Going Beyond Relationship Selling To Become A Trusted Advisor
I’m here to dispel the myth about relationships and selling new business. I’ve been studying the misunderstood relationship selling model for quite some time. One of the factors that never made sense to me was how anyone can expect a friend to give you their business when you haven’t earned the right to it. I know that I am throwing rocks at a few of you, but don’t push the delete key yet. Relationship Selling works; you just need to apply a clearer definition. A recently published study redefines the criteria critically important in making a sale. The study is intriguing and eye opening as it breaks through old myths around “relationship selling” to rank the criteria that are really important to the client when making a buying decision.
I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing a few of the major points of the study. The number one criterion for making important buying decisions is whether or not they TRUST the person. The second is whether or not they RESPECT the person, number three is the REPUTATION of the company, number four is the product’s BENEFITS, and coming in fifth is PRICE. What surprises many people is the eleventh reason a purchasing decision is made. It’s how much they LIKE the salesperson. You may at first disagree with the order, but I challenge you to really think about what’s important to you. How do you define a business relationship? What’s your definition of TRUST? Does having someone take you out golfing build trust? No!
So, if you are currently staking your sales career on being likable with large expense accounts, you will manage your career all the way to the poor house. Why? As someone who travels extensively working with sales professionals around the country, I concur that trust is the number one factor in building a business relationship. Trust is the foundation for creating a powerful relationship and when broken or non-existent will act as a wedge in a relationship that removes any hope of making a sale.
Note: The best sales people have not only developed the skills and knowledge necessary to build trust, they also understand how to communicate their unique knowledge and experience in such a way that they are recognized as the trusted authority with-in their given field. They have a special quality I call “known-for-ness” that provides a level of trust.
A question I often I am often asked is how to communicate or package your unique talents and skills so that the market recognizes and places a distinctive value on your unique talent. The answer is teaching sales professionals how to promote and position themselves. I am aware that lately there has been a lot of hype on the subject of Personal Branding lately that Tom Peters brought to the attention of millions. I too believe, based on working with successful professionals there is quite a bit of validity to the concept of building and extending a Personal Brand.
In the 21st Century it’s a must. Personal Branding is going to be the mantra of the professional for the next 100 years as markets become increasing commoditized. As a speaker specializing in prospecting, I’ve given 57 talks on Personal Branding for professionals around the country. Next month is no exception; I will address 500 Financial Professionals on Personal Branding in an opening Key Note address. So now you are asking… What does Personal Branding have to do with becoming a Trusted Advisor? It goes back to the number one reason people buy from you — TRUST.
Trust is the forerunner to everything else in professional sales is applied through Personal Branding by way of prospecting and marketing (i.e. Client/Practice Development). First, let me explain what a brand is. A brand is a represented ideal that exists in the minds of an individual. A brand competitively distinguishes itself usually with a perceived advantage over the competition. That’s right, I said a perceived advantage. Let’s take Wheaties as an example, people buy Wheaties because they believe {key word} that they will run faster and jump higher all because they are eating wheat flakes out of a box with a picture of an athlete. A brand is all about managing the beliefs for a specific segment of the population.
However, a Personal Brand is different, whereby a brand of a product or service is manufactured; a Personal Brand is based in authenticity. A Personal Brand is based on the unique talents, natural abilities and skills of the individual. It is further strengthened by the person’s experience in an area of specialization extending the Buzz on the individual. One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is “Experience is knowledge. All the rest is information”. Leveraging your experience as it relates to your natural ability (genius quality) is what successful people have been doing for years.
Why think about developing a Personal Brand? Well, believe it or not, you already have a brand, people already “see” you in a certain way. They instinctively know what you are good at and what you’re not so good at. So you might as well focus on optimizing your brand, building congruency with your natural talents and how the world sees you to redefine the reality you do business in. Your brand positions you as a known value in your market. Another question I often get is what do you mean by optimizing your brand? The answer is simple really. It has been psychologically proven that you can only be known as one thing in someone’s minds-eye. That’s why people who do more than one thing wonder why they never get referrals.
Note: If you try to be all things to all people, you market will not know what to believe. They will psychologically choose the individual who has specialized in the area; they perceive them to have a certain expertise that you don’t have to serve their particular need.
Remember, the people who are known for something are the one’s that have the first in mind advantage over the competition. They have become “the choice” and not just “a choice” within their market. The unique distinction of a Personal Brand removes objections from the buying process, especially among products and services that “look alike”.
