Sell more in 2025

Sales is evolving, shifting from traditional selling tactics to a more customer-centric approach. In a recent podcast episode, Alan Versteeg discusses the importance of guiding customers with noble intent rather than simply closing deals. He explores how character, authenticity, and understanding the customer’s world are more critical than sales techniques. The conversation highlights key strategies for sales success, including leveraging technology wisely, preventing objections, and focusing on long-term relationships over short-term wins. Let’s dive into the key takeaways from this insightful discussion.

Listen to the Full Episode here

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Takeaways from this episode:

• The long-term strategy is the winning strategy.
• Investing in brand building leads to organic growth.
• Balancing short-term and long-term marketing is crucial.
• Leadership often seeks immediate results, which can hinder growth.
• Metrics like organic traffic are essential for measuring success.
• Events play a significant role in brand awareness.
• Building a culture of patience is necessary for marketing success.
• Marketers need to be courageous in advocating for long-term strategies.
• Understanding brand equity is vital for tech companies.
• A 60-40 split between brand building and demand generation is effective.

Chapters 

00:00 Introduction
02:55 The Importance of Long-Term Brand Building
06:07 Balancing Short-Term Gains with Long-Term Strategy
09:10 Understanding Brand Equity in Tech vs. Consumer Brands
12:09 Metrics for Measuring Long-Term Success
15:05 The Role of Events in Brand Awareness
17:58 Building a Culture of Patience in Marketing
21:01 Advice for Marketers on Long-Term Strategies

The Power of Long-Term Brand Building in Marketing

Building a strong brand is essential for sustainable growth, yet many businesses struggle to balance short-term wins with long-term strategies. In a recent podcast episode, Amina, the CMO of Com4, shared her insights on the importance of long-term brand building, particularly in the tech sector. She highlighted the challenges marketers face in securing leadership buy-in and the key strategies needed to establish a successful brand over time.

1. Why Long-Term Strategy Wins in Marketing

Amina emphasized that while short-term marketing tactics may deliver immediate results, they are not enough to sustain long-term business growth. Companies that prioritize brand-building efforts create a solid foundation for organic growth, customer trust, and industry authority. This strategic approach ensures long-lasting success rather than temporary spikes in engagement.

2. The Balance Between Short-Term Gains and Long-Term Success

One of the biggest challenges for marketers is balancing immediate performance marketing with long-term brand equity. Many leadership teams push for quick returns on investment, often at the expense of broader branding initiatives. Amina suggests that an effective marketing strategy should allocate resources wisely, with a 60-40 split between brand-building and demand generation efforts.

3. Measuring Success Through Brand Equity and Organic Growth

Marketers must demonstrate the value of long-term branding efforts through measurable metrics. Amina shared that organic traffic, brand mentions, and customer sentiment are essential indicators of a brand’s strength. While these metrics may take time to develop, they are crucial for proving the ROI of sustained marketing efforts.

4. The Role of Events in Brand Awareness

Live events, industry conferences, and networking opportunities play a significant role in brand visibility. Amina highlighted how events help brands connect with their audience, establish thought leadership, and reinforce their market position. Companies that invest in strategic event participation can create lasting impressions and build credibility within their industry.

5. Creating a Culture That Embraces Patience and Long-Term Vision

One of the greatest obstacles to long-term branding is the organizational mindset. Many companies operate under pressure to deliver immediate results, making it difficult for marketers to justify branding initiatives. Amina emphasized the need for a cultural shift within organizations, encouraging leadership to understand the long-term benefits of consistent brand-building efforts.

6. Marketers Must Be Courageous Advocates for Their Strategies

Gaining executive support for long-term branding efforts requires confidence and persistence. Amina advises marketers to stand firm in their strategies, using data and case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of long-term branding. Advocacy and education within the organization are key to ensuring that leadership supports sustained marketing efforts.

Conclusion: Long-Term Branding as the Key to Sustainable Growth

Amina’s insights reinforce the importance of prioritizing long-term brand-building efforts in marketing strategies. While short-term tactics deliver quick results, true business growth comes from establishing a strong, recognizable brand. By balancing immediate performance marketing with brand-building initiatives, businesses can create lasting customer relationships, drive organic growth, and position themselves as industry leaders.

For marketers, the key takeaway is clear: be patient, be strategic, and be bold in advocating for a long-term vision. The right approach to branding will not only enhance brand equity but also secure sustained success in the competitive tech landscape.

