As regular readers of my blog know, I have an uneasy relationship with traditional brand advertising. Especially in the B2B space.

I do feel moved to clarify this point regarding corporate brand marketing: “People can’t buy your stuff if they don’t know you exist.”

Now, especially in the B2B world, people CAN buy a product or service from you – and not know you exist. Especially (but not only) if you’re selling commodities.

– They’re buying through a broker or aggregator or auction or distributor.

– They’re buying through a blind or competitive procurement process.

In both of those cases, an influencer had to know who you are and decide to bring you in. Purchases did not materialize through spontaneous generation. Someone still made them happen

Now, here’s where sales and marketing disciplines are inextricably linked, often uncomfortably so in many companies.

In any B2B sale I can think of, and also many consumer purchases, awareness is not enough.

A significant goal of marketing in the B2B world is credibility. That comes through many proofs — word of mouth referrals, customer testimonials and references, personal introductions, coverage in some kind of third party analysis (from research houses to blogs), awards, media coverage, peer reviewed journals, technology reviews…

Whether buyers, influencers, or both need to trust your credibility, this must be established before money will change hands. And typically before serious discussions will be entertained.

Credibility implies some openness, respect, trust. It is a source of motivation to proceed with a deal.

What credibility is not? Awareness. (It’s so much more than that!) Awareness is not a meaningful yardstick for measuring any kind of B2B marketing ROI.

How do you know your marketing is building credibility? By measuring the degree to which your marketing gives you influence over the actions your counterparties are taking. Is it easy to measure? No. But it’s what matters.

Enter tension between marketing and sales. In the B2B complex sale, marketing + sales must work hand in glove to deliver the kind of influence that leads to customer action. It’s a highly integrated partnership. It’s hard to peel out what marketing did and what sales did and give them credit as separate functional entities for their specific influential little successes during the course of a sales cycle.

We can steal many good ideas from six sigma, agile, and other manufacturing processes. Sales and marketing people should do more of this. But human influence is much, much more complex and unpredictable than a manufacturing process. What we do can’t be fine-tuned in the same way as a mechanical build operation. Which is already pretty complex and tough to tune.

What’s predictable, though, is this. If the marketing team is focused on writing pretty brochures and running pretty ads in traditional media, it’s going to be a strained partnership. If the sales team is waiting for fully qualified leads to fall from the sky, ready for contract negotiations, it’s going to be a strained partnership. (Hopefully that’s not your company…)

Related posts:

1. B2B complex sale = influencing a community.
2. To know us is to love us – right?
3. Social media = a hybrid venue for B2B marketing.
4. The one big problem that kills lead scoring programs
5. Monetizing relationships…

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