When I consult with a partner in a professional services firm; their biggest question is how do I become a trusted advisor? Your unique value needs to be communicated to your market in such a way that your listening (target) market immediately knows the value that you bring to their business. In order to accomplish this important goal, you can no longer be all things to all people. You must communicate your specialization to build the trust within your market segment or niche that will increase your sales success.
There are volumes of examples of individuals who’ve utilized Personal Branding to become a Trusted Advisor. These select few have learned to generate business momentum resulting in the establishment of them as “the choice” within their market niche. Interested in learning more about how professionals can take their business to the next level using Personal Branding tools. Contact Joe Heller for more information.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
How to Write a Powerful Marketing Letter
I’ve written this “how-to” article to give you a competitive edge when writing a powerful marketing letter. The following 15 Tips (and tricks) will give you everything you need to know to write killer marketing letters. Enjoy and prosper –
The secret to writing a sales letter is that there is no secret. A killer sales letter is written to accomplish one of three things.
# 1. Generate interest to qualify (or disqualify) a lead
# 2. Advance a prospect through the sales process
# 3. Secure TOMA [Top of Mind Awareness] for additional sales with your existing client base
Question: What makes writing an effective sales letter so challenging? Here are the top 15.5 reasons why people fail to write effective sales copy and what you can do about them.
1) No clear objective in mind before you sit down to write your sales letter — In order to write persuasively you must have an end in mind, a goal for your reader. Ask yourself, what do you want the reader do when they finish reading your letter.
2) Lack of an attention getting headline or opening sentence — You must hook the reader immediately with a captivating opener in order to get the reader to invest their valuable time to finish reading the letter. 80%+ of sales letters fail to generate attention.
3) Lead sentence fails to extend the theme of the headline into the letter — You must bridge the reader into the sales copy once their attention is captured or risk confusing the reader and losing their interest.
4) Fail to write in a conversational tone — Write like you talk. A letter should be a dialog between you and the reader. The reader should get a sense that you are genuinely concerned with their well being.
5) Copy is boring, fails to keep the reader interested — You must develop a writing style based on your personality, not on antiquated High School grammar practices that are assured to put any reader to sleep. It’s ok for your writing to fail grammatically as long as your don’t lose the focus on your message.
6) Fail to use a proven writing format — In order to be effective you must use an established formula for writing copy such as “story telling” or “problem -> agitate -> solution”. Sales letters are written to produce a measurable result, NOT a creative award.
6.5) No bolding or underlining within the letter — There are a number of things you can do to add emphasis to key parts of your sales letter to direct your readers attention where you want it to go. Emphasis also helps pull the reader into the letter.
7) Me focused, not reader focused — Stop focusing on how great your product is… the reader doesn’t really care. Will your product save money? Time? or generate revenue? Profits? Never forget your reader is tuned into WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) when they read your letter. Always emphasize the major benefits your reader will receive from your product.
8 ) Nix the jargon — avoid industry jargon or buzzwords and stick to talking bout your benefits in plain English. Nothing will turn a reader off more quickly that using industry jargon you think they should know and often don’t
9) Use testimonials — No matter on what stage you are in with your prospect you should always include testimonials. Testimonials increase your credibility and your believability.
10) Feature focused, not benefit focused — You must keep the copy focused on the benefits your reader will receive by owning your product. Example: Your product is made from plastic (feature); you tell the reader that because your product is made from plastic (feature) it will never rust (advantage). Thereby, lowering replacement costs (benefit), eliminate corrosion (benefit), etc…
11) No bullet points or single sentence paragraphs — There are two types of readers. There are those who will read the entire letter once you’ve captured their attention and then there are those who will skim your letter. You must be able to reach both reading styles. Bullets and single sentence paragraphs allow your reader to capture important benefits at a glance.
12) Long sentences — In order to keep the prospects attention in today’s busy world you must write in short sentences. Never use a comma. This includes using incomplete sentences [when necessary] in your letter copy in order to express your point.
13) Lengthy paragraphs — Try to keep your paragraphs to 3 sentences (5 at the maximum). Even though you’ve captured their attention with your opening headline you must write for interruptions that will occur as they read your letter during a hectic business day. Complete your thoughts quickly.
14) Copy does not define next steps — Now that you’ve got your prospect to read all the way to the end of your letter… now what? What actions on your part or theirs must take place? The “next step” is where you psychologically engage the reader into your sales process and tell them exactly what to do or expect.
