micro and small businesses: the DIGIT@MEI workshop, four hours in person where each person sorts out their own business. You leave knowing how to price, set real targets, manage the money, manage the brand and organize the selling and innovation routines.

Straight through TOVAP Marcas e Publicidade, my agency, the same services are available to any company in Brazil, plus trademark registration at INPI (the Brazilian trademark office), website design and the Complete Brand in 30 days.

How to ask

Go to the SEBRAE office in your city, or the service channel of SEBRAE in your state, and say what your company needs: brand, positioning, marketing. Ask for Sebraetec, Sebrae Consult or a consulting project through SGF, depending on the state, and give my name, Zé Paulo Gomes. If you prefer, message me on WhatsApp first. I explain which program fits your case and what to say when you get there.

Outside those four states, the work goes through TOVAP: in person in Alagoas and remotely anywhere in Brazil.