In their offices or in their homes, peo­ple are people.

I’m con­sis­tently struck by the absur­dity of the notion that “indus­trial buy­ers are unaf­fected by the emo­tional val­ues cor­re­spond­ing to brands”.

There sim­ply is no psy­cho­log­i­cal research that sub­stan­tively doc­u­ments this notion, yet this myth is foun­da­tional to the prac­tice of the major­ity of B2B brand­ing in the mar­ket­place, and is, I believe, one of the fun­da­men­tal rea­sons why most B2B brand­ing per­forms poorly–in a way that leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy that B2B brand­ing doesn’t work.

When one assumes that the B2B buyer enters a hyper-rational mode that elim­i­nates emo­tional influ­encers from a pur­chas­ing deci­sion, and then cre­ates brand strat­egy and cre­ative exe­cu­tion based on this premise, the result­ing out­put is assets (print ads, web­sites, col­lat­eral, trade booths, etc.) that are dull and  con­cep­tu­ally unin­ter­est­ing, and which vio­late many of the prin­ci­ples of effec­tive brand­ing, and the sci­ence that sup­ports it.

One of the chal­lenges B2B mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives face is a lack of ded­i­cated research into the psy­chol­ogy of the B2B buyer. As the prac­tice and sophis­ti­ca­tion of B2B brand­ing con­tin­ues to grow, this issue will be resolved. In the mean­time, let’s use com­mon sense:

Ask your­self which human emo­tion you haven’t seen dis­played by your­self and your col­leagues over the course of your career while in your work­place envi­ron­ment. Most of us have seen the gamut–from laugh­ter to tears, from the seven deadly sins to the most noble dis­plays of char­ac­ter. And in exactly the same pro­por­tion as we see it in our non-business lives.

Do you truly believe peo­ple turn off their “human psy­chol­ogy” and enter a “busi­ness psy­chol­ogy” once they enter their offices? Have you ever truly observed a busi­ness deci­sion that wasn’t influ­enced in some large or small way by emo­tional fac­tors: “I just like this com­pany bet­ter”, “I have more con­fi­dence in this sales rep”, “I enjoy work­ing with their sup­port team”, “I feel they’ll take bet­ter care of us after the sale” … ?

B2B buy­ing deci­sion are not just about pric­ing and feature/function sets–they’re also influ­enced by emo­tion, because at all times, and in all places, peo­ple are emo­tional creatures.

Be bold and prosper.

At the most fun­da­men­tal level–at the human level, the mechan­ics of brand­ing are con­sis­tent across every industry–across every prod­uct and ser­vice, because one ele­ment in the brand­ing sce­nario is ever con­stant: humans, and the mechan­ics of cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing mem­ory in humans tran­scends the set­ting in which that exer­cise occurs.

I often hear B2B mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives assert the idea that B2B and B2C brand­ing are fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent, and there­fore the require­ments for suc­cess in the B2B arena involve a com­pletely dif­fer­ent set of strate­gies and tactics.

In a thou­sand small ways this is true, but at the macro level, when focus­ing on the larger fac­tors that lead to our intended out­come: a sale, B2B and B2C brand­ing prin­ci­ples are far more sim­i­lar than not. At the macro level, our goal as B2B mar­keters is sim­ple: we want to cul­ti­vate aware­ness among our audi­ence, inform them of our value propo­si­tion in a mem­o­rable fash­ion, and layer our prod­ucts and ser­vices with a set of emo­tional asso­ci­a­tions that cre­ate affin­ity for our brand–one that tips the pur­chas­ing deci­sion in our favor vs. our com­peti­tors. Long sales cycle, short sales cycle, com­plex prod­ucts or sim­ple prod­ucts … all of those vari­ables are sec­ondary details in the process of sales persuasion–they inform the process, but aren’t the fun­da­men­tal drivers.

Keep it sim­ple. Win the big bat­tles, then tackle the sec­ondary issues.

Bat­tle #1: Give your sales activ­i­ties (peo­ple, processes, online and offline) the best stage upon which they can deliver a win­ning performance.

Here’s your sales­man walk­ing into a new busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tion and greet­ing a poten­tial cus­tomer for the first time. In the absence of a strong and mem­o­rable B2B brand, he walks in alone.

That same sales­man who enters a prospect’s office as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a strong B2B brand strides onto a stage your brand has cul­ti­vated, accom­pa­nied by a rich set of asso­ci­a­tions: “he’s an elite pro­fes­sional”, “his prod­ucts and ser­vices are reli­able”, “his prod­ucts and ser­vices are innovative.“his com­pany has a rich her­itage” etc. Your brand’s rep­u­ta­tion pre­cedes his enter­ing that office, and accom­pa­nies him for the dura­tion of his pre­sen­ta­tion. If you were that sales­man, which sce­nario would you pre­fer? If you were the poten­tial cus­tomer, which sales­man would you look for­ward to meet­ing more?

Your brand pro­vides the stage for your B2B salesforce.

The very same mechan­ics apply to your prod­ucts or services.

Bat­tle #2: In the absence of a brand’s employ­ees, how do peo­ple feel about your prod­ucts or ser­vices when they see them on a shelf, in a cat­a­log, brochure, website … ?

With­out a brand, this prod­uct is cola syrup and car­bon­ated water in a glass bot­tle with a metal cap–just the sum of it’s components.

Your prod­uct is more that its con­stituent parts.

How­ever when that exact prod­uct or ser­vice is branded, a pow­er­ful set of emo­tional and sen­sory asso­ci­a­tions are acti­vated in your audience’s mem­ory. If you had never pur­chased a Coca-Cola before and were pre­sented both of these sce­nar­ios: one branded, the other unbranded, which prod­uct would you reach for first? Which prod­uct would you be will­ing to pay more money for?

Your prod­uct is deliv­er­ing a brand performance.

Now you may say, “well that’s well and fine for Coca-Cola, but I sell rack­space servers!” The only dif­fer­ence  between your rack­space server and that bot­tle of soda (aside from the obvi­ous phys­i­cal differences) is this: they’ve acti­vated a unique, dis­tinc­tive, and highly mem­o­rable set of asso­ci­a­tions for their brand, and you haven’t. I could have just as eas­ily sub­sti­tuted a pic­ture of your server for that bot­tle of Coke and the effect would have been remark­ably sim­i­lar. A viewer would believe your tech­nol­ogy opens a world of cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for its users. And that using your products/services, and inter­act­ing with your com­pany per­son­nel might even be enjoyable.

Do you think that kind of posi­tion­ing would stand out among the dull, hum drum techno speak that dom­i­nates the rack server brand­scape? If your rack servers can deliver all of the per­for­mance and reli­a­bil­ity your com­peti­tors can, if your tech­ni­cal sup­port is just as good or bet­ter than your com­peti­tors, but your cus­tomers feel dif­fer­ently about your brand, do you believe that might give you the edge you need to inch (or leap) ahead of your competition?

Once you over­come your ini­tial resis­tance to the idea that the fun­da­men­tals of B2B and B2C brand­ing are inher­ently dif­fer­ent, you will have lib­er­ated your­self from the shack­les that limit your brand’s abil­ity to thrive and win more mar­ket share. You’ll come to see an entirely new set of oppor­tu­ni­ties for posi­tion­ing your prod­ucts in highly dis­tinc­tive and mem­o­rable ways that cre­ate space between you and your competitors–space that leads to higher lev­els of aware­ness and recall, and ulti­mately, sales.

Be bold and prosper.