Corporate brands and the power of a great impression

I can’t tell you how many B2B clients have told me that branding is a waste of their money. That comment is almost always followed in the next breath by the phrase “warm and fuzzy”.

Well, if this is your idea of branding your business – you’re right and wrong.

You’re right, doing a soft, image spot (or ad or brochure or whatever) probably isn’t the best use of funds for a business who sells to other businesses. But if you think that’s all there is to branding, you’re flat out wrong.

In fact, the most powerful tool to use to build your brand comes in to the office every day and spends most of his or her time talking to customers. Sales people often hold the key to successfully branding a B2B enterprise.

Brands are built in one way – by making promises (setting expectations) and by keeping promises (meeting expectations). If you’re good to your word, you build your reputation and that’s good for business. And in the B2B enterprise, no one is more important at both making and keeping promises than the sales person.

That’s why I’m providing a summary of seven key marketing strategies presented by Rob Engelman and tailoring those strategies to the individual sales person. These strategies take the basic marketing practices we encourage businesses to use on a corporate level and re-packages them on a more personal level.

1. Focus your pitch. Engelman encourages suggests creating a profile of your ideal customer. We suggest taking it one step further. Try to sell only to those customers who are inclined to buy from you. Our friend, Jacques Werth (the author of High Probability Selling), reminds us that the selling process gets much easier if you weed out the folks who don’t want to buy from you in the first place. Hard to believe? Check out the book.

2. Feel your customers “pain”. With all apologies to Bill Clinton, salespeople need to be tuned in to what drives their customers crazy. This requires active listening and an objective point of view. It’s a learned skill and once mastered, can be invaluable.

3. Define your personal value proposition and relate it back to the corporate brand. This is key. Salespeople have to make a great impression – talking to customers who are inclined to buy and empathizing with them will help make the great impression a salesperson needs to get close to the customer. But once close, the salesperson has to transfer the chemistry of their relationship to the company they represent. The best way to do this is to “become” the corporate brand by tying those things the customer likes about the salesperson back to the business.

4. Turn clients into your advocates. Nothing tells your story better than a satisfied client giving a referral that wasn’t coerced. Case studies are great (I use them frequently in my line of work), but actual referrals from clients are even better. There are a number of ways to turn clients into advocates.

5. Build high-power allies. It’s all about the network, baby. Salespeople should be careful not to concentrate their networking efforts inside one industry. Sometimes the most valuable pieces of information, advice and new business come from network members who exist outside the list of “usual suspects.”

6. Become a celebrated expert. We tell businesses they need to create a well-defined position in their market in order to succeed. The same is true for salespeople – especially senior-level account reps and sales managers. Well known, personal reputations can provide leverage in a negotiation or help settle disputes.

7. Use direct marketing practices to your advantage. Communicating with prospects and customers on a regular basis is key to achieving top-of-mind awareness and establishing credibility with the people who matter most to your success.

By using these well-established branding and marketing techniques – this time on an interpersonal level – will help salespeople make a great impression and build a relationship based on trust and performance.

Good luck.