Sales & Branding

Sales & Branding

 

Are You Pitching Tennis Balls?

 

Do you know exactly what your sales reps and channel partners are pitching to potential customers? Trust me, you don’t. You’d be surprised. Or, maybe not.

Mostly, they make it up as they go along: Your brand is so weak, confusing, or unfathomable (just look at your homepage) that it doesn’t work in a sales call. If you have 1,000 reps on the street, you have 1,000 different brands.

Every time your sales rep opens his mouth, he’s branding your company.

Commissioned reps are coin-operated, transaction-oriented machines. For the most part, each will do and say what works to close sales. The weaker your brand, the more your reps will assert themselves as your branding agents.

 

 
 

“I have a cardinal rule with my staff: We don’t use jargon. We don’t use acronyms. We don’t assume the audience has this down pat.”

Neil Cavuto
SVP, Business News, Fox News Channel
AdWeek: 02.07.12

 

“We’re not in the coffee business — we’re in the experience business.”

Howard Schultz
CEO, Starbucks
Fortune: 12.12.11

 

“Every bureaucracy develops their own language — their own jargon, abbreviations. The problem with that is, the higher up people are or the less involved they are in particular activities, the less likely they are to have a good working knowledge of all the acronyms. It’s particularly a problem for a President, who one minute is dealing with stem cell research and another minute is dealing with education. Jargon just wastes time.”

Donald Rumsfeld
Former Secretary of Defense
BusinessWeek: 09.26.11

 

 
 

Strong Brand: Teflon for the Sales Funnel

 
Look, for 15 seconds, at the typical homepage; what do you see? A cockpit with switches, dials, and gauges. Impossible to grasp or navigate — an homage to products & designers, instead of customers. It won’t fly as a branding platform.
 

The Typical Homepage: It Won’t Fly

 

Jargon. White Noise. Confusion. No Brand. Window Shopping.
Search-engine optimization (SEO) and social media can’t fix that!

 

Does Your Homepage Speak Unique?

Odds Are, It Doesn’t.

 

Is It Sharp & Piercing Like an Arrow?

Odds Are, It Isn’t.

 

Do Customers Find It Compelling?

Odds Are, They Don’t.

 

 

This discussion isn’t about Website design — it’s about effective communication. There are simple homepages that grab us, fancy ones that repel or bore us.
 

Why My Obsession With Your Homepage?

 
Your company’s homepage is its brand container, the jar that exposes its jam; its barcode; its book cover; its opening statement; its billboard — in fact, the most-visible indicator of your brand’s strength and ingredients.

A weak brand on your homepage is reflected everywhere: in CEO speeches, sales pitches, employee training, channel recruiting, financial documents, exec summaries, product brochures, advertising, and, therefore, in customers’ guts.

“Brand Always Pulls the Revenue Cart”

 

Strong Brand: Teflon for the Sales Funnel

 

A Strong Brand is Your #1 Priority

 

Result: Operate @ Lower Cost

 

“The price of panic greatly exceeds the price of preparation, and most people are willing to pay it.”

Marc Rudov

 

 

Be Unique or Be Ignored™