15) Fail to use a “ps” to close your letter — The “ps” is the second most read section of a letter. The “ps” is a great place to reiterate your #1 benefit from your headline or opening sentence.
Finally, Proof-read your letter — always proof your letter two or three times. If you have someone else proof your letter, explain your goals to them. When they give you their critique, acknowledge their comments; however, any changes made to the letter are your decision alone. If you decide to proof your own letter let it sit for a few hours or a day, print it and then read it aloud to make sure it’s conversational. Do NOT proof your letter on your word processor (unless you’re an experienced editor); make your notes on the paper for easy review.
One final note; in order to become a great writer you must become an avid reader of successful sales letters. I’ve developed a course you can invest in to help you write a killer sales letter on my site http://joeheller.com and click on “programs” to learn more. It’s a great resource from my personal library for yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
Are You Invisible to Your Potential Clients?
Do you remember a time when you were a kid and pretended to be invisible? Your imagination delighted your parents as you walked through the house inspiring them to play along with you, all could hear your innocent giggling. Fast forward to today, entrepreneurs and professionals are still invisible. Only this time it’s not pretend, it’s real and you’re wondering why potential clients can’t see you. Are you confused why someone else is getting all of the referrals or how a big deal lands effortlessly in the lap of your competitor? You feel like jumping up and down, and screaming at the top of your lungs, “here I am!” You are trapped beneath the “ceiling of visibility” being pulled down by the same vacuum that pulls sailors to their death as their ship sinks.
Invisibility for professionals is becoming more of a realization today than ever before. The world is more complex, and more crowded. Competition is getting more rigorous; there are hundreds of suitors vying for the same opportunities today, whereby only a few a decades ago, the competition was more scarce and timid. The uprooting of technology with the fall of the Internet and the manipulation of the stock markets by corporate America is driving confusion and noise in the marketplace at a level we’ve never seen before. Adding to the confusion is the new “law of the jungle.” We no longer trust business to do the right thing; the burden has fallen back to the individual. We have renewed our trust in the people to do the right thing, adding a new dimension for gaining visibility an already bloodthirsty market.
With this in mind, let me dispel a common belief that many entrepreneurs and professionals have today is “build it and they will come”. The fallacy in these words is it removes your effort to build a trusted relationship with your market. Today, the key to building a thriving business in the ever-evolving world is building a foundation on trust; one person at a time. I’ve noticed in my speaking travels that people have adopteda “so what…” attitude. They are less concerned about the product/service advantages and more concerned with individuals living up to their promises. People are doing business with people again and they are saying, come and see me and please stop sending me those damn emails. I am not
saying technology is bad, it does have its place. In order to stay competitive today means you must break through the technology veil to focus on building strong personal relationships with your clients or perish. Technology is now controlling society instead of society controlling technology. Let’s stop hiding behind email and speak to our clients whenever possible.
How can you gain control and break through your “ceiling of invisibility”? The secret lies in branding; not corporate branding, but personal branding. A question, I was recently asked during an interview with The Brand Channel was “…is it possible for a person to be a brand?” I answered no; not in the traditional sense of a brand. A personal brand is a metaphor for communicating your unique talents to your ‘listening’ market in such a way that they immediately understand the value you offer. A personal brand is about how to communicate the authenticity of your unique talents, your genius to the world. It’s about earning the trust and respect of your market by establishing yourself as “the choice” and not “a choice” when someone has a need. Personal Branding is about the quality of the communication you have with your “listening” market.
Note: A “listening market’ goes beyond a target market. It is a market that is specifically listening for your unique value message based on their experiences and historical references. In other words, it’s why someone chooses Wheaties and another chooses Bran. Each cereal has very little nutritional difference; the real difference lies in minds of the buyers who are ‘listening’ for a specific benefit message. This is a subset of how branding works.
Don’t sit and wait expecting the world to discover your unique talents. In order to communicate your distinctive value to your listening market, consider a “visibility campaign”. It’s a way to communicate certain things, to certain people in a certain way that positions you to capture the attention of your internal market (firm/company) and/or your external market (clients/customers). Finally, if you think you can be successful
while staying invisible, you are misleading yourself into the depths of mediocrity.
Important questions to ask yourself:
1) Do you have a FEAR of being visible?
2) Do you have a “visibility plan” that will build trust and credibility?
3) What is the first step I can to today to begin my quest for more visibility?
