10 Branding and Sales Tips You Need to Know for 2020

Sales empowers freedom. It's that simple.

Whether you like it or not, each and every one of us is in sales -- whether you're selling a product or service, or selling yourself by looking for a new job.

Hell, I'm a father to four children. I have to sell at least one of them on something each and every day!

Effective, sustainable branding is fuel over the sales fire; empowering you to sell more by effectively communicating your impact story to the customers who most need to hear it.

During 2019, I've had the privilege of interviewing some of the world's top sales and branding experts on the Freedom Mindset Radio podcast. Heading into 2020, here are the top ten tips these experts have shared with me on the show:

Money is an Echo of Value

"Nobody's going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet. They're not going to buy from you because you need the money. They're not going to buy from you just because you're a really nice person. They're going to buy from you because they believe they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so. And in a free market, that's the only reason that someone ever should buy from you."

-- Bob Burg, bestselling co-author of The Go-Giver series of books and author of Endless Referrals

You're Not Selling Because You're Not Productive

"The reason you’re not winning more new business is because you spend very little time working on new business. You may be working 50, 60, 70 hours a week and really proud that you get to inbox zero, and you’re uber-responsive to everything that comes your way, and you’re the first person to jump in and help out operations or to volunteer at the July 4th barbecue or to put out a customer service fire. But you suck at sales and you’re on the bottom of the ranking because you don’t spend time working on things that move the needle; that create sales.”

-- Mike Weinberg, sales trainer and bestselling author of #SalesTruth, Sales Management. Simplified. and New Sales. Simplified.

You're the X Factor in the Sales Process

"(Some sales people) see the product. They see the process and all that stuff, but they never put their own 'X Factor' in and say, but here I'm the differentiator. Yeah, I can buy from somebody else. Of course I can. Yeah, I can get it somewhere else. We've reached a level where you know all products look the same, right? Five sigma, quality is all equal, parody of products, it's all the same. So what's the difference? The X Factor. The individual."

-- Victor Antonio, international sales trainer, author, keynote speaker, and Spike TV show host

Focus on Building Relationships

"If you're in sales, you want to focus on building relationships. If you focus on building the relationship first, you’ll not only end up selling them what you intended to sell them, but you’ll end up selling their friends and family. You’ll also end up selling them many more items in the future. If you focus on the sale, okay, you may make the sale, but you miss the relationship and it’s going to cost you in the long run.”

-- Brad Lea, founder of Lightspeed VT, sales expert, author, motivational speaker, and host of the Dropping Bombs Podcast.

Personal Branding is Understanding Who You Are

"In the end, personal branding is about understanding who you are, what is important to you, what you're the expert in, what you have to offer, why people should work with you, how you want to make people feel, what you're going to talk about, how you're going to help the world, make it a better place, how you're going to walk and talk and dress. This is a very rough idea of what personal branding is. You don't need to create viral content when you don't know what your values are. That will not work. So have a look at the bigger picture. Why do you do what you want to do? Know the basics first."

-- Dr. Natalia Wiechowski, international personal branding strategist and Edutainer

Sustainable Branding Starts from Within

"If you want to be genuine, if you want to be authentic and you want to speak from the heart, then find out who you are and get to know the real version of you, not the next Gary Vee or the next Grant Cardone or the next somebody else. They're great people, but there's too many people that are trying to mimic their lifestyle, and it just doesn't work."

-- Larry Levine, sales coach/strategist, author of Selling from the Heart: How Your Authentic Self Sells You

Selling is About Having Conversations with People

"So the thing that I don't understand about human beings at this point when we start thinking about calling people, especially salespeople, is at what point did you decide that selling wasn't about having conversations with other people? We get paid to talk to people. If you don't want to talk to people, and people can buy stuff without talking to you, we don't need you. It's the internet. By the way, looking in the eyeballs of all the salespeople who are watching this, this is important: You can't compete with the Internet, ever. So the thing is that you have to start having conversations. This is not an art, it's a discipline. It is understanding that sales is human to human, and the reason that you're here is that you're adding that human element that makes it easier for people to make a decision."

-- Jeb Blount, CEO at Sales Gravy, author, keynote speaker and sales acceleration specialist

Become a Trusted Advisor, Instead of a Vendor

“The trusted advisor equation, as you know from reading the books, is two parts. Trust, that part’s easy for me. Advice, that part’s hard. So you have to figure out how you’re going to dispense with the advice and the counsel, which means you have to up your game and go out and do the work so that you actually are somebody who has the right to give that advice because you’ve done your homework.”

-- Anthony Iannarino, international speaker, entrepreneur, sales leader and bestselling author of The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need; Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition; and, The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the Ten Commitments That Drive Sales.

Focus on Your Non-Negotiables

"Productivity, you know in the book traction, they call them rocks. In my methodology I call them non-negotiables. Everybody should have a list of these things that are the most important things that generate business. Six years ago, my wife got mono. Nobody in our client base knew she had mono because every Thursday she put makeup on, she would do a Facebook live. She would do her live LinkedIn. The rest of the time she was in bed. She's my partner. She does all our writing. Got it? Our business grew 27% that year because Joe sat down and said, 'Joe make a list of the non negotiables that have the greatest impact on growth and as you said, productivity.' And we grew 27%."

-- Joe Pici, ranked by Global Gurus as the #3 sales trainer in the world

Networking Isn't Prospecting

"Networking is not prospecting. Let's just drop the mic on that one right there. People go to networking events because they're too afraid to have one-on-one conversations with people they don't know. That's fine. So what do they do? They go to this networking event, and networking is about as effective as standing on a street corner with a sign saying, 'Hi, I need a job.' Okay. It just random people passing by. . It seems like there's three types of people who show up at networking events: Real estate people, finance and insurance people, and unemployed people. And all everybody does is they breathe each other's exhaust. I mean, you go in any community and here's the Tuesday night networking thing and then Thursday night, and you know what? You see the same people at every one. You see the same people. So isn't this great that every realtor can be sitting there selling to every other realtor? I'll go to networking events, very, very selectively, only if I have a very high probability that there's a specific person or two there that I want to meet."

-- Mark Hunter, keynote sales speaker, bestselling author of High Profit Prospecting and High Profit Selling

Note: The Freedom Club Podcast has recently re-branded as Freedom Mindset Radio. You can subscribe to the show here.

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Curt Mercadante is an international speaker, trainer, and author who helps executives, business owners, and teams become more purposeful, productive, and profitable.