Why Brand Power is the Ultimate Cheat Code

Brand power is a cheat code.

Large enterprises have multiplicative advantages you don’t see until they’re gone. The biggest: brand power.

Here’s the test. If Linkology Labs cold messages you on LinkedIn, what’s your response rate? For most people, the bar is high. The content has to resonate. The problem needs to be urgent. The hook better be sharp. The positioning flawless. The timing perfect. And even if you nail all of that, the probability of a response is still low.

Now imagine someone from Apple reaches out. Same message. Same offer. Maybe worse writing.

You respond. Of course you respond. You’re flattered. The brand carries weight. The logo does half the work before you read a single word.

That’s the gap. And when you leave the corporate world, you fall into it hard.

The math changes when you’re nobody.

Here’s how I think about business development success:

BD Success = (Brand Power × Relationships) × (Pitch + Process + Persistence)

Let me break down the variables:

Pitch — Do you solve an urgent problem? Is your offer credible? Does it land in one sentence, or does it require three paragraphs of setup?

Process — Your messaging, hooks, lead math, tech stack, prospect lists, target personas, channels, personalization. The mechanics of outreach done at scale without feeling like spam.

Persistence — The ability to keep moving after rejection. To send follow-up number six without catastrophizing. To treat “no response” as neutral data instead of personal failure. To have a bias toward action over rumination.

Brand Power — Do people recognize you? How does your name make them feel? Do they trust you before you’ve said a word?

Relationships — Do you have history with the recipient? Warm intros beat cold outreach every time. Relationships counterbalance weak brand power.

What the equation reveals.

When I was corporate, I could engage prospects without perfect pitch, process, or persistence. The brand did the heavy lifting. My follow-up could be lazy. My messaging didn’t need to be razor-sharp. People responded because the logo mattered.

Strip away the brand, and the math flips. Now pitch, process, and persistence carry the entire load. You can’t coast. Every message needs to work harder. Every follow-up needs to add value. And you have to keep going when your inbox is silent and your brain is screaming that you’re bothering people.

Persistence isn’t a personality trait.

The good news: persistence is learnable. It’s not some innate quality you either have or don’t. It’s a muscle you build by ignoring the unhelpful voices in your head—the ones worried about being annoying, the ones catastrophizing silence, the ones convinced everyone thinks you’re a pest.

It requires effort. It requires emotional regulation. But it’s not unattainable.

The bad news: it’s uncomfortable. You will send messages that get ignored. You will follow up with people who ghost you. You will feel like you’re bothering strangers. That discomfort is the price of building without a brand.

Lean on relationships while building your brand.

One mistake I made early: I didn’t leverage my relationships. I thought cold outreach was “real” business development. That asking for intros was somehow cheating or imposing.

It’s not. Cold lead generation is a grind. Warm intros close faster, convert better, and feel less soul-crushing. If you have relationships, use them. Let people vouch for you while your brand is still being built.

Your network is the closest thing you have to brand power when you’re starting out. Don’t waste it trying to prove you can do it the hard way.

The inverse is also true.

If you’re backed by a strong brand AND you develop the 3Ps (pitch, process, persistence), you’ll crush your numbers. That’s the multiplier effect in action.

Most corporate reps don’t realize how much the brand is carrying them until they leave. The ones who figure it out—who learn persistence, refine their process, and sharpen their pitch while still inside—become revenue machines when they go independent.

A note to executives.

If you’re a leader who dismisses upper-funnel brand investment as “fluffy” or “hard to measure,” get over it.

Your revenue team is grinding against the math every day. Brand power makes their job exponentially easier. It reduces friction. It opens doors. It turns cold outreach into warm conversations.

Your BDRs will thank you. Your close rates will improve. And maybe, just maybe, your best people won’t burn out and leave because they’re tired of being ignored.

The takeaway.

Persistence is the skill nobody teaches you in corporate. You don’t need it there—the brand does the work.

But when you leave, it’s the difference between building a business and burning out in six months wondering why nobody responds to your emails.

Learn to keep going. Ignore the voices. Send message 48.