Important points to consider to effectively carry out your “visibility campaign”:
1) What’s your message? Remember not use the same narrative that everyone else in your market does. Be distinct, focus on the problems you have solved for your clients and tie that into an emotional account from your client’s perspective.
2) What media will be most effective? What are the experts in your field doing, where are they being published? Write an article on the focal issues your clients are facing and offer solutions.
3) What’s your Brand Promise? Are you living up to the expectations the market has for you? And, remember to communicate with clarity to you market about your successes. You need to consistently educate and remind your market on how good you are.
4) Are you distinct? A catastrophic failing with many professionals is that they try to be all things to all people. When this happens their brand gets diluted. Successful people today are known for something, they’ve specialized.
5) Do you have a story that can be easily told? Story’s are viral and create buzz, hoping from one person to the next. Craft a story that’s full of emotion and get people excited about what you do.
Hint: A speaker practices their story at least 50 times before going on stage. Make sure you ‘own’ your story before you tell it in public. And, remember you can’t stay invisible and expect to be successful! I challenge you to rise from the “Sea of Sameness.”
One final note; in order to rise from the “sea of sameness” you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy. I’ve developed a toolkit that gives you powerful 1-2-3 lead generation techniques that can skyrocket your success. You can find it on my site http://joeheller.com and click on “programs” to learn more. It’s a great resource from my personal library to yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
How to Find a Hungry Market
The most important skill you can have as an entrepreneur is to know where to find a hungry market that craves your product. Knowing how to find a “hungry market” is the single most valuable skill you will ever develop. What I am about to revel to you has been a closely guarded secret by the most successful people on the planet for centuries.
The secret… find a Hungry Market!
The majority of people on the planet are unaware of the secret. They are trying to get in front of any market; right, wrong or indifferent. The problem is that when you adopt this approach no one cares what you are selling. Calling on the wrong market is a time waster and the greatest creator of mediocrity in business today.
After all, why buy sales training to advance your sales people or hire a marketing firm to help you with your message when you are calling on the wrong market. Calling on the wrong market is the most common mistake in business and the most overlooked. They think by calling on people in need that they will be catapulted to great success; however that’s a lie that has been told around business campfires for years. You MUST sell to people who want your product, not merely need your product.
Granted, the market that you’re calling on may have a need for your product, but I’ll wager they are not staying at home laying awake every night yearning with desire for your product. In the eyes of your market, your product is ho-hum and barely raises an eyebrow.
With this in mind, you can run the best ads, and send your trained salespeople into the field to sell the best possible product in the world. But it does not mean a thing if you don't have access to a group of people ready, willing and able to buy what you have to sell – a “hungry market”.
What determines a hungry market from a market that has indigestion?
There are 3 Must Haves for determining a hungry market:
#1. You must be able to identity and easily reach them
#2. They must be hungry [want] for what you have to sell
#3. They must be proven buyers who will pay a premium for what you are selling
Note: Whether you are selling a product or a service, you are really selling the benefits for the prospect that is packaged in your message (aka Unique Selling Proposition). The USP is crafted from hunger your market has for a product. In other words you cannot tell your market what it needs; you can only give it what it wants.
When you hear of someone enjoying spectacular success you're more often than not seeing an example of someone who found a 'hungry' market
and worked it intelligently. Professionals who enjoy this type of spectacular success have shelved the old selling model and learned the ancient secret of the hungry market.
Note: The Old Selling Model is where you build your product first and then find your market. The New Selling Model is where you find a Hungry Market and then build a product to quash the markets hunger.
Sure, you can build a business that's missing one or more of the “3” M’s, but why would you want to kill yourself serving a commodity market when serving a hungry market is so much more lucrative? The intelligent people reading this article will grasp my message and escape from the commodity vortex where they only compete on price to a “hungry market” where you can live like a king.
The goal of this article is to educate you on becoming a marketing genius. That’s right it’s easy to become a marketing genius; a marketing genius knows how to find and serve a hungry market. Awareness of hungry [under served] markets within your existing market can make you rich. And it’s a lot easier than you think.
Hint: Here’s a way to discover a Hungry Market — The Magazine Stand Technique
Think about it… every year, billions of dollars in sales start between the covers of magazines. Now, I'm not talking about big magazines like Forbes or Time – those are for Madison Avenue types who have lost touch with reality. They spend small fortunes on advertising that produces a big nada at the cash register. (If you feel like wasting money on big dollar traditional advertising on poorly targeted markets just send me the money. I’ll put it to good use.)
