What’s the strength of your Brand? Many leaders have fixated on this topic over the past several years as it’s become popular. Brands like Nike, Starbucks, Coca Cola, Marriott, UPS, Apple, Harvard, Intel, and Google are part of our personal and business culture. We all would love to have a brand name that resonates with their level of awareness and consideration.
What if our firm doesn’t make consumer products? Does that make a difference? My quick answer is “Yes.” In Business-to-Business (B2B) a company may have fewer than ten customers, or maybe hundreds or even thousands, but never millions like the B2C folks.
So am I suggesting you drop Branding from your approach and move on to other things that are more valuable? No. But I’m asking you to think differently about how to “March-in the Brand.” The key to the change is the delivery vehicle and how it’s built in B2B with its smaller customer communities. While we live in a real-time culture where changes and impacts are expected overnight, the development of strong and sustained brand in B2B does take some time.
Here’s an outline of some components of B2B branding:
- Customer-facing channel representatives. When I say “marching in the brand” I’m talking about the #1 impact group in affecting your brand, for better or worse: your customer contact representatives. How prepared are they? How committed and supportive of your products and services? How do they interact, dress, and present? (As an aside, dress is generally sloppy these days, so it wouldn’t take a lot to upgrade. I’m not saying you have to go to uniforms or Italian suits, but some nice pressed dress slacks would be a good start.) Are your representatives heavy handed and high pressure? Are they focused, good listeners, informed, shy from disparaging other alternatives? There are other questions you and your team can develop, but you get the point.
- Supporting the Channels. How do your customer representatives receive support? How responsive are you to them? Are channel partners treated as external customers by support? Do your representatives feel pumped-up after contact with others in your company? If your representatives (direct or indirect) are feeling well supported and listened to, how do you think they will interact on your behalf? What impact will this have on developing your brand?
- Social media. This is a critical area as many influencers and decision makers rely on social media posts for information. We’re learning that younger buyers/decision makers don’t necessarily have the same brand loyalty of other generations. So if these buyers are a target community, how are you dealing with it? How are you using social media to better connect with a new generation of decision makers? Segmenting, targeting, and positioning (STP) can fit right in to a better focus on social media. Effective use of social media has less to do with investment and more to do with putting in a creative, disciplined approach to the communities you target.
- Customer intimacy. This is often thought of during the sales process, but often neglected after the sale closes. After the sale is complete, are your channel representatives providing support? Does support move to impersonal vehicles like web-based self-service, email, or a toll-free hotline? Do your customer service and technical support representatives have good communications skills? Do you know how your customers and targets would like to be serviced and what premiums they would pay for more personal service?
- Customer correspondence. This includes proposals, sell sheets, and presentations, and even less formal communications like email. Is the look consistent? Are the branding elements managed or controlled (e.g. email signatures)? Do they convey the image you’re trying to deliver? How do you know about this if you’re not in on each sale call?
- Terms and conditions. Are you easy to do business with? We’ve all done business that is complex but is well organized, understandable, and positive, even if it means parting with a fair amount of cash. I’m not saying to throw out the legal department and have them replaced with creative writers from advertising. I suggest looking into your process to see how you can simplify it and yet have tight agreements that achieve your goals.
These six areas are a good starting point and by no means an exhaustive list of where to improve your image and brand value. They provide a basis for thinking about how you can impact the brand through your people, as you all try to march in a new and improved band – one that has everyone playing on the same sheet of music, that’s well-coordinated, and well-choreographed.
My thoughts turn to the Rose Bowl parade on New Year’s Day, how wonderful the bands play, how crisp they look, how precisely they move. It’s so impressive seeing all the bands and floats pass by that it’s very easy to take for granted the effort that goes into these performances. It’s easy to take our customer touch points for granted as we move headlong into managing our various challenging global businesses. Marching in B2B has as much to do with customer relationships and effective contact points as with advertising and marketing.
Wishing you all the best as you march forward in 2010 and beyond.