B2B Customers Are Not Logos

People don’t want to be a number. B2B customers don’t want to be a logo.

An increasing number of companies refer to existing and potential customers as logos, e.g. Our goal is to add 20 more logos this year. It’s gone so far that a search on LinkedIn will produce individuals with titles like VP of New Logo Acquisition. We think referring to customers this way is a mistake. Beyond being jargon, it sends the wrong message to employees. Customers and prospects are better terms. A customer is a person or organization your company has a relationship with. A logo is a stamp.

This may seem like an exercise in semantics. But Language matters. How you describe customers and prospects in internal documents and conversations sends a message to employees. It subtly turns customers into a score, rather than a relationship.

Many organizations are sensitive to this issue when referring to employees. Employees are partners, associates, leaders, representatives, etc. These labels elevate the relationship the employee has with the organization. Even firms that don’t use aspirational terms for employees don’t call them cogs, underlings or wage-workers.

The use of the term “logos” to refer to customers appears to have originated in the financial services sector where banks and private equity firms display the companies the invest in using PowerPoint presentations. In this situation a logo represents an abstract connection. An investment.

But customers don’t want to be logos. They are organizations full of people with goals and challenges. Customers want to believe that their vendors have their best interests in mind and want to help them succeed. Your employees will be more motivated to help a customer or a person that your organization views as a relationship, then they will to help a logo that is keeping score in a PowerPoint deck. At least we think so.