What’s Your Brand?

If you were to ask fifty people the question, ‘What is a brand?’ you’d likely get fifty answers.  I know, because I have asked that question, hundreds of times.  And I often hear these and other responses: ‘A brand is a logo’ ..or.. ‘an ad campaign’ ..or.. ‘our sales force’ ..or.. ‘the sum total of all impressions’ ..or dozens more.

All of the above are symbols or elements of a brand.  But the brand, itself?  Sorry.  None of the above quite hits the mark.  Here’s the answer:

A brand — your brand — is a promise to your customers that your products or services will meet or exceed their expectations each and every time.  All of these other elements — the logo, the website, the sales force — are merely distributors of the brand promise.

Companies with strong brands work very hard to integrate the brand promise throughout every aspect of their organizations, so when customers have an encounter or transaction with the brand, that promise is continually reinforced.  And then that continual reinforcement ultimately creates a belief system among customers.

BMW owners, for example, have bought into the belief system that BMW is ‘the ultimate driving machine.’  And that promise is reinforced every time they drive, by BMW’s precise handling, quick acceleration, exacting engineering and fine appointments.  John Deere owners have bought into the brand promise of durability, because ‘nothing runs like a Deere.’  The consumer who enjoys a Budweiser has bought into the belief system that Budweiser is the ‘King of Beers.’

Bold promises (backed by facts) create strong believers.  And strong believers create strong brands.  What do your customers believe?  What’s your brand promise?

Mark’s email address is markt@mediacross.com

Maximizing Sales Leads

Okay, you’ve exhibited at your industry trade show. You’ve collected scores of leads. Now what happens? If your company is like many, those leads get distributed out from the sales manager to one or more salespeople — and then they end up under a pile of catalogs, sales plans and other crap, never again to see the light of day. Want a better solution? Hire an outside call center or marketing firm to make the follow-up calls for your company. Afraid the outside resource won’t understand your business well enough to make an intelligent sales call? Well, you could always train them to do the job. Or you could limit their role to asking 3 or 4 key questions of each prospect to further qualify each lead.

Ed Overy, Business Development Director for MediaCross, an integrated marketing firm in St. Louis (www.mediacross.com) says this method “eliminates all the dead ends in sales prospecting that bog down sales departments. You want to put your sales guys out in front of bonafide prospects, doing what they do best….and that’s selling,” says Overy. “You don’t want them wasting their time on prospects who have no interest in buying your product or service.” Overy’s firm, MediaCross, provides sales lead follow-up calling programs. “We’ve had great success for clients — giving them a daily feed of prospects who absolutely want to do business,” he says. “A company spends a lot of money participating in trade shows and events,” says Overy. “This is just the smart way to maximize its investment.”

Ed Overy’s email address is: edo@mediacross.com