Personal Branding Through Personal Sales
Posted on Jan 29, 2008 By Dan HealyI always thought that sales consisted of finding clients, setting up meetings, and getting them to sign a contract that would eventually make me direct advertising money. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much more sales can be, and how it can affect every aspect of your business and your life.
The personal sale is something I have always been an advocate of. Not necessarily from a patron aspect, but instead, from the marketing side. With my company, I have been lucky enough to have my target demographic all in one area, with the same interests. The design of my website was aimed specifically at my market, and my slogan, “for the students, by the students” was also an attempt to make a personal connection.
However, I am not alone in this market, we’re just one of hundreds of companies attempting to get a hold of the population of the largest university in the country. We had to come up with something unique in order to gain a loyal customer base. When we looked at what worked and what didn’t work we realized that a personal sale was the most effective form of advertising. I thought about the best way to approach this, and this is what I came up with:
Introducing myself to everyone. This includes randomly going up to people in popular hangouts, shaking their hands, and sharing my message with them.
Going into offices around campus. I tell the secretaries about how my friend and I want to give back to the university, so we started a website that would make their lives easier.
Speaking in classes. I get in front of classes of 700+ students, and tell them about our website, why we started it, and how it is for them to use, free of charge. This enabled me to give a personal sale to many people all at one time.
Sponsoring university functions. This includes everything from Homecoming Week, to dorm socials, and fundraisers.
These were all very successful for us, they were our most effective routes of advertising. It gave us the opportunity to get in front of thousands of people and spread our message.
Throughout all of this I realized that I was not only branding my company, but I was branding myself. When I go out now, people recognize me as the SloopyMenus.com guy, and tell me how cool it was that I spoke in front of their class. I go into the business school and say hello to at least half of the people I see, not because I have spent quality time with them, but instead because I have branded myself as the SloopyMenus guy.
This got me thinking, and what I realized was that personal sales are a way to brand yourself as whatever you want. If I had stood in front of classrooms, and talked about registering to vote, I would be known as the vote guy, or if I represented the Buckeye Barbeque Club, then I would be the BBQ guy.
I fell into this role without even knowing it, and every time I wore a shirt with my logo, or said hello to someone and told them about my website, that is how they thought of me. I need to remember this lesson in the future, because whenever I meet someone, or have a conversation, I need to assume that they will recall me, my face, and my name by whatever was in the context of the conversation.
When you meet someone at school, at work, or even in the bar, be aware of what you talk about, and take advantage of it, because that is how you will be remembered. And that’s personal branding.
Posted In: After-College, Career Development, Personal Development
Comment by Chris Tackett on the January 29th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Tackett
Comment by Dan Healy on the January 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Chris,
Thank you very much for your comment. We appreciate you reading our blog, and I hope you continue to enjoy our posts.
DH
Comment by Michael Lombardi on the January 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Dan,
Personal Branding is more important now than ever before in history. When someone can do an internet search about you from across the table, whether on an interview, a date, or a business meeting, they can immediately determine if you are worth their time. Though, usually they do that research before you even get a chance to meet with them.
Learning from your failures has also never been more important because now there’s a record of them online. How many people didn’t get a job or scholarship because an employer found comments they made on an inappropriate website or inappropriate pictures on a myspace page?
People need to protect their brand and that brand includes the often overlooked quality called character.
Comment by Guerrillero on the January 29th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Selling yourself and building up your brand name is a real piece of art.
Comment by Alex on the January 29th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
For anyone interested, I am the BBQ Guy. For more info, shoot me an email. gardner.760@osu.edu
Keep posting.
Comment by aspott on the February 1st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Andrew Spott and I am a senior in Entrepreneurship at the Fisher College of Business. Like Dan, I too am graduating from The Ohio State University in the spring. I am also the other half of the 50/50 partnership which Dan and I formed to manage our business, SloopyMenus.com.
This post is a great preview to the greater realm that is personal branding. Dan, you wrote very well on the steps you have taken to develop and grow your personal brand, but it is just the “tip of the iceberg” in my opinion. For me, I feel that personal branding is not just a single association such as “The SloopyMenus Guy” or “That Kid who is President of AMA.” It is so much more than that. Personal brands are very similar to corporate brands. You can work to present an image, rhetoric, or a core competency/value proposition but in reality, a brand’s equity in the minds of people can’t be directly controlled. The actions you take and the information you present to form your personal brand can be looked at as inputs. These inputs are distributed through your various touchpoints (see wikipedia) with other people. These touchpoints can be a blog post, an elevator speech, small talk in a hallway, a facebook profile or even your physical appearance. Together, these various inputs (or factors of your personal brand) work together to form your own share of personal brand equity in everybody’s mind. In the same way that people of different cultures understand body language and behavior in various ways based on context and perceived rhetoric, your own personal brand is digested differently by everyone you meet or reach through a touchpoint.
So what does all this really mean?
Different people think of you (and thusly, your personal brand) in different ways. To exemplify this, take a look at this following list of questions. :
Who would you call right now if you had a computer problem or virus?
Who would you call right now if you needed to buy a hard to find sporting event ticket?
“ “ if you needed to get some remodeling done to your kitchen?
“ “ if you needed to find the best deal on a vacation?
“ “ if you wanted to find a good place for Sushi?
“ “ if you wanted to find the best bar for happy hour?
The people who you think of when you answer those questions are being thought of by you as a result of their personal brand equity in your mind. Now maybe the person you just thought of for Sushi is actually an interior decorator by trade, but for you, their opinion and advice on Sushi is why you are calling them. For all the people you just thought of, what do they do for a living? Does it relate to why you just thought of them?
That, my friends, is how I look at Personal Branding.
Comment by Grad School and Experience: A Scientist's Perspective | Employee Evolution on the February 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
[…] Being able to sell yourself becomes incrementally harder outside of your own field. Had I gone on to a post-doc I would have been fine. Moving out of science I had to market my talents in a manner that non-science employers could appreciate. It was only until I actually attempted it that I learned how. Had I developed my name and branded myself properly I would either still be at Job A, or have had an easier time finding a new job. […]