Most folks only think about their brand when they are updating their resume or marketing plan. Consider this. You are reinforcing your brand positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year.

If you want to be more memorable and influential in a sea of other executives, separate yourself from the pack at every opportunity:

1. Elevate the thoughtfulness, strategic depth, and currency of all your conversations. Talk more about the latest trends in your industry, and cutting edge technology. Show thought leadership.
2. Demonstrate your ability to sell ideas, build consensus, and grow business. This goes beyond showing you are a good networker and relationship builder. Your community needs to know how well you can influence key decision makers, facilitate across departments, get results, and create revenue.
3. Create opportunities to network with business peers on a deeper-level than possible in a typical monthly networking event or occasional networking lunch. Increase the percentage of people in your network with heavy business influence.
4. Upgrade the quality of your interpersonal interactions. A salesperson I know never ends a conversation without asking “what can I do for you today?” He stands out amongst the thousands of sales people I know because of the way he communicates it. He really does mean it. His customers and network know it.
5. Improve your LinkedIn profile and activities. It says volumes about you. Whether or not you have self-awareness about your value to employers, and can communicate and sell your ideas. Whether you are interested in helping others in the industry, or just want their contacts. Whether you are willing to read and comment on someone’s blog or discussion in a LI group in exchange for reading your sales pitch. I believe most LI profiles are doing more damage than good to their owners.
6. Update your clothing and hairstyle, look less generic. Be more hip. Have a professional quality picture in LinkedIn.  Free, generic business cards are out. Even your email signature matters.
7. Lastly, once you have turbo-charged your brand, create “buzz” and sustain it.

The key is to establish and maintain your brand in terms that are as relevant as possible to current business needs. Your brand needs be memorable and easily repeated by your fans. (Most elevator speeches are not.) Your pitch needs to have focus and a theme offering synergy amongst skills. Emphasize how you are different, not how you are similar. Highlight what is most in demand in the marketplace.

If you don’t groom and maintain your brand image, you may have no recognizable value to the community or a very muddled image that makes people avoid you for fear of a poor return on investment. Establishing a positive brand in the industry for future contingencies takes time and is crucial to long term stability and growth. It takes little time to damage a brand and forever to repair negatives.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, leadership, networking, selling skills, technical skills, visibility | No Comments »

My apologies for stealing a bit of phrasing from Dr. Suess. Here is the point: Building your reputation as a SME (Subject Matter Expert) is one of the most effective strategies you could use to foster long-term career growth.

If you are a thought leader on a subject, you need to be creating instances where you can showcase your depth of strategy to others in your industry. Maybe it is a speech or board role at an association, a blog, whitepaper, newsletter article, or PowerPoint/Keynote presentation stored in your LinkedIn profile. Concentrate on 1-2 methods where you will be most comfortable and effective demonstrating a depth of understanding not possible in a resume or networking encounter over a beer and burger.

This is not just about job hunting. This is about entrenching knowledge of your credentials in the community over your long-term career. One of my Director-level coaching clients makes a point of writing a new article for a trade magazine every 6 months. She has received scores of phone calls from CEOs asking to meet her as a result of those articles. She has, with about 20 hours of writing, established herself as a high potential and in the top 10-15% of folks in sustainable energy nationwide.

Topics: branding + positioning, career strategy, networking | No Comments »

Here is my New Year’s resolution:

I promise to try one new idea per ___ that I have never tried before, to build my business. I will track responses and see if it works better than my current techniques. This can be applied to the script I use on the phone to reach out to people I have never met, a cover letter, elevator speech, resume, or whatever.

I will survey my customers after every meeting to see what I can do better. Feel free to tell me what I could do.

At the end of every conversation with a friend, client, or stranger I will ask each of them “How can I help you?” Thank you, Alex, for NEVER failing to do this.

I will volunteer my time to those less fortunate. I helped make sandwiches for the homeless last Sunday. Thank you, Jennifer, for putting the event together. If you would like to help, email Alan Law at info@363days.org. He is a retired teacher who hands out sandwiches 363 days a year. He needs volunteers who have time to help assemble sandwiches or deliver them in bulk to homeless shelters. If you are an out of work executive, it is a good way to put your own problems in perspective.

What is on your list?

Happy Holiday and Happy New Year!

Topics: career strategy, networking | No Comments »

Most importantly, top executives can not only perform more effectively than many of their peers, but they can communicate their ideas and impact to the rest of the organization and industry. The CEO needs to be able to influence the world outside of the company such as VCs (Venture Capitalists), Wall Street stock analysts, and the industry at large. Most competencies of a successful CEO are about soft skills. The CEO must be able to advocate a vision and future success. Promote the potential of a company not yet delivering that service/product. Demonstrate presence, gravitas, and panache.

Regardless of how far down the path to CEO you are now, getting ahead in the work world is increasingly about soft skills and demonstrating your ability to lead ideas, influence others, and be a rainmaker. Are you building those skills? Are you having the conversation with your communities to demonstrate your prowess in these areas? Is your story as convincing as it could be?

Topics: branding + positioning, career strategy, interviews, negotiating, networking | No Comments »

Someone usually gets promoted to Sales Manager based on his/her track record as a solo Account Executive rather than on his/her potential as a leader and sales coach. Most often the AE received limited training, but not enough to explain the good sales numbers. Ranking is more the result of personality (relationship building) and persistence. When that AE is promoted to the supervise others, the team’s numbers are most heavily dependent on the innate skills that came with the team.

An exceptional Sales Manager can identify and nurture the competencies that are needed for every team member’s success. The Manager can articulate the processes and benchmarks required to win most sales opportunities regardless of customer issues. Like an effective Product Manager, a top Sales Manager will probe more deeply into root causes and unarticulated problems with team members and customers than other Managers. Delivering a better ROI (return on investment) for the entire team is not an accident, it is part of that Manager’s toolkit. He can predict and deliver the team’s revenue within a very small percentage.

Topics: branding + positioning, career strategy, interviews, negotiating, networking, resume + cover letter | No Comments »