Jetrader - March/April 2011 - 34

since we all know that people come and go, and personality conﬂicts can and do arise. The beauty of a properly managed brand is that it becomes ﬁxed ﬁrm in the minds of current and potential customers and survives interpersonal relationships.

Forming Strong Bonds
Earlier I mentioned the important role that trust plays in the aviation industry. Again by investing in your brand, trust in your company becomes inherent. For example, do you know the name Rockwell Collins? Do you know the name of Rockwell Collins’ top-performing salesperson? Chances are that you know exactly who and what Rockwell Collins does, but you do not know the name of the top-performing salesperson. This is because the Rockwell Collins brand is trusted and respected throughout the industry. Rockwell Collins’ tagline of “Building trust every day,” speaks to what the company is about, not what its products are. Rockwell Collins has invested in its brand, and as a result, the brand speaks and sells the company, enabling its sales force to sell its products. This is not to minimize the role of a salesperson in any organization, but to point out that the salesperson should be enabled to fulﬁll their primary responsibilities of successfully continuing existing customer relationships while building new customer relationships. Another beneﬁt is that with proper branding, you are controlling the perspective of each customer on a broad scale. Depending upon your success with delivering upon a consistent message and experience, the customer-speciﬁc knowledge forever stays with the company and not the individual salesperson. Both relationships and brand marketing are beneﬁcial to business, although in aviation we ﬁnd that there is often entirely too much dependence on the former. Giving the sales organizations the marketing tools they need to be brand ambassadors will improve growth opportunities for a company and will help to stave off competitive threats. It takes time and effort to develop a successful brand, but once built, a brand can be a company’s most valuable asset. Business-to-business aviation companies are behind in adopting new marketing tools such as social media networks. These tools allow companies to leverage technology to develop a marketing reach similar to that of much larger competitors. New media marketing, as part of your branding strategy, allows you to build a conversation with your customers and insinuate your brand into that conversation. The recent recession has given us valuable lessons about resource allocation toward marketing and branding. Companies that have taken the time and made investments in their brands in good times are much better suited to survive an economic downturn as their brand power can help carry them through the lean times. Companies that have maintained their visibility during the lean times are better positioned for the good times to take market share, since they have already captured mind share. Steve Tanis is the president of InAvanti, a business-to-business strategic marketing advisory and execution ﬁrm specializing in aviation, trucking, rail and maritime.

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Jetrader - March/April 2011

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