The secret of the hungry market is hidden inside hundreds of special interest magazines that cover practically every subject known to man. These magazines are wildly profitable and have been around for years on subjects such as knitting or collecting bottle caps and even raising earthworms. None of these topics interest me personally, but it PROVES the existence of a lively, hungry marketplace for these topics.
Think about it… how big of a niche do you need to sell into? I know a consultant who has a very specialized niche in software; there are less than 300 companies in the world that meet the “hungry market” criteria. Sounds small… after all how can anyone earn a living with a universe of 300 prospects?
She earns more than $15 million a year serving this niche.
Size does NOT matter!!! A market hungry for your products are more motivated than any liberal activist group. They don't just daydream about the things they're passionate about, they take action. They buy, and then they buy some more in order to appease their hunger and occasionally they will super-size the order.
Here's the take-away lesson from all this:
Keep an eagle eye out for niches that are hungry and when you find it make sure the people in it can be reached, they are passionate about their interest, and they're buyers. The rest is easy… Go For It!
One final note; in order to find and position yourself as “the only choice” inside a hungry market you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy. I've developed a toolkit that gives you powerful 1-2-3 lead generation techniques that can skyrocket your success. You can find it on my site http://joeheller.com and click on "programs" to learn more. It's a great resource from my personal library to yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
Your Greatest Competitor — Indifference
Who is your greatest competitor? Throughout the history of marketing, professionals have always faced great adversaries that compete for their highly coveted piece of business. Is yours the large multinational company or the boutique that somehow seems to call on your best customers? No, the most formidable competitor that has haunted professionals for decades is the invisible competitor, the unseen attitude of customer indifference.
Why is indifference such a challenging competitor? Psychologically, indifference is rooted in our belief system. Its endemic, an attitude, a viewpoint held by your customers that you must change in order to close your sales. In addition, while you are more than able to compete head on against the visible products of your toughest competitor, the balance of power shifts when you are forced to compete against the invisible competitor of the human mind.
Indifference is not based in logic, but lies embedded in your client’s perception. Many factors can contribute to client indifference, including familiarity with an existing product, or “may be” false satisfaction with a competitor’s product, or the failure of the buyer to notice additional needs, or their failure to recognize the unique benefits value of your product/service. However, the most prevalent factor by far is simply complacently, the age-old adage, “but that’s what we’ve always bought.” Indifference comes from the client’s opinion that what you are selling is a commodity-like product with relatively no distinction nor value over their existing product/service.
How do successful professionals confront the competition of indifference? You attack the issue strategically, armed with a thorough evaluation of a potential client’s current business practices. Indifference is overcome when a salesperson maps out a plan to resolve areas of customers’ hidden frustrations by uncovering previously unidentified needs. In approaching indifference, the sales professional must understand the psychological considerations that are tied to changing an attitude. Your client needs to be motivated to change.
To combat indifference, you need to acknowledge that indifference affects your customer, gaining permission to ask probing questions that increases your understanding of the customer’s specific needs. By having a questioning strategy, you help the customer gain an awareness of the needs and problems your product can solve. Probing questions permit you to explore problems that may have been lying dormant, and/or hidden; buried for years under by the initial adoption of poor business practices. Analytical probing allows you to understand the customers’ core business; including new business strategies the client is planning, and to define the competitive pressures within a market niche or segment with the goal of helping the customer realize problems or needs of which they were previously unaware.
Having a questioning strategy designed to overcome indifference permits you to discover who the other suppliers are that are currently doing business with your prospective customer. By evaluating how satisfied the customer is with the current suppliers, you uncover business needs they would like to improve. Additionally, strategic questioning provides an opportunity to investigate the customer’s strategies and goals, allowing you to align your product/service with the achievement of their business objectives. Once a customer’s business objective is in the open, you can determine how your product can assist your customer in meeting their stated business goals.
Note: Effective probing that ties questioning and strategy together allows the sales professional to become consultative in their marketing approach focusing on the customers business needs. Probing also allows you to gain insight on how your customers are positioned in the market, allowing you to evaluate how effectively they are competing, identifying who their competitors are, and whether they are gaining or losing market share respective to the specific products and segments they serve.
Raising the customers awareness about their current level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, helps identify the consequences of leaving things unchanged, promoting the cost of a the need to facilitate change. If the questions are carefully crafted by your understanding of their business, the customer discerns the immediate financial implications of not acting in a timely manner, advancing the breakdown of the indifference barriers.
