Empowering Sales Professionals Through Personal Branding Strategies

PROFESSIONAL SALES CONDUCT HANDBOOK WEEK 3 A 3-WEEK STRATEGY GUIDE CPSA Meeting in a Box: A series of 15-minute guided presentations to help increase your team s performance.

PRE-LEARNING: Facilitator: One week prior to your meeting, please inform your sales team to prepare with these CPSA Learning Hub resources. Reading: Sell Yourself! The Art of Online Branding The Importance of Representing Your Company & Personal Brand 2

WEEK 3: INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSONAL BRANDING IN SALES Today s top salespeople don t rely on acting like gatekeepers during the sales process. It is no longer just about qualifying and converting leads which come your way. The highest-performing sales professionals are those that actively position themselves as a go-to resource within their given market. Let s consider some key steps to help your personal brand grow. 3

DISTINGUISH YOUR PERSONAL BRAND Today s top salespeople don t rely on acting like gatekeepers during the sales process. It is no longer just about qualifying and converting leads which come your way. The highest-performing sales professionals are those that actively position themselves as a go-to resource within their given market. Let s consider some key steps to help your personal brand grow. 4

BUILD AN ONLINE PRESENCE Providing education through content is a powerful and trusted channel for salespeople wishing to develop and grow their online brand within a specific market. Content, of course, comes in many forms and can include written articles, podcasts, videos, webinars and in-person speaking sessions. For now, let s focus on your online brand. A key part of building your personal brand as a sales professional is to own a digital base that belongs to you entirely and where you can publish your content and interact with your audience and social media presence on a channel that you (not your current employer) owns. In the shorter term, you can start sharing your expertise through social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. 5

Once youve established your brand, it is time to put it out there. Arguably the biggest and most impactful way to leverage the power of your new personal brand is through social selling. If you re going to start small, it s key that you choose a channel where your target audience demographic hangs out so that you can maximize your exposure and engagement to them. As the selling landscape continues to shift, (social selling becomes the norm, and AI continues to streamline processes), the top-performing companies of the future will be those who invest in providing their sales execs with the knowledge and tools to grow their personal brands and exploit communication technologies. LEVERAGING YOUR BRAND AND SOCIAL SELLING 6

TAKE ACTION! Start building your personal brand today. It takes time so why not start laying the foundations? Ideally, your company will recognise the longer- term benefits to their bottom line in helping your efforts to grow your personal brand. Watch this CPSA Webinar on how to develop your personal brand:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FROM CPSA TEMPLATES CPSA is constantly building and upgrading our catalog of templates to make your job easier! WEBINARS - Our virtual training sessions led by industry experts, at your convenience. PODCASTS - Take the sales experts wherever you go! LEARNING HUB - Check out the latest sales articles, white papers, and ebooks 8

GO TEAM GO! 9