Every Transaction Brands You

I have been conducting sales training this year for the national sales force of a well know brand management company representing some of the most common retail brands in the world.  The training is focused upon “Building Brand U” by managing each person-to-person, point-of-sale transaction to be a professional experience for the customer. The emphasis holds that every promise kept, or not kept, contributes to the brands image. And, this linked string of experiences ultimately creates tipping point that propels branded products that will become woven in the fabric of our society.

 

Think of some of the product brands that have come from nowhere to become a mainstay of the consumer preference in the past ten years;  Prius, Dell, Grey Goose, Smart Water, Brita, Jet Blue, Axe, Google, Little Black Dress wines, facebook.  While it may seem that these brands came from no name to top name, it was largely the result of having effective marketing plans, yes. More importantly, making each transaction between service provider and end user a pleasing one translates to a positive experience. And, it is these experiences that creates long lasting brands with loyal, if not enthusiastic, users. There is not magic wand, but there is a magic in consistency of positive experiences.

 

When Huey Lewis and the News received their Grammy a decade and a half ago, Huey humbly thanked “…all the fans that followed us (his band) from garages to back street bars to small town pavilions and big city music venues over the past 20 years until they became on overnight success.”  Having seen Huey Lewis some five years ago I must admit that he and his band gives it all he’s got for his audience. I can only believe that twenty five years of top drawer performing joined with talented songwriting and the combined charisma of “The News” has created a indelible consumer brand.

 

The lessons that we can personally draw from marketers of successful consumer brands is to understand that every transaction we have with individuals in our larger network contributes to our personal brand.  It creates a marquis reputation that precedes itself.

 

Thus, a motto for “Building Brand U…” 

The strength of my personal brand is a function of my past and current interactions with others, which become the ‘experience’ of doing business with me. The legend of that experience becomes my personal brand fingerprint. 

 

Charles Fellingham is founder of QAlias, a personal branding tool that provides prominent personal placement optimization on the web. He is also a corporate trainer for the Forum Corporation and a Regional Sales Manager for a Fortune 200 company.

Gaining Every Single Advantage in Today’s Sales World

The economy has slowed down, the competition has become more intense and the battle is becoming one of commoditization for many sales professionals.  How do you rise above the industry standards?  How do you gain a competitive advantage over your competition?  What can you do to make yourself more credible, findable and referrable?

Simply put, you need to do something bold, something forceful, something with class and with value.  You could spend a lot of money on a campaign that promotes your company.  You could cold call all day.  You could go to networking events and gain a few leads from those who take your card.

However, there is a way to gain instant credibility with prospects, instant referability from those in your growing network and even a way you can simultaneously promote your company, and the cost is often recouped in even one extra sale. 

Think about it – what if someone could find you just by Googling your name?  What if all it took to refer you was the simple phrase “Google her” instead of “let me find her card, or send a three way email, or set up a lunch, or find time to do a call.” 

What if there was a way you could leverage this new top position to make yourself look like an expert in your field?  To show off all you do that matters to you?

Thanks to the fastest growing new personal branding optimization service, QAlias, there is a way to do all this and more.  With subscriber training included, as well as private label branding options, this is a surefire way to bring yourself to the top of the search engines, represent the company you work for in a new way, and ensure quick and easy referrals.

Be sure to learn more today - and sign up if you like what you see.

Are you Brave Enough…To Ask People To Google You?

For those of us who think that we have to be an author, speaker, CEO, or noted Philanthropist to be Google-worthy, think again. And you are not that far away from dominating the first few pages for your name on search engine results.  But you do have some work to do if you haven’t started yet. 

 

Step One, secure the top line of page one.  This is where your quest starts. This will be the easiest task as all you have to do is sign up for a fast growing subscription service called QAlias.  The site gives you top billing and give you tools to control content about you with a generous bio space and an e-mailable blog.  Be sure to create hyperlinks to your company, charitable acts, hobbies and interests and accomplishments as this will engergize the search engines.  

 

Step Two:  Drive people to your bio.  Tell people to google you and have them click on your QAlias link and the hyperlinks that you have placed in your bio space.  This will give ‘relevance’ to those links as they are associated to your name and will, in time, raise the level of their position in the organic search results.

 

As an example, My Frank Sinatra Impersonator website gained strong relevance from my QAlias bio page and has gained five pages of priority placement in the past year.  If you google Frank Sinatra Impersonator, I now show up number 2 on page 1.

 

Step Three:  Become a blogger or write articles as a guest writer to a blog.  This creates interconnectivity and triangulation which are essential to telling the search engines I am active in web and a force to be reckoned with.

