Sell Yourself - Develop your brand and reputation
It’s important in business to develop your personal profile, as people buy services and products from people they trust are an expert in a particular field. We’ve outlined some steps below for you to take for creating your personal profile.
Become an Expert
We recommend you become an expert in a particular area that fits with your services and products. New clients will come to you if you build your reputation as an expert. Your expert profile should be backed up on by your previous track record, work history, training or learning.
You need to sell yourself as an expert in your field by undertaking the following steps:-
- Emphasizing and demonstrating your expertise in your Bio and CV and make sure they are on your website and social media profiles.
- Write articles for media and the web that demonstrate and raise awareness of your expertise
- Communicate your expertise on your social media profiles – linked in, twitter, facebook, and talk about the topic regularly.
- Collate case studies of clients you’ve worked with that demonstrate your expertise and impact. These can be used in marketing material or in articles as examples.
Build a Network
It is essential that you build a network of contacts who will either be your clients or who will refer you clients. Remember people need to know you and your expertise so they can recommend you to other people. You will need to sow as many seeds as possible.
- Connect with individuals, organisations and media contacts who would be interested in your services – Pro-actively search and connect with others who would be interested in your expertise via social media, face to face at networking events or by making cold calls. Introduce yourself, talk to them about your interests and passions, find out what they are doing and find out if there opportunities to collaborate or work together. With every new conversation you increase your knowledge and contacts in the marketplace.
- When you launch your business aim to connect with a least 40 new people each week for the first three months and then aim to make at least 10 new contacts a week ongoing.
- Make sure the contacts are quality not quantity and are in line with our brand values. It’s important to work with people you trust.
- Actively ask if there are opportunities to work together, don’t be shy! And don’t be afraid to ask for money, remember you’re the expert at what you do!
- Build your contact database – Log your new contacts on your newsletter list and in your client management system and encourage them to follow your social media profiles.
- Distribute marketing material, firstly in hardcopy and secondly in online format to your contacts to leave them details of your services.
- Once you’ve built a network of contacts, invite them to an event, focused on your services or products.
Communicate regularly with your contacts
- Send a newsletter or bullet regularly with the intention of reminding your potential and existing clients and partners that you exist and are still there to help them. The newsletter should include an expert article, casestudy and details about your services to remind people about who you are and what you offer.
- Keep in touch with your contacts via social media platforms on a regular basis – Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, let them know when you’ve published a new article, casestudy or event, and talk about topics in your subject area.
Hosting Events
Hosting events are good for generating business for two reasons, it gives you an opportunity to promote the brand and your profile to hundreds of contacts via a range of marketing channels, and it gives you the chance to come face to face with potential new clients and partners, rather than you having to go them. It’s best to run the events as a lost leader, with the intention of achieving after sales from the event. Here are the steps for hosting an event.
- Choose a topic for the event that will attract the target audience and help to raise awareness of your services.
- Decide on a date, venue and format for the event.
- Invite another guest speaker if appropriate to the event (possibly a previous client or complementary service provider), to increase interest in the event if necessary.
- Invite your target list of contacts to the event with a personalized email bulletin.
- Market the event through your new partner and media channels and via your social media outlets to your connections, as well as within your newsletter.
- Think about how you are going to sell your services at the event, with the distribution of marketing material, an explanation of your services and a special offer discount maybe for attendees.
Written by Heather Wilkinson, Business Coach and Chair of Striding Out
