In this issue:

Personal Branding for the reluctant self promoter

Books of the month

The questions to ask when they say talk

    ISSUE 8 • Spring QUARTER • April 2007

Successful self branding begins with a well-defined brand that is RELEVANT today, to the market for your services.

We suggest that you try working through a number of the five brand elements to define your brand —position, promise, personality traits, stories and associations.

Then you need to work on infiltrating your brand into influential areas with your organisation and elsewhere.

THE Five Brand Elements:

Brand Position: The Brand Position is the part of your brand that describes what you do and for whom, what your unique value is and how a customer benefits from working with you or your product/service, and what key differentiation you have from your competition. You may like to ask a few of the people you work with what are the 5 words that come into their mind when they think of you today.  Once you've defined your brand position, make it available in a 50 word document.

Brand Promise: The Brand Promise is the single most important thing that you promise to deliver to your customers—EVERY time.  To come up with your brand promise, consider what customers, employees, and partners should expect from every interaction with you. Every business decision you make should be weighed against this promise to be sure that it fully reflects the promise or at the very least it does not contradict your promise. Maybe go and ask a few clients for their opinion of what your brand promise is??

Brand Personality: Brand personality illustrates what you want your brand to be known for. Think about specific personality traits you want prospects, clients, employees, and partners to use to describe you. You should have 4-6 traits (5 is ideal), each being a single term (usually an adjective). This can be full of your aspirations. You may need to add some training and experience to your brand in order to reach this. This will however begin to change the opportunities that may come your way. This is different to the opportunities that come to you based on your reputation.

Brand Story: The Brand Story illustrates your history, along with how the history adds value and credibility to the brand. It also can includes a summary of your services available today and planned.

Brand Associations: Brand Associations are the specific physical artefacts that make up your brand. This could be your name, logo,  taglines, imagery, etc. Your brand associations must reflect your brand promise, ALL of your brand personality traits, and support your brand positioning statement.

If you know what your brand is today and where you want to move your brand to in the future, then opportunities that you want are only a few actions away...   Good Rainmaking!

Books of the month

Click the book to link to our recommended book page

Imagine you're sitting across the table from a potential client you'd like to work with. They've invited you in and you've had the discussion about the weather and the tea machine not producing a good cuppa.

They start the meeting with the request that you "Tell us a little about what you do" .

The request sounds so innocuous.... But of course the issue is...

   Just what is that you are going to tell them?

   Better give them the overview of everything.... Right?

Only unless you want their eyes to glaze over and the sounds of snoring to start up.

What they are really saying is
             "I'm not sure how to start this conversation. Why don't you start" . 

But of course, you know that the real place to start is by you uncovering the client's needs.

Then and only then will you know specifically what to talk about.

Then and only then will they hang on to your every word because you are talking about them.

Their favourite topic. 

The question is, how do you go about uncovering those needs?

This is where the prepared Rainmaker has a few favourite questions for just such an occasion...

You may want to ask questions like these:

• What prompted your call?

• How did you come to call us?

• Tell me about your current situation.

• When did this problem first come to your attention?

• How long has this problem been going on?

• Does this impact this division exclusively or are other divisions also impacted?

• Is this the only issue you have arising from this situation?

• How valuable would it be to resolve this problem?

• What impact will it have on the company if this problem is not resolved?

• What would you like to see happen?

• What results do you hope to achieve?

• How do you go about making a decision on whom to appoint?

• What criteria are important to you in deciding which supplier to appoint?

• Who else is involved in the decision making process?

• When do you expect to make a decision?

When you have the answer to most of these questions.

       Now you can "Tell us a little about yourself"

    Good Rainmaking!

"Logic will get you from A to B.

Imagination will take you everywhere."

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
German-American physicist

Mike Meyer on organising your customer data to support your processes

"Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor.
Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering, chiselling, scraping and polishing."

B.C. Forbes (1880-1954)
Scottish journalist & founder of Forbes magazine