Is brand important in the B2B world

Grant Leboff: One of the things that you talked about in the book, which I think is really important, is brand building, and I think there's this misnomer, especially in the business to business world, that unless you're one of the big players in the game, the IBM's, the GEs, the companies that we will know, that brand is not so important. What would your view be?

Simon Hall: I would definitely disagree with that. I would say that it all comes down to scale. Yes, you got the big guys with the big budgets and they'll actually put a lot of money behind that brands, but it doesn't mean that the smaller companies can't do some form of building their brand and reputation. I think it's really important. I think it's absolutely important to build a brand against what you feel your identity is, what's the personality of the brand, what you're trying to achieve with the customers, and then go out and do things to actually support that brand building.

Grant Leboff: And are there definite techniques or strategies that a smaller company can use and that you would advise them to use to build brand - if they haven't gotten the budgets of the huge conglomerates?

Simon Hall: I would definitely say they need to think about, what is that company's brand's, key audience? Who are they thinking that they're...  What's their match for their business and what that brand stands for? Obviously they need to understand what they stand for in terms of their brand values, and then from there, what's the match in terms of the audience? What's the segment and the profile and the customer profile, they're trying to sort of match that too.

Grant Leboff: It's interesting that as more of the purchase journey goes online, in a B2B world as well as the B2C world, my gut instinct is that brand is becoming more important, not less important. Because if I'm not getting that opportunity to get sales person in front of that customer early or prospect early in the buying journey, I need my brand to perhaps do a little bit of that when they're searching around and they go, well, I've heard of them, which obviously then means they might have a second look or whatever else. Is that your view? What does that mean for a business, if it is?

Simon Hall: Well, usually if your doing work to actually build your brand, your brand should have a limitless longevity. That means it can, should ever limitless, long term, lasting imprint on what customers hear about it. Then what you hear is that products and services can come and go, but your brand stays and the brand equity is what you want to be creating and building in the background.

Grant Leboff: So are you saying that in a world that's changing more than ever and faster than ever before, actually hanging your commercial budgets and nouse and communications on a brand rather than a particular service, which is going to evolve and change anyway - most likely - is a smarter way of marketing?

Simon Hall: Absolutely, and it's not just marketing. I think if you've actually identified what your brand stands for, it should actually drive everything. It should drive an internal organizational culture, how sales engage, how services and customer service, even operations. So it should actually be something that should shape the company so that at every touch point and engagement point that a customer engages you, they actually are experiencing that brand.