Shama Hyder:
It’s funny because it’s not about one Tweet, one LinkedIn post. It’s what you do consistently over time. And I feel consistency is such a unsexy word. People don’t like it. It’s the cousin of prudence, right? Nobody wants to hear the word consistency, but it’s absolutely crucial when you’re building your brand and you’re trying to build that trust and credibility and shorten your sales cycle. So for B2B folks, they say that’s the best thing you can do. As you build these profiles, as you build this presence, you are going to shorten that sales cycle considerably. That doesn’t mean you can be short-sighted about it because it does take time for where something might’ve taken eight months to a year can be a lot shorter because they already trust you. They already think that you are the best of the best. I think as any good salesperson will tell you, right, especially in the B2B world, relationships are everything. So the first thing that you have to keep in mind, especially with something like personal branding, is that you’re going to have to look at the ROI in both quantitative and qualitative ways.
Shama Hyder:
So the qualitative is that really important, hard to put numbers on at times but just as important. So it’s your reputation. It’s how someone says, “Oh, you are everywhere.” Or “I’ve heard of your company before.” Anybody who’s been in sales knows the difference when they call someone and they get hung up on versus, “Oh, I’ve heard of you guys.” Right? And that’s the game changer. When someone says, “I’ve heard of you.” And you have that instant credibility, your reputation precedes you. And I think that’s what you’re really looking for when you build a brand where you already have that credibility, you have that respect and you have that time. So you get that time and you’ve got their attention, then you’re one step closer to actually closing the sale. So it’s not necessarily about amplification all the time. Right? And what I mean by that is it’s not necessarily about how many people can you get in front of, which of course, if you have a niche audience, that’s not really the case. It’s how are you viewed by that audience? Are you another salesperson? Are you a respected resource?
Shama Hyder:
Are you someone they feel looks out and has their best interests in mind? Are you someone they feel keeps up with the industry that cares about their patients, their practice. I think it’s conveying all of this information. So it’s depth rather than breath. And that is also something to be said again, about your personal brand. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s not how many people know you. It’s what the people that you’re trying to get in front of think of you. How are you creating resonance and relevance with that group? The highest leverage thing that you can do to build your personal brand, regardless of vertical is perhaps the most important and the most overlooked, which is, ask yourself why and what are you trying to accomplish?
Shama Hyder:
I know this seems like a simple question, but it’s amazing how many people dive in because they think that’s what they’re supposed to be doing without really seeing, what’s the goal? Am I looking to shorten that sale cycle? Am I looking to build trust? Am I looking to just get visible? I mean, maybe my target market doesn’t even know who I am, I don’t even exist. What does that look like? And I think then the question becomes, and again, this is so important, how do I add value to my target market? Right? This is the big difference I think between sales from yesteryear and sales now, perhaps it’s always been this way, but that it’s highlighted so much more now. How can you add value to your given audience? Absolutely crucial in sales. And most people never ask themselves that. If you asked yourself that, you’ll get on stage, you would talk about these vendor agnostic solutions that there might’ve been, but you’re really trying to educate and you’re providing value. So whether that’s through the stage, whether that’s through online, that’s the key. What is it that your audience is hungry for?
Shama Hyder:
And I’ll go a little deeper into this, well, if you don’t mind, because I think this might be helpful for your audience listening. So many people don’t know this, but I did my thesis on Twitter when it had about 2000 users. Right?
Speaker 2:
Wow.
Shama Hyder:
Yeah. So it’s crazy. Long time ago, but 10 years now. Today of course Twitter has 375 million users. So very different landscape. One of the things that I looked at in my academic research for grad school was, why do people use social media? And I think this is an important question to answer because before you can try to figure out how to use it, think have to understand what drives people, right? As salespeople, we’re all about the motivation. What is the motivation? So when I looked at that, my hypothesis was that we used it to connect with each other, to have that sense of community, but I was wrong. The primary reason people use social media is to showcase their own identity. Okay.
Shama Hyder:
And I know it might sound narcissistic. First glance you’re like, “Oh my God, the world is a giant selfie.” But if you stop and think about it, you realize that that’s how we’ve always become who we are. It’s the feedback we get who we are and we adapt to fit our community and so forth. Identities are very changing thing, but translate this to sales and marketing and what this means is, it used to be so much about what does your brand say about you, right? We’ve all been these branding exercises for a company, perhaps we’re looking at, what does our brand stand for? Who do we want to be? What do we… We’ve all been there. But what this research shows us is the right question to be asking isn’t, what does your brand say about us? The right question to be asking is what does doing business with us allow our customers to say about their personal brand.