Transcript:

Paul (03:43.79)
and then building brand equity measuring long-term success which I of just touched on and then how to build a culture of thinking long-term

Amina (03:56.753)
Yes, you need to have a change in the culture and mindset. And I think it's very different from sector to sector. I think the SaaS to tech sector, they want to have immediate rewards because these are sectors where things happen very fast. But something for long, for well-established brands, I think about Apple or Microsoft or Nike or

added us, you know, they have this tradition of brand building all the time and giving it the time to flourish. yeah.

Paul (04:37.422)
think role for me and let's just keep going yeah I mean let's dive in on that let's think so obviously they're sort of every marketer likes what they do or even if you're not a fan of the product or the people behind it or whatever you can you can admire sort of the brand control and building of Apple and Nike and stuff do those kind of principles of having that long-term game and patience do that apply in you know ordinary b2b businesses or

Amina (04:40.236)
Now, okay.

Yeah.

Paul (05:06.441)
SMEs

Amina (05:08.688)
Definitely, Paul. Actually, you cannot succeed with your business if you're just focusing on short term results. I mean, of course, if you run ads, Facebook ads or paid ads, you would get some return on investment, but just a short term effect. And I mean, in my day to day work, what I see is that if you actually invest in building a brand, making

great videos, participating in events, building communities, interacting with important stakeholders, then over time, you don't need actually to spend so much time on advertising because people would come to you all naturally because they've heard about your company, they've heard about all the great products and services, and also there is the word of mouth, know, like people speak to each other and recommend

great companies to work for. So, the long-term strategy is the winning strategy, even if it's very difficult actually to get the buy-in from the leadership always, because they want to have immediate rewards, that the sales pipeline is great and we have an X number of leads and closing customers.

And this is of course we're going to focus on. having what I call the 60 focus, 40 % demand gen, 60 % brand building, this is what yields good results over time. sometimes I get these skeptical questions from the CEOs or the chief revenue officers.

We need customers now, where are the customers? And what I used to say actually to them is that, well, if we don't invest in brand building while driving demand gen campaigns, we'll get maybe two or three customers now, but what about six months? So you have always to think about the present and the future and invest even more in the future than the present.

Paul (07:20.803)
Hmm.

Paul (07:32.174)
I'm gonna go just look back to the intro. We've dived straight into the topic. So we were rolling recording just before. So welcome to Avidly Talks. Today we're in mostly marketing focused podcast. Amina, you're CMO at Com4. Tell us a bit about Com4 and what they do and what your role is there.

Amina (07:34.384)
Yes.

Thank you very much.

Amina (07:50.961)
Yes, Com4 is an IoT provider company, IoT connectivity provider company. That means that we provide IoT telecom services to companies that deploy IoT devices. So we serve different verticals, whether it's fleet management companies or predictive maintenance companies. yeah, it's

It's actually at the intersection of telecom and tech. So I work in a highly technical environment. Most of people that work at Coop are engineers. So it's a quite funny environment to be in as a marketer.

Paul (08:42.648)
you're the only marketeer if I remember correctly in-house

Amina (08:45.64)
Yes, yes, but I work with different great agencies, thankfully, and among them Avidly that have been helping us with both the rebranding of the websites and building the websites and actually some of the content strategy and different parts of marketing.

Paul (09:10.862)
and we're also going to be working together again at Nordic Growth Summit and when this goes out in just a few weeks, I it was four weeks yesterday actually on day of recording.

Amina (09:19.554)
Very excited to be there. I'm going to meet a lot of great people with great minds.

Paul (09:25.656)
have you finalized your talk slides yet?

Amina (09:29.948)
I have some good outlines of what I'm going to be talking about. So this is quite finalized and then I think we need to go through it and make it ready.

Paul (09:42.703)
Just like me, never have it finished. It's working in the back of the mind for weeks now. But you are gonna be talking about node it growth and the ROI of patients and that's kind of the topic we've just dive straight into. Let's go back to it. So you were talking there about balancing short-term needs, long-term growth building. And then you talked about...

Amina (09:45.894)
Yeah.

Amina (09:50.812)
Exactly.

Amina (09:56.892)
Mm.

Paul (10:09.506)
I don't know, the classic brands that everybody points to, Apple, Nike, Adidas, have such strong brands and brand affinity and loyalty and they can, don't know, sort of, it allows a lot more things that people like us at a regular business don't often maybe think they get to do. Do think that's true or do you think there's bits where actually brand,

Amina (10:11.95)
Mm. Mm.

Paul (10:34.286)
is the key for long term growth and how do you build it in sort of, in your setting, the tech space that you're in, in that little slice of the pie, how do you build a strong brand that builds long term growth?

