I just chanced upon this blog recently and was unable to join the conference. Anyways, this is a great read all throughout.

whats brand? a companie’s collective +/- reputation for solving business problems and delivering customer services while meeting stakeholders ROI goals and acting as a responsible corporate citizen.
Sum total micro/macro, local/global of: Awareness, reputation, specific buyer knowledge, product SKU reputation, customer service, viral user recommendation (Netpromoter score (NPS), market share, size, etc.

IF marketing has done their branding job in the first place- and made sure the companies inside the ICP universe (ideal customer profile) are at least generally AWARE of the company, then it should not fall to the inside reps to spend 1-2 minutes identifying the company to the NEW prospect.

However, all initial sales calls are branding calls for the first 1-2 minutes (OR 2-3rd interaction), IF that prospect has no idea of who the company is, SKU’s, products, problems solved, etc are.

Inside sales reps are proud workers and 95% will take the time to learn the companies “brand place” in the market niche. If surveys indicate that a companies brand is weak, and surveys show the inside sales team is driving brand awareness- then the marketing bonus should be given to the insides sales teams. If marketing reps spent more time listening to these front line workers, then they would know exactly how low the brand equity is- and take corrective action- before these blogs start getting tweeted around.

regards
Stuart

But what we ARE doing is thinking ever more closely about those front end interactions. The team in India used to scatterbomb their calling, even if they were connected to a campaign. But now, just as we segment our direct sales teams efforts, we are also examining how we can segment our inside teams effort to help them build ongoing “relationships” that tie into our marketing campaigns and use even VM as a tool to move people through the awareness/research phases when they are ready.

Case in point, we sent out a high end dimensional piece to a key prospect. No response to that or the multi-touch email follow-up. The direct team member who owned the prospect followed-up by phone respectfully, but repeatedly. And just when he was about to give up 6 weeks later, boom the prospect called him back. His message: “I didn’t know a lot about you, but you caught my eye, and were persistent. We are going to bid on a project and we want to talk.”

The moral as always: sustained and consistent contact does work. You could argue for both demand gen and awareness building in this example, but the net result is the same. We are pushing these changes in our inside team rapidly.

-@ajdun

Another reason is that as the role of telesales has expanded while the amount of spend on brand awareness media has declined. Witness the decline of print advertising and overall marketing spend on pure brand awareness.

I would also suggest that brand engagement is more important than brand awareness to B2B marketers. Thus we are seeing a movement to social media marketing and telesales, where live people can engage prospects.

Laura, I look forward to the report!

Best,

Robert

Thanks for adding some color to reason #3.

I work often on joint projects with Brian Carroll and his team at InTouch. We’ve been incorporating calling with content nurturing touches for several years now with great results. Since buying cycles are longer, we build the conversations around business reasons the content in the nurturing touches address, while at the same time learning more about the prospect.

The reason marketers may have said “awareness” is because we find that the callers’ personal connection rate is higher when the prospect recognizes the brand/company based on their experience of value with the content. Hence they are more willing to engage in conversation. And, of course, calling based on a business reason that the prospect has expressed interest in doesn’t hurt, either.

Just my spin on your #3 above.