Remember the 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle states that 80% of sales are made by the top 20% of all professionals. As a result, the lower 80% make 20% of the sales. One major failing of the lower 80% of professionals is a tendency to introduce an assumed need the customer has not verbalized though probing. When a salesperson introduces a need the customer hasn’t verbally expressed, the customer sees the sales person as “pushy,” destroying any comfort level that’s been built. The professionals poor judgment causes the customer to raise their barrier of indifference toward the salesperson’s perceived high-pressure tactic.
Learning to recognize indifference by applying the appropriate strategy and tactics to combat it will continually advance the sale and lead to greater success in selling. Occasionally overcoming indifference happens immediately, but more than likely conquering customer indifference takes a long-term commitment.
Note: Questions that a professional asks must drive a business solution. Here are a few examples of questions to ask to gain a mutual understanding of a need between you and your prospect.
How do you feel about the results you are getting now? Are you on plan to achieve your 1/3/5 year goals? Are there any competitors in the market that are impeding your growth plans? How does that affect your business operations/sales? What impact is that having on your new client acquisition? Customer retention? Your product quality? Your productivity? Your cash flow?
In summary, indifference is a psychological competitor that lies in the attitudes of our customers. Remember, in a questioning strategy there are more than just using open and closed ended questions. There are questions that are designed to capture account information, help the customer recognize problems and what the problems will cost if not addressed, and questions on how to orient the customer to distinguish that your product is the right solution that will drive results to reach their intended business goals.
Final Thoughts: I’ve been talking about conquering indifference on the buyer side in order to win new customers. However, I’d like to point out that 68% of the customers a business looses are rooted in indifference from the professional. From the customers’ perspective, they believe that the supplier has stopped treating them appropriately with care and empathy, no longer valuing their relationship. Remember, that it takes up to five times more effort/energy/cost to win a new customer verses maintaining a profitable relationship with an existing customer. Indifference is a critical issue faced by all, causing the loss of more client relationships than any other reason. You must take care of your customers because they are the most valuable assets your business has.
One final note; in order overcome this powerful competitor — you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy. I’ve developed a toolkit that gives you powerful 1-2-3 lead generation techniques that can skyrocket your success. You can find it on my site http://joeheller.com and click on “programs” to learn more. It’s a great resource from my personal library to yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
The Power of Personal Branding
The Power of Personal Branding
Why is Personal Branding important for professionals? In today's society trust of consumer brands declined a staggering 50% over the last three decades with awareness of brands declining another 20%. Personal Branding for professionals is no longer important, it's essential for not only professional gain; Personal Brands are crucial to help the law firms convey trust to market where consumer brand loyalty is no longer important.
The goal of this article is to help you understand how to become the trusted resource for your internal clients (attorneys) and you external clients. Now is the time to step out of the commodity pool by establishing your Personal Brand.
Have you positioned yourself as a trusted and indispensible resource? Or a better question is how are you communicating that you are Trustworthy? Question – During this recent recession many "trustworthy" people were laid off. Why? They may have been very trustworthy, but failed to communicate their trustworthiness effectively.
Studies have consistently shown over the last 20 years that people buy the most "trusted" person first, company second, products third, and price last. This dispels the myth that people do business with people they like. Today, people do business with people they trust. Trustworthiness translates directly into how valuable you are to your internal and external clients via your Personal Brand.
Who needs a Personal Brand? Anyone whose success depends upon being the most trusted person in the room in their respective area must cultivate their Personal Brand. The more trusted your Personal Brand the more opportunities you will have professionally.
What this means is in order for you to be successful your success is directly tied to how people perceive you. Perception is another person's reality and can mean the difference of winning or losing business, projects or a job.
Everyone has a Personal Brand. The real value of Personal Branding is learning how to control how people perceive you by communicating your strengths and talents to create the reality you want them to see.
Now more than ever in an every increasing competitive and commoditized environment in the legal community is Personal Branding is essential for professionals to not only advance your position within a firm but to keep it.
Reasons why you must to develop a Personal Brand:
- You increase your Trust and Respect to reach people who will engage or hire you
- Increase your "perceived" value and how help others how you can benefit them
- Competitive advantage over your peers and competitors in today's marketplace
- Simplify the complexity of information overload by being the trusted resource
A Personal Brand gives you a clear competitive advantage inside your market. It gives the people who buy from you the focus to see the benefits you deliver clearly. One analogy is where the sun by itself cannot burn paper, but hold a magnifying glass up to it and the intensity of the focus will burn a hole right though it. Personal Brands magnify the benefits you bring so your clients know how to use you for their highest benefit.