Amina (10:44.166)
Well,

Amina (10:47.536)
Well, I think what is very interesting is that like when the leadership makes a decision to recruit marketeers in tech companies, many of them, think, the sales are not selling enough. So we need to have a marketeer doing the sales job. And I think that's where, we need to have greater pipeline. So we need to recruit a marketeer. And from day one, you know, we're going to

Paul (11:05.612)
What do mean?

Amina (11:14.364)
close more deals and they're gonna bring into the company more customers. Yeah, exactly. And I think at the start of my career in different tech companies, I've been using a lot of time explaining to the leadership team, like how marketing works, you that you need to balance what you've been saying, like the...

Paul (11:18.478)
because there'd be more opportunities.

Amina (11:39.481)
short-term tactics and the long-term brand building that would yield great results over time. So maybe in the first year, know, of course marketing will help with the pipeline, with getting some results, but the biggest effect actually, you start seeing them after the second year investment or third year investment, because then you've spent the time and resources in building the brand.

So this is from my experience from different companies. When you just start working in a new company, both the sales and the leadership team, mean the CEOs, they expect to have results right away. And you you get some results. It's not that you don't get some good results from the first or second month, but I mean the greatest results, you can start seeing them after some time.

And you have to give it, and I mean, while waiting for the magic to happen, then you need to invest in long-term strategies. And by long-term strategies, mean, SEO, you have to focus on doing some research about the right keywords to focus on, what kind of backlinks you need to have on your website, the visuals of that.

that you display on different platforms, it's your websites or physical buildings, et cetera. And community building, getting the right partners, working with thought leadership, publishing great articles and interviews in key.

publications. So you need to think about all this. even if like, I mean, sometimes I start laughing because after we publish a press release, some of the team members would ask me, how many customers have you gotten after the press release have been published? And I'm like, well, it will take some time. We will see the effect maybe sometime. It's very difficult to measure, but we know that working

Amina (14:01.712)
constantly and in a very structured way that what actually results in the best marketing effect.

Paul (14:14.286)
how do you have uh... when you're reporting to the rest of the cc do you have a metric or kp either is so tracking the long-term growth because like you say that i've just done a podcast this morning with the a i have a tower of brian halligan co-finder of hotspot and watched a video from ran fishkin uh... spot tarot this morning as well around

Amina (14:29.702)
Mm. Mm.

Paul (14:39.402)
sentiment and the micro consumption of content people go through that all that you used to be able to like say used to like it was years ago five years ago you could track every inch of the way but now you can't really do that so how are you so reporting on the effectiveness of some of the softer plays or smaller plays that build and compound over time

Amina (15:05.276)
Well, actually, as you're saying, the leadership, would always look at the pipeline and the number of leads generated and the closed customers. In my leadership meetings, I always try to show the organic traffic, the evolution, the development of the traffic compared to the month before, the year before. And also I do a lot of

benchmarking studies. I I benchmark like our organic traffic compared to the competitors, the keywords, and also the sentiment as you're mentioning. And there are some tools actually that you can use to actually to assess the brand awareness. And one of these tools that think that's been developed by HubSpot and

You know, it's free, so it's great actually, because before when I was working for large companies like Equinor and Coca-Cola, you have to invest millions to get these studies done. But now today with HubSpot tools, can get some sense of your brand equity through using simple tools like those developed by HubSpot.

Paul (16:28.27)
The AI brand sentiment tool, I can't remember what it's called exactly, we'll have to get that exactly right, but yeah, it's clever. I watched a webinar this week about that from the HubSpot team and it came from...

Amina (16:31.708)
Yeah, exactly.

Amina (16:39.473)
Mm.

Paul (16:44.206)
then name escapes me but lady that was far as we was tracking it for hopes for must be quicker and easier way and it built away and it's been intended into a tool and what's different actually i didn't have this in the notes but you've i forgot that you told me before but working at coca cola and now you're a stay btb business and then talk about so long term brand building coca cola's probably

I can't think of another brand that's more recognizable rather. What are the and differences from a more normal marketing approach, normal companies approach like yours now versus the big glossy sort of powerful brands?

Amina (17:17.436)
Thanks

Amina (17:32.157)
Yeah, well, when you work for a powerful brand, know, then they have a billion dollar brand that is established, you know, so you the way you drive your marketing is totally different from a tech company where you know to survive as a company, you need to have X number of new customers each month. So for Coca-Cola, we used to drive this like a global

Paul (17:39.874)
Yeah.