 

Step Four:  Join a few social or Business Networks.  Sites like Linked In, Ning, Xing, Ryze, Fast Pitch Networking and Squidoo offer free posting of your bio and contact information.  The caveat here is that they are networks and so you should be prepared to be bombarded by other’s in the network that want to add you to their list of ‘prospects’.  As well, you may find that the information that you give these networks is being offered to virtual marketing companies that will also target you for email ads. But, the web presence does become another prominent position toward your domination of your name-space.

Step Five:  Weave all of these elements together by linking them to one and other.  Be sure to help Google see you as relevant.

Let’s face it, we are in a competitive world. And the key to success may be our ability to differentiate our self. Owning your name space is the one certain way to compete.

 

Charles Fellingham is founder of QAlias, a personal branding tool that provides prominent personal placement optimization on the web. He is also a corporate trainer for the Forum Corporation and a Regional Sales Manager for a Fortune 200 company.

One Thing That NEVER Changes in Sales

With the huge shakeups in the financial world last week, there was a lot of talk about the hundreds of thousands of financial analysts and representatives who are now seeking work.  Yet, there is one thing they still have going for them, one thing they each retained no matter who let them go.  Its the one thing their customers know about them, too.

Really, in an unstable world, there is only one given, one standard, one thing that never changes (on its own) in sales, no matter the economy, the company you work for, the state of the dollar, price of gas or anything else.  Do you know what it is?  You know it – you have since you were very little.  People say it to you all the time and it gets a reaction almost every time.  Getting there?

Ok, we’ll tell you.  It’s your name.  Your name is the one thing that never changes in sales.  That’s a great thing, because people do business with people – not companies.  Sales are built on trust and relationships, although they can be driven by price.  The best sales people, however, will not succumb to that type of pressure, because they will know how to be found.  By name.

Let’s take the opening example – there are now north of 100,000 former representatives of financial institutions looking for work – and trying to reconnect with clients – or hope those clients can reconnect with them.  But those business cards the person had?  Irrelevant.  The number they had?  Disconnected.  The security they felt?  Dwindling.

However, if you were findable by simply saying “Google Me” – you’d still have contact with your clients.  This is true no matter your profession, but in sales and personal sales and care (hair and nail, massage, real estate) – it is paramount to success.  You need to be found and for your clients to be able to find you.  Begin to establish your online presence today.  Sign up now.  And tell them to Google you as early as tomorrow.

How the Price Of Gas Effects Increase In Need for Online Personal Branding

 

The pumps keep going up – and the signs are that it won’t stop anytime soon.  Plus, now that we’re past $4 a gallon – the chances of things going back below the $4 mark seem slim.  Until we find and begin to use alternate energy sources, we’re going to see people cutting back more and more on travel, conventions, face to face meetings and more.  With that decrease in one on one interaction, more people will be turning to the internet to learn about you and what you offer to them.

 

It is an imperative, now more than ever before, that you are being found online the way you want to be found.  Being found on page one of the search engine(s) of choice is key, as is conveying the information you want them to find.  Making sure your personal brand is created, portrayed and projected as you’d intend can make the difference right now in this economy – where a “first impression” becomes a first e-Impression.

 

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to tell all your clients who need to be in contact with you – “Just Google Me!” – and make it so your presence is a professional, ad free and clean space you control?  Wouldn’t it be amazing if, over time, your name being input in the search engines brought up a whole page or two or three of results – the accolades and the information you want to share with the clients you have, or the ones seeking you out?  What if your clients could refer you by simply saying “Google her?”  Try it today – Google yourself – and if you don’t like what you find – take action to change your position.

Someone’s Got My Name And They Won’t Let Go!

Ever Googled yourself to find that someone has your name out there – and they won’t let it go?

It can be a real shocker.  Sometimes the things they have done are good, sometimes your “internet doppelganger” has gotten into some things you’d rather your name not be associated with.

So, what can you do?

There are a few potential ways to clear this up – one is to find a company you can pay to help remove the nefarious content.  However, oftentimes, unless this is simply untrue information about you – it isn’t easy (or inexpensive) to do.

The second manner to take control over them is to “avalanche” them with data of your own.  Google rewards relevance – and they will place your name overtop the other person – so long as you can show you are the more relevant match.  The issue here is when you share the name with a celebrity, a news magnet or someone who has already been posting to the internet for a long time.

The final way to leapfrog the other names online, is to sign up for QAlias.  Google me, Andy Greider, to see what QAlias has helped me to obtain in less than one year.  Read the archives of this blog to see how to do this for yourself as well.