Be true to yourself. The best part about personal branding is that it focuses on the most important asset you have. You! Personal Branding is about standing for something, differentiating and separating yourself apart from the crowd by communicating your unique talents to the people who can engage you.
Always remember that a great personal brand and average talent beat those who have great talent and an average personal brand every time! A Personal Brand defines the focus of how people see you and is the central point to all of your business and career development.
Steps for Professionals to develop a Personal Brand:
1) Identify your unique value: Ask yourself and others what makes YOU unique. You are the original – there is no one else like you. Ask yourself the following questions: What do you stand for? What are your talents and strengths? What specific benefit do you bring to others? How do others perceive you? Write several key words or phrases that best describes your unique values for each question.
2) List your core strengths: Identify your key strengths and talents and describe them using a few key words or phrases and what benefit they bring to people.
3) Develop your Personal Brand statement: Look at carefully at your unique values and key attributes and from the key words and phrases you can begin to develop your personal brand statement in 1-2 sentences. This statement represents your Personal Brand's unique promise of value; it is distinctive to you and only you.
4) Dress for Success: Be congruent; if the way you dress is not a direct reflection of your Personal Brand statement, you are doing yourself and others a disservice. Consider your image as the package for your Personal Brand. Remember, your package must be congruent and represent your brand.
5) Behavior: Do you return phone calls and emails promptly? Do you deliver on your promises? Although it may seem obvious, being forgetful or stretching yourself so thin that you don’t deliver on what you promise can negatively affect the integrity of your Personal Brand.
6) Communicate your value: Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) shows that we communicate in three distinct ways – first our physical appearance represents 55% of influencing power when meeting someone for the first time, 38% comes from tone or timbre of voice/behavior. The words we speak reflect the balance of 7%. Although 7% may not seem high, it still has influencing power when meeting people who have audio as their primary communication modality.
Therefore, using words and speaking in a manner that reflects the core of our Personal Band is the key to having your clients use you over other anyone else. For example, if your Personal Brand statement depicts energy and creativity, then your speaking style, vocabulary, diction, etcetera should reflect those key elements as well.
7) Let your Personal Brand take center stage: One of the most effective ways to promote your brand is to speak in public. When asked, public speaking is one of the things most people are terrified of doing, followed by dying. Shake off the fear and communicate the brilliance of your personal brand by looking for opportunities to tell others what you can offer. The more people you can touch with your brand, the more valuable your brand becomes.
Evaluate your brand regularly: Make an appointment with yourself twice a year to re-evaluate your personal brand statement. If your unique values and key attributes have undergone changes (we are continually growing and evolving and there are times when that growth is so great it alters our personal brand) compare those changes with your personal brand statement and adjust as needed. By evaluating your personal brand on a regular basis, you are also confirming that you’re on-track and staying true to your unique self.
9) Delight in your brand: Many people will make the excuse that they don’t have enough money, or time, to invest in themselves (or their brands). Here’s a brand truth, no brand is successful without making an investment. Stay interested in the success of your brand by paying attention to how your brand is being received and look for opportunities to tell others about your brand. The more comfortable you become with your brand the greater your chances are of attracting brand interest. Be patient, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your brand. Building brand equity takes time so take the process a day at a time and enjoy the journey!
Finally, please remember people choose different brands for different reasons. Why do you choose Cheers detergent? Because they perceive Cheers is the best choice for them. Why does your neighbor choose Tide? Simple, you perceive a higher benefit using Tide. Cheers (laundry detergent) targets a market that buys into the benefits of its specific brand, and Tide does the same. In order for your Personal Brand to thrive you must target the people who will derive the most benefit out of your Personal Brand and communicate those benefits directly to them.
When you make it clear who you’re serving and what you help them do you only attract those people want work with you and repel those who do not perceive value from your brand. Their perception of value lies elsewhere. Personal Branding means not pleasing everybody, its only purpose is to truly please those who will benefit the most from your Personal Brand. Contact Joe Heller for power insights on developing your Personal Brand.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com (c) 2011 Heller Marketing International, All rights reserved Worldwide.
Trust from the Client’s Perspective
One of the most challenging, if not the most difficult piece of the business development puzzle in winning a new client is Trust. Trust today is truly the pivotal point of building a successful business relationship. Trust is rarely tied to a product or service but it is facilitated by the person interacting with the customer. Why is this important? Because everything depends on trust and in this day and age, trust is difficult to come by.