Amina (17:58.737)
marketing campaigns and also the channels are very different. you, with Coca-Cola, use TV and radio and newspapers and also in like metro stations and train stations, you have great billboards. So like the channels and the way of driving marketing is completely different from tech companies. Meanwhile, in, for example, in Com4, we have

very much focus on digital marketing.

events because these are like channels where it's easy to attract customers to the brand and especially for not a so well known brand.

Paul (18:44.462)
Do you, yeah comparatively to probably the most famous brand in the world. Are there any similarities internally, no matter the company in your experience when it comes to what marketing is doing and how it's contributing?

Amina (18:47.612)
Mm-hmm.

Amina (18:59.632)
think for all businesses at the end of the day you need to grow and you need to have enough revenue to survive as a company. think the end game is the same whether it's Coca-Cola, Apple, Nike or Microsoft or a small tech company in Finland. So for me it's like...

There are not so many differences among businesses, but of course when you have established brand, it's much easier to drive marketing than when you're not known at all. And then you need to build everything from scratch.

Paul (19:42.009)
So building that up then, you talked about a 40-60 split, 40 demand gens, 60 brand building kind of plays. That's the, on the face of it, seems the other way around than most people would want to approach. Is that deliberate?

Amina (19:51.324)
exactly.

Amina (20:00.412)
You

Well, this is what actually, you know, I believe in science and that's what science have been showing us. I mean, even if you're tempted as a marketeer because you have this people behind you pushing you to do that, you're tempted to go for the opposite. But you know that, okay, if you don't use 60 % of your resources on the long-term strategies, then in six months, you know, you're going to have problems.

in one year, you're gonna get problems. You're not gonna be able to meet all the KPIs that the business has set for you. So of course, even if you have this really pushback from the departments around you, but you need to be strong as a marketeer and say, we need, I mean, though it seems easy to surrender to the temptation.

but all the time it's not like a winning strategy.

Paul (21:05.761)
and exhausting.

Amina (21:08.038)
Of course, it's very exhausting because then you're like, it's just like you're just running on the hamster wheel all the time. While I mean, when you invest in the right way, then you can just lean back at some point and you can see the results coming to you without stressing the marketing team or the agencies around you.

Paul (21:29.518)
So about that, taking a step back and measuring sort of the long-term success then. So if you can get, we'll come on to get in the buying for this approach in a moment. So measuring that long-term success, what are the right sort of metrics to be looking at?

Amina (21:45.788)
So we talked about the traffic metrics. It's a very important metrics.

Paul (21:50.991)
How do you do that in today's lens though, with sort of traffic being so scattered and sources being so scattered?

Amina (22:01.188)
Well, you can use great tools like SEMrush and HubSpot to do that. And for example, in SEMrush, can track, I mean, traffic and also Google Analytics, like traffic from different sources, whether it's from SoMe or it's from organic search or paid ads, et cetera. And it will give you a very good idea about how you're getting your traffic.

And I see when like the organic traffic starts equaling the traffic coming from ads, then I think it's, then it's it's a KPI about the health of your marketing. Because if all your traffic is coming from paid sources, then there is a problem. Then you're not working enough on the brand building side. Yeah, you still have traffic and you have also other.

other KPIs like the site authority that you can check with the SEMrush. Also like the different KPIs regarding the keywords and organic search, et cetera, and you can track all this through SEMrush and analytics.

Paul (23:21.39)
You mentioned events earlier as well as part of what you do at COM4 and it's something we do as well. Tell us about what kind of events you're doing and why, so that people can sort of take any learnings and ideas from what you're doing that's working.

Amina (23:24.508)
Mm.

Amina (23:40.701)
Well, actually, it's a very interesting question and I think it will drive me back to the work we've been doing with you, Avidly, when we started building the brand for Com4. So one of the focus areas was actually to select the right personas for Com4. And what we've found out after some research is that the

Personas for Com4, they're highly technical people. It's like the CTO, the engineers. There are these people actually that contact us and ask us about services and products. So then, you know, when we start there with the Personas, then it makes the task much easier to select the right events because you need to meet these profiles. And these profiles, you'll meet them at

technical events or events that are focused on the telecommunication industry or the connectivity industry. And it's also at the intersection of hardware, connectivity, software, AI, cloud. So then you need to map all events that are where you can meet the...

the right profiles for your business. So that's how we work at Com4.

