Activating Your Re-Brand Externally: Why Sales Enablement Comes First
Jami Mullikin • October 29, 2024
Activating your brand externally is a powerful way to drive growth, create loyalty, and amplify your impact. But where do you start? While many focus first on top-of-funnel activities like advertising or social media, we believe the most effective way to begin external activation is at the bottom of the funnel—with sales enablement.
Why? Because sales is where your brand promise becomes tangible. It’s the moment your prospects decide whether or not to trust you with their business. Starting with sales enablement ensures your messaging is clear, consistent, and aligned with your brand at the most critical point in the customer journey.
Here’s why sales enablement should be the foundation of your external brand activation—and how to do it effectively.
Why Start with Sales Enablement?
- The Bottom of the Funnel is Where Decisions Happen
At the bottom of the funnel, prospects are no longer browsing—they’re deciding. This is where the rubber meets the road, and your brand has to deliver. By starting here, you ensure that your team is equipped to close deals and generate revenue quicker. - Sales Interactions Define Your Brand
Your sales team isn’t just selling a product or service—they’re representing your brand. Every conversation, presentation, and follow-up email shapes how prospects perceive your company. Without consistent, compelling messaging, even the best brand strategy can fall flat. - Improves ROI Across the Funnel
Sales enablement doesn’t just help close deals—it makes your entire funnel more effective. When your sales team is armed with the right tools and messaging, they convert more leads into customers, maximizing the ROI of your marketing efforts. - Drives Alignment Between Marketing and Sales
Starting with sales enablement forces alignment between marketing and sales teams. It ensures both teams are speaking the same language and working toward shared goals, creating a seamless experience for prospects.
What Great Sales Enablement Looks Like
Sales enablement is about giving your team the tools, resources, and support they need to sell effectively while staying true to your brand. Here’s how we approach it:
- Develop a Unified Brand Story
Your sales team needs a clear, compelling story that aligns with your brand and resonates with your target audience. This includes:
- An understanding of your Brand Platform
- Strong value propositions for each target market.
- Messaging that highlights the customer’s pain points and how your solution solves them.
- Stories or case studies that bring your brand to life.
- Deliver a Pitch Book
The first and most critical sales enablement tool is your Pitch Book: the 8–12 most important slides that train your sales team and serve as the foundation for presentations to prospects and customers. A well-crafted Pitch Book ensures that every member of your sales team delivers a consistent, powerful message that aligns with your brand. It typically includes:
- The problem you solve and why it matters.
- Your unique brand pillars and promise.
- Key differentiators and proof points.
- Client success stories and case studies.
- Create Sales Tools That Work
Equip your team with additional resources that make it easy to sell, such as:
- Branded pitch decks and proposals.
- Product one-pagers and FAQs.
- Interactive tools like ROI calculators or product demos.
- Train Your Sales Team
Even the best tools won’t make an impact without proper training. Your sales team needs to understand how to use the tools, deliver the messaging, and handle objections—all while staying on-brand.
The Ripple Effect: How Sales Enablement Fuels Broader Activation
Starting with sales enablement doesn’t mean ignoring other parts of the funnel—it means building a strong foundation that supports everything else. Here’s how it fuels broader brand activation:
- Middle of the Funnel: Once your sales team is aligned with your brand, it’s easier to create effective nurture campaigns that guide leads toward a purchase.
- Top of the Funnel: Sales enablement provides the insights you need to create marketing campaigns that attract the right audience and drive qualified leads.
- Customer Experience: A consistent brand experience during the sales process sets the tone for long-term customer relationships.
Wonder’s Approach to Brand Activation
At Wonder, we believe external brand activation should always start with the people who represent your brand most directly: your sales team. By aligning your messaging, tools, and training, we help you create a seamless, on-brand experience that converts prospects into customers and builds trust at every interaction.
From there, we scale your activation efforts to the middle and top of the funnel, creating campaigns and assets that amplify your brand and attract the right audience. This inside-out approach ensures your brand remains authentic, consistent, and impactful across every stage of the customer journey.
Discover how to measure B2B marketing success with multi-touch attribution, ABM insights, and metrics that prove ROI and drive smarter strategies.
Starting a B2B marketing program can feel overwhelming. With so many tactics and platforms to choose from, knowing where to begin is often the hardest part. From selecting the right channels to aligning with sales, the early stages can make or break your campaign. That's where Wonder comes in. We help businesses get up and running in market quickly and effectively, often within the first 30 days.