The “trust” question arises more often with the sale of a service, simply because you cannot see or touch the product. This means, there is no visible brand, other than you, so you become the representative for quality. Because of the downward spiral of ethics in business today, it is no longer simply a matter of a product being trustworthy; you must convince your clients that you are trustworthy. What you do and how you are perceived by a potential client sets the tone for how they view your entire organization.
A recent study found that marketing competencies for professional service firms are explicitly focused on defining the element of trust from their client’s perspective. The study also revealed after interviewing nearly one thousand people they found that trust has three essential elements in the eyes of a future client.
Candor: Clients value honesty when dealing with a service provider. They want the person to be straight forward about what will and what won’t work about their solution as it relates to their problem. They respect and appreciate your candor so if you don’t know the answer and let your client know that in fact “you don’t know” it creates a foundation for a solid business relationship.
Competence: Clients want and need to believe that you know exactly what you are doing. They need to feel there is a low level of risk involved in working with you. Remember, because they cannot see and touch your service, your ability to solve their problem becomes the focal point for your client relationship. Your competence truly represents the product in the client’s mind.
Concern: From a client’s perspective, the most important element of trust is concern. Clients want to know you not only understand their problems but you have the ability to empathize with them and feel their pain. They want to know you are concerned about them and the business issues that go beyond the typical sales rhetoric it takes to land a new client.
The importance of candor, competence and concern are essential for developing trust. The absence of any one element can lose a deal. The challenge is that most people when engaged in a selling scenario is that they are not very good at demonstrating each of the three C’s. In both the professional services study and in parallel studies conducted with product sales forces, the element of concern was most frequently deemed missing. Clients felt that while most professionals were competent and/or candid, when it came to concern they fell short. They were interested in making a sale as it related to their service. As a result, they failed to really listen for the prospect concerns; and when a trust breakdown occurred? The sale ultimately broke down as well.
A quick comparison from the study, using a score of 100 as the highest level of trust shows us that service sales people consistently score a 35 on concern verses a product sales person scoring a 53 on concern. As you can see, when compared with product sales, service providers receive an unexpected surprise. They immediately fall 20 points behind a tangible or product sale in the area of concern. Yet, as professionals, they are used to thinking of themselves as deeply concerned about their clients. They are often surprised and offended if anyone suggests they don’t put their clients’ interests first. As the research shows, this is not how they come across to a potential client.
Thus, not only do clients give service providers the lowest ratings on concern, they judge professional service sales people to be significantly less concerned about them than product sales people.
Why do clients see you as unconcerned? There are several reasons: First, service providers listen for what they can solve rather than what is important to their clients. Prospective clients view service sales people including attorneys and accountants as sharks circling for a kill (we’ve all heard the jokes). Second, service sales people are often too anxious to get to their solutions and fail to listen for the client’s real problem.
Service professionals are very seldom seen viewing the problem from the client’s side of the table. What’s needed is an ability to demonstrate their capability, to see the core business issues, and to drive the results that exceed client’s expectations.
To reinforce and ensure success of a service-based sale, the one element of trust where you need to score an A+ is concern. Not only because it is the most important element to clients, it is the only trust element that your client can make a personal valid judgment with. Keep in mind, it’s hard for a client to judge whether you are competent; it is assumed that you should be sitting in front of him/her because your expertise in solving other client’s problems.
Candor isn’t easy to judge either. It is tough to tell who is being totally honest and isn’t exaggerating. No matter what the selling scenario, the client will always decide emotionally whether or not the sale will move forward and support that decision with logic.
Why? Psychologically, if you don’t believe someone is concerned about helping you, you don’t trust them. And, lack of concern translates into suspicions about their competence and candor, which influences all three levels of the trust equation. If you’ve ever wondered why you’ve lost a sale you need to consider how often clients have drawn the same conclusions about you. Trust is not a prepackaged emotion, it is something that has to be earned and it can only be developed through the interactions you have with your clients.
One final note; in order to build trust with your market you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy. I’ve developed a toolkit that gives you powerful 1-2-3 lead generation techniques that can skyrocket your success. You can find it on my site http://joeheller.com and click on “programs” to learn more. It’s a great resource from my personal library to yours.
Editor’s note: Joe Heller can be reached at (713) 927-4494 | 1 (888) JHELLER | joe [AT] joeheller.com
(c) 2011 Joe Heller Marketing, All rights reserved Worldwide.