Paul (25:11.692)
and that's approaching goal what is that sponsoring a third party events is it arranging to meet prospect what are you speaking at them are you putting on your own events or all the above

Amina (25:23.908)
We have, we do all of this. So we, for example, now are going to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It's a big, big telecom Congress where we're going to be meeting peers, partners, other MNOs and MVNOs and also customers, companies that we've been working with and that we're still working with. And we do also our own events like webinars and

podcasts as we're running now. we do also, mean, for me, it's like thought leadership is of utmost importance because like showing all the technical expertise that we have, we have internally is a great way of marketing comfort. So we have partnerships with different platforms like IoT for All, IoT Now, where we have

Paul (25:56.686)
You

Amina (26:22.748)
webinars, podcasts, also interviews and articles published.

Paul (26:29.198)
Nice, are you consciously doing more of that in sort of this more weirdly more disconnected age and more competitive online landscape? Are you deliberately doing more sort of in-person stuff?

Amina (26:47.804)
Yes, definitely. again, you know, it's a very, I mean, it's a very interesting question because I would always get the question before the event, after the events, how many leads and how many customers. But for me, it's like just, it's part of the brand building. It's part of the brand awareness because when you have your logo displayed on these types of events, your stand.

showing the brand and showing all the great solutions that the company is delivering. I mean, even if you can't prove it right away, like how many customers we've been able to attract, but all the time people would, they won't forget Com4 and when they need

some type of solutions or products that Com4 can deliver, then they would contact us.

Paul (27:53.359)
Absolutely. And then it's making sure you've got a robust or clear way of tracking this building over time, which we've talked about. Obviously the last piece of the puzzle really is getting a culture right in the business to trust this longer term process. How do you go about building that?

Amina (27:54.417)
Mm.

Amina (28:18.268)
It's actually a marathon. yeah, it is. And it's like a daily work. But over time, people start understanding the importance of doing it this way. So yeah, as I said, when you start working with a new team, the first months are quite tough, you know, because they expect results right away and rewards.

Paul (28:20.782)
You

Amina (28:46.652)
And they need also to report to the board the results. But then when they start seeing, and that's actually my CEO has been saying that to me, is that now after three years of investment, now we can see the return on investment. Because we don't need to, like I can say,

that 50 % of the leads that we get, relevant leads, they don't come from paid advertising. They come from organic storage or the customers call us or contact us directly. so without all the long-term efforts, I think this wouldn't happen for Com4.

Paul (29:39.608)
What are the signs that you see in the buy-in to the approach grow from those around you?

Amina (29:46.429)
The science of the buy-in is very simple. It's actually more budget to marketing and also recruiting more marketeers to the company. I see that happening now. That the leadership is willing to invest more in what we're doing and also they believe that having internal resources that are

Paul (29:52.28)
Yeah.

Paul (30:01.55)
Nice.

Amina (30:12.988)
committed to the company and to reaching the goals is as important as recruiting another engineer or another salesperson.

Paul (30:22.338)
You're going to dive into this topic in some more specifics and more depth in a few weeks time. I was going to say four weeks. It's four weeks on the day of recording, but obviously this won't quite be going out today. Yeah, so join us at Nordic Growth Summit and see Amina along with nine other brilliant speakers diving into these topics. The ROI of patience is what you'll explore.

Amina (30:30.704)
Mm. Mm.

Paul (30:45.26)
What's something somebody can do? I normally say, I mean, I'm at the end of these, what's something somebody can do this week to get started with this? But let's be more patient. What's something they could get done in the next quarter to help build this longer term approach at the business?

Amina (31:03.14)
I think you need to be courageous as a marketeer. So when meeting your leadership team and when you get questions, then you need to show courage and believe. For me, it's like marketing is like a religion. You need to believe in the effects of long-term marketing. You need to have faith in what you're doing. So having the courage and

the strength of the fighting for your expertise, I mean the area and the company is key here. So that would be my advice to anyone who would start this quarter.

Paul (31:55.607)
I appreciate that as well and communicating it out as well. I'd layer on top of that. think we as the marketing function in the business can, we look at this every day but other people only really look at it when...

Amina (31:59.558)
course.

Paul (32:10.37)
we talk about these things so we can drive this home as well. think that'd be my two penneth to add to that brilliant tip. So if you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a comment and five star review. Make sure you head to NordicGrowthSummit.Tech to come and see Amina and head to ComFour.no.

and to check out more of the services if that's relevant to you and you're a partner for IoT connectivity. Put it just out of interest, it's a lovely website as well. Right, thanks very much Amina, been pleasure.

Amina (32:40.081)
Yeah, thank you very much, Paul. Really pleasure talking to you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Paul (32:44.121)
See you again in a few weeks.