Let’s just call it like it is. We live in the Age of Distraction. Slack messages. Email threads. Meetings about meetings. Threads to read to know if you were supposed to read them. It’s easy to mistake movement for progress. But the real breakthroughs? The real clarity, traction, and transformation? They come when you carve out time for deep, uninterrupted work. That’s where the magic of a clarity comes in. That’s the power of a Clarity Break. What Is a Clarity Break? In the language of EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), a Clarity Break is time you intentionally schedule to step away from the day-to-day and think. Not react. Not multitask. Just think. No meetings. No inbox. No distractions. You block the time. You find a quiet space. You bring a notebook. And you give yourself permission to wrestle with the real questions: What’s working? What’s not? Where are we stuck? What needs to change? You don't need to have an agenda. You just need space. Why It Works Clarity Breaks work because they shift your mind from urgent to important. You’re not trying to check something off a list. You’re trying to understand what belongs on the list in the first place. It’s like cleaning your windshield after driving through a rainstorm. Same road. Different view. In the past few years, I’ve built the discipline of taking regular Clarity Breaks. Some short. Some long. And every time I do, I walk away with more clarity, stronger decisions, and renewed energy to lead. Problems I’ve Solved in Clarity Breaks This isn’t theory for me. These are just a few of the things I’ve worked through. Sometimes in a coffee shop, sometimes in my home office, sometimes in a cabin on a mountain where I can see for miles. Personally, the mountains are simply good for my soul. Proven Processes EOS teaches us to document the way we work. But that doesn’t happen in the chaos of back-to-back meetings. In a Clarity Break, I’ve outlined and refined the processes that drive consistency in our delivery at Wonder. Core Processes Big decisions about how we operate need space. And space is what Clarity Breaks create. I’ve mapped the foundational ways we serve clients with my notecards and flow spread across the floor. Value Propositions The best messaging doesn’t come from brainstorming with 10 people in a room. It comes from thinking deeply about what your ideal client actually values. That happens in quiet. In stillness. In reflecting on the true needs of others. Offers Too Good to Refuse The best offers come from clarity, not complexity. When I stop trying to be clever and get laser-focused on solving a real problem in a simple way, that's when irresistible offers show up. Sales Commission Structure Even tactical, structural issues, like how to design a comp plan that drives the right behavior, have found their way to clarity in the space of my Clarity Break. Get clear. Clear the calendar, that is. The Clarity Break is one of the simplest, most overlooked tools in EOS — and one of the most powerful. It’s also deeply personal. No one schedules it for you. No one demands it. But if you make the time, protect the space, and show up ready to think, you will find what’s next. If you're running a business and haven't created a rhythm with Clarity Breaks, this is your nudge. Start small. Block an hour. Bring a notebook. Leave the laptop. If you're not running on EOS, but the idea of creating intentional space to think resonates, give it a try. The best leaders think. And the best thinking happens when you finally stop doing everything else for everyone else.
Discover why true B2B marketing success starts with fundamentals, not automation. Learn why mastering clarity, consistency, and customer insight matters more than chasing flashy tools and shortcuts.
Long sales cycles. Complex products. Relationship-driven growth. Learn why smart B2B brands need a marketing agency that gets their world—and builds momentum every 90 days.
In B2B sales, the traditional approach has been clear-cut: marketing drives awareness and generates leads, while sales takes those leads and closes deals. But the reality is more complex. Buyers don’t move through a predictable funnel, and purchase decisions aren’t made in isolation. This is where Account-Based Marketing (ABM) changes the game. Rather than focusing on individual leads, ABM aligns sales and marketing around target accounts—companies that fit the ideal customer profile (ICP). It’s a dynamic, data-driven approach that helps teams work together to engage prospects throughout their entire buying journey. Account-Based Marketing (AB M): Not a New Idea, But a Better Execution The concept of ABM has been around for years—previously known as “Key Account Marketing.” What’s different today is the power of digital data and technology. With a combination of first-party and third-party data, advanced targeting, and personalized messaging, ABM enables teams to: Identify the right accounts with precision Engage the full buying team within each organization Deliver the right message at the right time based on where each prospect is in their decision-making process By focusing marketing efforts on accounts that sales has already prioritized, ABM ensures that resources are spent on the highest-value opportunities. Why ABM Works Better for B2B Sales 1. B2B Buying Decisions Are Made by Committees Very few B2B deals are decided by a single person. Instead, purchase decisions often involve 8 to 13 stakeholders across different roles: Initiators - those who start the buying process Researchers - team members gathering vendor options Influencers - stakeholders pushing for features they favor Decision-makers - leaders signing off on the purchase Traditional marketing often targets just one individual, but ABM engages the full buying committee, ensuring the right people receive relevant content and messaging throughout their journey. 2. ABM Uses Data and Technology to Deliver Meaningful Engagement One of ABM’s biggest advantages is its ability to meet buyers where they are—not just with broad awareness campaigns, but with targeted content tailored to their stage in the buying process. Using marketing automation, CRM data, and intent-based signals, ABM delivers messaging that speaks to the unique priorities of each stakeholder—whether they’re just starting research or narrowing down vendors. The result? Higher engagement, shorter sales cycles, and stronger conversion rates. Account-Based Marketing: A Smarter Way to Drive B2B Growth ABM isn’t about generating more leads—it’s about generating the right opportunities. By aligning sales and marketing around a focused list of high-value accounts, engaging full buying teams, and leveraging data-driven insights, ABM helps B2B companies win more deals with the right customers. If you’re ready to refine your sales and marketing strategy with ABM, let’s start the conversation. Let’s talk.
