The 3 Simple Steps To A Stand Out Brand

In this disruptive and distracting World, it's vital that your personal brand stands out in order for your ideal prospects not only to see you, but to have a real reason to choose you.

You can make yourself visible using social media, speaking at events, running webinars or workshops and of course writing a book. These tactics are all important, but in order to really stand out, and to do it confidently and consistently, your personal brand needs to have a rock solid foundation.

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The biggest hurdle when building your personal brand is the requirement to dedicate so much time, effort and money into it. If you don't have a clearly defined brand story, a core message that drives your brand strategy, you will quickly exhaust your marketing enthusiasm and start to look like everyone else.

I see many professional service providers doing what I call WOFTAM marketing - a Waste Of Flipping Time And Money. Don't get sucked into the idea that as long as you are taking action, eventually recognition and respect will come.

Action without purpose puts you on a hiding to nothing. Focusing your purpose first with three simple questions to ask yourself, can ensure your personal brand foundation supports everything you do and makes it easy to market and promote your services, knowing you are being as productive and effective as possible.

Here are the 3 steps to have a stand-out personal brand and become well known,well paid & wanted:

?Step 1: ?Know? Me?

The survival instinct of the brain is incredibly powerful. From the days of the caveman your brain just wants to keep you safe.

It needs to know if the brand it meets is friend or foe, if it should pump up the adrenaline and run for the hills or stick around to find out if there’s something worthwhile to gain.

The Amygdala is the fear centre that drives this flight or fight response, using memory and emotion to recognise brands, based on previous experiences and feelings to switch to high alert or remain open for business.

The first thing your prospect wants to know is “Do I know what you do and can that help me”

If you don’t explain this clearly, or appear unsure about your expertise, the Amygdala’s early warning systems will be set off, putting up barriers and protecting itself from making bad decisions.

Waffle is a sure fire way to create fear in the prospects brain. People don’t buy your expertise, they buy your confidence in that expertise. Having a great pitch and clearly explaining how you help people is the key to becoming well known.

Discovering your True North and developing a brand strategy, with a clear core message makes it easy to explain what you do and why someone should choose you.

Ask yourself: What is the #1 thing I want to be well known for?

?Step 2: ?Like Me?

Your ideal prospects brain is 10,000 times more interested in itself than they are in you, so make sure your brand engages with their needs, wants and desires and less on how you work, your systems or processes.

Your personal brand is not what you know, it’s how much you know about your ideal client.

It’s amazing how likeable you can become if you simply talk more about your prospect than about yourself.

So the next thing your prospects brain wants to know, after your brand has explained what you do and how you can help them, is “Do I like the idea of working with you?”

In order to become wanted, you need to know exactly who you want to attract and what makes them tick. What is going on in their life, what are their desires, the attitude they have towards their problem and your services. Only then can you know if they are predisposed to become your client without needing to be convinced, coerced or closed.

The trouble is, as a professional service provider you have a need to please, a desire to be liked and an instructive desperation to prove yourself.

You probably try to help every person you meet and may even offer a free consultation. Please stop devaluing your expertise, skills and talents and start getting clarity around who you help and how you make them feel.

Work out first who you like working with, focus on them, build a client avatar and continually add information to it so you can walk in their shoes and develop marketing that naturally attracts them.

Ask Yourself: Who do I want to spend my time with?

?Step 3: ?Trust Me?

Once your prospects brain knows what you do, how you can help them and they feel they will like the experience of working with you, the next step is to give them no doubt that choosing you is a safe bet.

Their brain at this stage is asking the final question “Can I trust you will deliver on what you promise?”

Becoming a well paid, trusted service provider is all about how much the prospect values your expertise, and how confidently you explain your fees.

I’ll repeat that because this is so important for you to understand if you want to avoid price rejection - the human brain buys confidence and the conviction in which you explain your rates directly effects their purchase decision.

The interesting thing is that you have an entrepreneurial brain because you overpowered your own fear centre when you started out as a service provider or consultant.

You knew you’d be exchanging your time and expertise for income and your Amygdala was screaming; “you need to find clients, you’ll never survive, it’s going to be hard work, you could fail”, so you took control of your own brain, faced the fear and did it anyway.

You have a superhuman power to dominate your own Amygdala. But that power comes with Kryptonite and it’s called Bright-shiny-objectitis. You are more open to new ideas and opportunities because you listen less to the fear centre.

Unfortunately if you leave this unchecked it leads to FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out) and you try to be everything to everyone, offering all sorts of services, programs and processes to take advantage of every opening.

This makes you a generalist brand instead of a trusted specialist. Your business card, website and marketing collateral starts to look like a business directory. You struggle to explain what you do, changing your pitch constantly, creating confusion and giving your prospects brain every reason to reject you.

Instead of building value in your trust currency you depreciate your worth.

Ask Yourself: What is the value I can be trusted to deliver?

To become the trusted, go-to specialist, paid whatever you want to charge, you need to find your inch-wide, mile-deep niche and stick with it. Discover your single minded purpose and infuse this into your brand.

Because your personal brand is your expertise, the thing you do with ease that others find difficult. That’s why it’s called expert-ease.

It is ironic that in order to stand out you first need to go inside yourself to get the clarity and direction you need for your personal brand.

The ancient maxim inscribed on the entrance to the Temple Of Apollo at Delphi in Greece translates as “Know Thyself” and was quoted by Plato and Socrates to extol the virtue of understanding your sense of self before trying to understand the world and that by understanding yourself, you have a better understanding of others.