Creating a personal marketing plan designed to position you as the only obvious expert of choice requires several steps. No matter what you sell, you would do well to learn these and most importantly implement them.
Sales Training Tip #1
Leverage yourself. Leveraging yourself gives you the chance to build equity and saleable value for
your business. By hiring the right staff to perform revenue generating tasks that don’t involve you,
you’re freeing yourself to create the most possible revenue, and building a business identity that can
be sold.
Sales Training Tip #2
Ignore the advice of those who have marketing degrees from Colleges and Universities.
The most successful marketers I know – the ones who make the most money – are
self taught and have learned from those who actually do marketing instead of from those who teach
marketing. Unless you have an unlimited budget that allows you rent blimps or hire a bunch of frogs
that you can get to set on a Lilly Pad and sing your jingle, stay away from what you see the corporate
guys doing.
Sales Training Tip #3
Use Your Name. Build your brand by using your name (Charles Schwab, Donald Trump and Oprah did
it). You want to build a business with enduring value around your persona, and your name captures
that idea better than anything else. Remember, your clients do not make decisions based on what is
rational — it is the emotional connection they will have with you personally that will impact their
decisions.
Sales Training Tip #4
Publish. Write articles for your local newspaper and industry trade journals, write a book, create a
blog. Being published enhances your credibility and establishes you as an expert.
Sales Training Tip #5
Saturate the Marketplace. When you think everyone in your area is sick of hearing your name, do
another mailing. Research shows it takes the average consumer up to five strong exposures to a brand
to even recognize and remember the name of a person or product! So even if you think people are sick
of you, they’re not. Keep pushing your brand. Personal Branding is radical to some people. But we’re
working in radically changing times.
Focus on your Personal Brand — your experience, your character, and your skills.
Turn YOU into THE “brand”.