Senior management at B2B companies are often tempted to "expand their fishing nets" in pursuit of more sales and to grow their suite of services to an extensive array of variations.

We certainly advise against falling for this temptation, as such actions can adversely affect the overall core brand strength. If you stand for so many things, how can you really be good at all of them? What are your core competencies and where is your focus?

As a B2B company, brand value has a direct impact on trust and on new or repeat business. We have also seen the recent lean times force bulked-up business services companies divest divisions or trim down their portfolio in order to do what makes sense: maximise return on investment.

If you find yourself in such a situation though, we suggest that you focus on marketing the one or two core products or services that help build brand value, and leave it to the sales teams to educate customers on the entire warehouse of offerings face to face with new customers. To shortlist the key products or services as your 'frontline' core offering, you can consider asking yourself:

• Does this support our brand positioning?
• Does this support the top three priority messages about what we offer customers?
• Does this reach and appeal to new prospects?
• Will this get real ‘cut-through’ and not end up being just ‘one of many’?
• Is this something we can ‘own’?
• Will this help build long term (as opposed to short term) sales?

Good luck!