What’s In A Personal Brand?

Flexible, dependable, creative, efficient, honest and optimistic define my personal brand.  To help me transition from being an employee to a business owner, I used a brand value proposition document, which I developed years ago to supplement my resume and tell employers why they should hire me.  The core values stay the same, while attributes change as you gain experience.  The key components of it are your positioning statement, what differentiates you from others; value drivers, things that support your positioning; proof points, accomplishments you have made that uphold your claims; and brand characters, your personal attributes.  With the document and a clearly defined brand, it was much easier for me to craft my elevator pitch, improved my confidence in terms of what I wanted, and for the most part it made me fearless in terms of  “I offer something of value and here’s why we should partner.”

Personal brand management includes your appearance, how your presence is perceived, your talents and skills and how they are communicated through relationships and your network.

The tips below will help you define and effectively communicate your personal brand.

What do you want to stand for? How do you want people to perceive, think, and feel about you in relation to others?  Create a list of why people should believe you can deliver on certain strengths.

Know and understand audience needs. Personal branding is also about the audience.  Understand the needs and meet them better than everyone else.  If you’re unclear about your client’s needs, ask, because their needs may have changed.

Be consistent. Watch how you react to adverse events.  Maintain a level head and a professional image.

Innovate.  Stand out from the pack by coming up with your ideas to drive growth in your or your client’s company and give yourself staying power.

“Your personal brand is a promise to your clients . . . a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability.” – Jason Hartman

How to Lead for Exceptional Customer Service

Ever stop to really ponder about what business you’re in?  Ask around, and you’ll probably hear things like:  retail, food service, manufacturing, etc.  If those are the kind of answers you or your employees would give, then you’d be only half right!

One question for you:  If all your customers went away for good, would you still have a business?  Would your employees still have jobs?  Nope, of course not!  The more important half of what you and your employees do is CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Everyone in your organization needs to know excellent Customer Service, more importantly need to practice it.  And the leadership you provide plays a huge role in making that happen.

Here are some Customer Service Leadership tips:

Start with hiring the right people. Your selection process must be a part of your overall customer service strategy.  During interviews, probe the candidate’s passion for providing superior service.  Pose hypothetical situations and ask the candidate to describe how s/he would handle them.

State it in Job Descriptions. Make “Customer Service” a part of all job descriptions, no matter the level of function.  Make sure that that each employee understands how he or she directly or indirectly “touches” the customer.

Expect it and Inspect it. Clarify your expectations and communicate them to everyone.  Have follow-up meetings to make sure that they are clear on what is expected of them.  Include “customer service” feedback in all performance evaluations.

Make your Employees Customer Service Experts. Help your employees become experts on the products and services you offer.  Provide them with product manuals, sales tools, and appropriate training.  The more they know, the better their service will be.

Celebrate Successes. Recognize employees who provide exceptional customer services.  Share their stories internally and with your customers.

By applying these ideas and by focusing on the people who focus on the customers, you can help ensure that you don’t end up as one of the losers.  You owe it to your customers, you owe it to your organization and you owe it to yourself.

“Motivate them, train them, care about them, and make winners out of them . . . we know that if we treat our employees correctly, they’ll treat the customers right.  And if customers are treated right, they’ll come back.” – J. Marriott, Jr.

7 Rules to Create an Effective PR for Small Business

Effective public relations strategy is an excellent alternative to advertising, especially for small businesses with limited marketing budget.  It is a cost-effective way to gain exposure for your product or service, get more leads, generate more sales and build a great brand.

What makes PR so powerful? A product (or service) mentioned in the context of a news report or print feature story gives it a passive endorsement and third-party credibility advertising just can’t buy.

How can you make the PR process work for you? Here are a few rules you need to create an effective  PR plan to give your product competitive advantages in your market:

1. Identify your market. The more specific you can get about which group should use your product, the easier it will be to identify which media you need to work with.
2. Be clear about the benefits relevant to your market. Remember to sell your product or service to the media so your story will get published. Let them know the benefits and show them the numbers to prove that your product or service saves time and money–or makes money.
3. Position your product as unique. It’s important to be able to attest your product is x-times faster, better, cleaner or more cost-effective than your competitors’ product or industry standard. Such specific and proven advantages will provide the media concrete evidence to feature your product over anyone else’s.
4. Make use of testimonials. All other things equal, testimonials are one of the strongest ways to enhance the credibility of any promotional piece. This also holds true for your editorial piece as well.
5. Target the media used by your target market. Find out which media outlets your target market typically reads, views or listens to. Do an online search for free or inexpensive press release submission sites.  Research sources that outline available media according to locality and special interest groups.
6. Prepare your press release. If writing is not your forte, hire a PR writer or a seasoned virtual assistant to help you write the release.  Make sure the release has a great headline and it follows the AP style guides. Your first paragraph should be no more than 25 words and needs to both explain the headline and summarize the story. And remember to keep your editorial to one page or less.  If you are selling a product, attach a photograph.
7. Sell your release. Email or call the person named in the media guide. Give them the headline and the first paragraph. If you catch them on the phone, they’ll make a decision then and there whether they like it or not. A “yes” or “maybe” means “send me an email with more information.” Forward it immediately. Earn the right to follow up by asking if you can call back the next day or at some other specific time, depending on publication dates. Keep in contact, but don’t be pushy.  If the story is of value, it will sell itself.

While these steps don’t guarantee publication and broadcast, following these steps will give you a better chance of success.  These steps will enable you to start building good media relationships you’ll need for the future and also give your business a strong competitive advantage in the media market.

“If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.” – Bill Gates