Tool Box
Issue No. 34 - April/May 2007
B2B branding starts at home
by Kimon Lycos
Business-to-business marketing by its very nature is people focused. Somewhere down the line another human being has to make contact with another human being to get the business done. Often it’s a team of experts from the supplier side meeting with another team of experts from the customer side.
Knowing that branding is all about saying the right things to the right people long enough until they believe it, how much effort is put into Internal communications?
If your people don’t believe in the brand, don’t have passion for the brand and act as servants to the brand rather than champions, you are missing out on gaining enormous brand effectiveness.
When business is being done, face-to-face, how confident are you that your people represent the brand in the best possible way? And as you walk through your corridors, do you know what your employees are saying about the brand? Because the greatest sales people you can ever have are people totally convinced and committed to your brand’s mission.
Your employees are the critical link between your company and your customer. Your employees must actively deliver your unique brand promise every day, all day.
Certainly, many companies champion customer service, but few companies translate their brands successfully into employee behavior.
Companies strategise at the highest levels – push the marketing and communication teams to craft customer messages, invest in expensive marketing campaigns – yet employees are often the last to truly understand their company’s brand.
For a brand to truly come to life, it must permeate the organisation’s culture, training, performance and evaluation systems, internal communications and every employee’s responsibilities. Doing this provides your brand with real substance that translates into real sales.
A successful brand alignment initiative educates employees with the same clear and consistent story.
