In a recent interview with Steve Brossman (The Authority Catalyst and a Personal Branding expert) we discussed the importance of a strong personal brand and the 6 key principles of personal branding. See the key points below from the latest episode.
Positioning
- Positioning is all about who you are and what’s different about you, how can you be seen as a leader and authority
- A lot of people think that they must be the best in the world to be an authority. This isn’t necessarily the case you don’t have to be the best in the world, you just must be the best in their world this is essentially what your personal brand should be all about.
- The starting point is the outcomes you want to achieve with ideal clients or good clients and how you can communicate what you do in a unique way to make your company a point of difference
Packaging
- A lot of people in professional services put their rates up online and if people put their rates online either selling dollars per hour or sessions per dollar they’re pointing a big red arrow at their fees saying please compare me.
- This is the worst thing that you could do (is just dollars per hour) because people will pay more for an outcome than they will for dollars per hour
- If you are selling to businesses, other businesses want price certainty.
- Especially if you are selling to a small business, they don’t want to know what it’s going to be x per hour without any knowledge of how much it is going to cost them in the long run, they want to know, it’s going to cost them 2 grand, 3 grand or 10 grand or whatever it might be for an outcome but not per hour.
- Therefore, IT services are moving away from that model for this very reason
Blueprint
- The next thing Steve Brossman recommends is creating a blueprint. It’s almost your system in one page but in a way that it feels like a journey.
- The reason for doing this is that we absorb 83% of our information through our eyes so if you are talking to someone, conversation is linear, so if you are having a conversation, there is a big chance you have probably forgotten anything that was 5-10 minutes before the conversation
- Whereas if you have a blueprint in front of the client, which is based around the outcome they want to achieve they can see the value in working with you
- It makes a lot more sense for a potential client to give you money to implement the blueprint rather than just throw money at something
- The purpose of having a blueprint is to demonstrate value significantly greater than the perceived and potential investment
Promote
- The next step is to promote what you do and what makes you stand out from competitors in the same field.
- Steve Brossman is a big fan of the “Holy Trinity” of positioning marketing which is videos, books and speaking irrespective of any platform
- You can have the best business in the world but if people don’t know about it, what is the point, it’s the same with your blueprint and positioning
- You should be promoting on as many channels as possible be it Linkedin, Facebook, Email, mail-outs
- A great mentor of Steve’s’ once said “There is not one way to put a hundred people in the room, there are hundreds of ways to put one person in a room”
Clarity & Cash
- Clarity equals cash because if you are clear, absolutely crystal clear on who you are, what you do and you can communicate it with clarity you’ll make more money
- If your prospects, clients and people out there understand and have clarity on what you do you’ll make even more money
- But if your strategic and referral partners can communicate with clarity on who you are and what you do, you’ll make a bucket load more money
Persuade
- If somebody says “Steve, you need to talk to this person” Steve will send them three chapters of his book, and then wait for them to come back and checks whether the person has read the chapters. If they have than they are generally going to be a fantastic client, If not then they probably wouldn’t have made a good client
- So if the prospect has read part of Steve’s book and they understand who he his and they make an informed decision whether they think he is an idiot or whether they’d like to work with him, either way is fine as he doesn’t have to waste time telling them who he is
- If the prospect has booked in for a call, Steve will then send them a video email after doing some quick research on the prospect as well as a copy of whatever blueprint they are going to go through so the person has already had six touches from Steve before the call
- The persuade doesn’t actually start on the call it starts well before the call so it makes the conversation much easier
- When they get on the call with Steve they are already pre-positioned to see Steve as a leader and authority and most of the conversations end up with how do we work together not if
- This is the authority way of doing business, you are attracting people who know you and see you as an authority before you get to talk to them and it’s a much better way of doing things.
Resources
Listen on your Favourite App
The easiest way to listen is to subscribe on iTunes. Reviews on iTunes are the best way for us to get more listeners and spread the word, every review counts so please take a moment to do so!
