Sales Reps Define Your Brand Not Advertising and PR

As VP of Marketing this is a hard pill for me to swallow, but I believe that in B2B a salesperson has more impact on a company’s brand than any advertising or PR campaign!

Marketing certainly owns creating the Brand and the supporting accoutrements such as names, symbols, designs and messaging that differentiates. Marketing can even do some distribution of the Brand through the campaigns you’d expect – online, events, advertising, syndication, etc. But, marketing’s distribution channels are full of noise and distractions. Think about all the competitors that appear next to you in a magazine, ad space, trade show. Also think about the negative affect this level of distraction has on the attention your Brand gets.

IT IS TOUGH TO STAND OUT.

Take my inbox as an example. If you are an email marketer look at what you are competing with.

That’s a screenshot of the top of my inbox for the last 12 minutes. 5 cold emails, all with different branding, messaging etc…. how many of those do you think I’m going to open? And I get about 30 cold emails every business hour during the week. So whatever these companies spent on Brand is worth naught.

A LOWER SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO

If I receive a message/call/letter from a person I trust, know, or even someone I’m about to meet (e.g. a salesperson), the likelihood I will open and review the content increases exponentially. In this use case whatever Brand is presented will be noticed, and at least have a shot at influencing me. 

Your salespeople control the distribution channel with the lowest signal to noise ratio.

With great power comes great responsibility so salespeople need to be armed with tools and content to accurately portray Brand in all their sales situations.

SALESPEOPLE AND DISTRIBUTION OF BRAND

In B2B, salespeople are the most important delivery vehicle for marketing’s message. Every sales situation a B2B rep faces is unique. Salespeople deal with different permutations such as industry, buyer, solution, configuration, stage, requirements, etc. every single day. Every time a rep — a good rep — gets in front of a client, they are pitching a slightly different story and value message based on the brand, messaging, and content marketing has created.

The salesperson is really acting as a marketer in their sales situation. And because a salesperson is operating in a more intimate setting with a prospect the signal to noise ratio is much more in favor of the salesperson. Regardless of the meeting being in-person/webinar/phone, a salesperson gets more attention from a prospect than any kind of marketing campaign.

HOW CAN MARKETING SUPPORT SALESPEOPLE WITH BRAND?

Your salespeople are in front of the prospects you want to influence the most every single day. You need your reps to tell a targeted compelling story to the prospect, while still imparting an accurate portrayal of your brand. How?

• Train (really train, test them, and then test them again) reps to be consistent, train them to be accurate, keep them focused on what’s available today.
• Hire reps that live & breathe your brand. They connect with your market. They have a more efficient channel to convey your brand personality and strategy than any marketing campaign. Even the profile and demographics of the salespeople you hire portray your Brand. Think about how an IBM rep is different to a HubSpot rep or Marketo rep.
• Build great tailored content, distribute it, watch how it is being used, and altered, then learn from the alterations.
• Make reps more efficient. Provide solutions that fit with workflows reps are used to, are simple to use, and save time.

This post was originally featured on the Docurated Blog.