Best of Brand Marketing Distilled is our weekly distillation of the best of brand marketing and business intelligence. We hope the ideas and articles are fuel your organization’s planning and success.
B2B Marketing and Sales
This week our focus is B2B branding, marketing and sales. The five links below are to blogs and articles which address planning, lead generation, ensuring a prospect has BANT (budget, authority, need and a timeline), impediments to closing your sale and ensuring you focus on the right customers.
- Sales Strategy: Success starts with Demand Generation
- 7 Reasons Why a Business Blog is Valuable
- When should a lead become a Sales Opportunity?
- 12 Most Dangerous Threats to Winning Your Deal
- HBR – It’s Time to Fire Some of Your Customers
Brand Thinking
The thesis of John Hagel’s blog “Resolving the Trust Paradox” is that humans want trust but don’t do the things that build trust. He says that, like conventional branding wisdom, we tout our strengths and hide vulnerabilities. While leading with your chin is not our brand building advice to clients, we do counsel the importance of ensuring your brand authentically fuses your team’s passion with your customer’s need; no one trusts a phony person and no customer trusts a phony brand.