Branding Yourself Using One Sales Tactic

What do you imagine when you hear the word sales? You may picture a call center where salesmen make cold calls all day or a door-to-door salesman getting doors slammed in his face. I personally picture Shark Tank, one of my favorite TV shows.

If you haven’t seen Shark Tank, on this show, a variety of individuals give a short presentation on their business or company to a panel of investors (the “sharks”). Then the sharks decide, based on this quick introduction, whether or not to invest in these small or up-and-coming businesses.

I’ve seen a variety of people walk onto this show with extreme confidence in their product and company, but they don’t manage to sell themselves and don’t end up getting the deal. What are their biggest downfalls? You might assume it’s them being over-confident or under-prepared. I would argue that there is only one answer that applies to anyone who doesn’t make it on Shark Tank or in the real world of selling. They didn’t build trust.

The most important part of sales is trust.

People only buy from a person or brand that they trust. 

There are many ways to build trust. If you were in-person with the customer or client, it could be as simple as looking them in the eye. Online, this becomes a bit more complicated. For example, by showing up when you make promises, showing up consistently, and showing social proof. However you choose to do this, you must build trust to sell anything. Even if you are just selling yourself as a creative or entrepreneur.

Sales is an important skill for anyone to have. You are constantly selling. Whether you are trying to find a new job, sway your partner to take you to a nice restaurant on valentines day, or convince your friends to watch a new TV show–all of it is sales.

Using trust as the most important sales tactic, I’m going to explain the basics of how you can use this skill to brand and market yourself as a creative or entrepreneur.

Most people cannot sell just anything to anyone.

You have to know exactly what you’re selling and who you are selling to.

As someone trying to market themselves, this means knowing yourself and your target audience.

The most important part of knowing yourself is to know what skills you bring to the table and what makes you unique. You are competing with hundreds of thousands of other individuals. What makes you different from all of them?

To build trust, you must prove that you are qualified and unique.

Your target audience could be a hiring manager or even the CEO of the company you want to work for. Do your research on these individuals, find out how they think by learning what they are like as a person (remember they are a real person). 

To build trust, you must build relationships with your target audience.

How can you build trust in your brand?

In this day and age, the easiest way to prove your authority is by creating content online. Write a blog post or an email newsletter about your field of interest. Start a podcast or Facebook group. Put yourself out there as an expert in your field, show your interest and experience.

The best way to build trust is by being consistent. Showing up online, displaying your unique personality, and learning more consistently. Show your learning process. Be transparent about your mistakes and tell your audience how you’ve learned from them. Just be a real human and connect with your audience.

This is just the beginning, there’s a lot more I could say about building your brand. I lay it all out for you in my personal branding course, which is coming soon. Join the waitlist now to be the first to know when my full course launches!

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