How to become a thought leader in sales: Lessons learned from sales leaders

Do you agree brands are relationships? Social media and digital experiences are influencing our personal and professional lives. Over time, people behind the brands have gained that extra space. Thought leadership efforts have carved a niche for experts who shape brand experiences that stick. Furthermore, it has helped them build a network and enabled them to build their career trajectory. 

As a Sales Development representative, have you thought about what could separate yourself from the pack to make you successful? If you want to have prospects respond, it goes without saying that you need to build credibility, and being “known” plays an important factor. 

Building your personal brand while improving your business acumen

Personal branding is about sharing your journey and bringing forth your authentic self. To bring in authenticity, Business acumen is now a need to have skill in today’s VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). 

During the industrial age, it was important for business owners to possess this skill. Now, people across bands need to have the knowledge and business acumen in order to deliver brand experiences. A good way to build the acumen in parallel to your personal brand is to consume a lot of material by reading articles, blogs, books and listening to podcasts/watching videos.

Building a personal brand requires effort and is about putting oneself and one’s skills, experience, and personality out there. And the first step to getting here is setting the intentions right. For sales especially, it’s important to differentiate the need to be known vs. the need to sell. 

So where do you start?  

I have put together a set of practical tips from sales thought leaders who have carved a niche for themselves. Follow these and just before you know it, you’ll be inching your way to success!

Start out with optimizing your social profile. Just having a social profile won’t cut for it! Your social media profiles can play a big role in your ability to get found online. It expounds your experience, the value you add, and makes you visible. So carefully consider how you want your business connections to view you. 

• Add a professional picture 
• A compelling headline 
• Interesting summary highlights 

This is sure to grab the attention of your audience over time. A good way to start is to take a look at thought leader profiles in your area of work. 

Here are a few thought leaders who have been there and done that. 

• Tibor Shanto
• Becc Holland
• Amy Franko
• Trish Bertuzzi
• Morgan Ingram
• John Barrows
• Nancy Nardin
• Kevin Dorsey

Now it's time to...

Focus on researching and educating yourself

Know the enterprise you are working with and the industry you are operating in and the key factors that drive the industry. For Sales professionals, it is important to keep up with the latest business issues and trends affecting the customer, keeping conversations relevant and meaningful will be quite a challenge.

Going one step further using social selling techniques

It is about forging connections and making it meaningful by listening for the right moment to join the conversation so you can present yourself as a solution to a problem. It’s the modern way to develop meaningful relationships with potential customers so you’re the first face that comes to their mind when they think of a brand or when they are actually looking to buy. 

What social selling is not? 

It’s certainly not about bombarding strangers with unsolicited Tweets and private messages. Network with professionals and executives with different departments across the industry and try to understand the challenges they have and how they handle them.  Here's a webinar by John Barrows on how sales reps can build their personal brand to close deals faster.

Share content with context

Giving on social media could be sharing something useful for your customers, sharing insight, commenting, or engaging with your network. Keeping tabs on social media sentiment is a key part of social media listening. When you do social listening, you can keep a track of brand mentions, relevant hashtag, competitor mentions, and industry trends. For instance, if your audience is talking about a problem, you could get directly involved in the conversation and help by sharing a useful piece of content or solution. Google alerts can be a good tool to help you set up alerts on key things your audience is talking about. 

Following a routine

Sharing or writing 3 posts a week is terrific! But keeping at it is key to growing an audience. Never be that person who just shares a link or ends up commenting just for the sake of doing so. Creating and sharing high-quality content when branding yourself on social media always lifts up your brand. Putting on the content marketer cap is a good way to keep you on track. It’s good to make a list of key topics and messages that you would publish within a certain frequency. You could even go one step further in planning the kind of content media you wish to use to express your thoughts. 

Like, instead of just a blog post, you could even share a video. Getting in front of the camera, not only shows off the real you but drives better engagement. To shoot a video, you don’t need an expensive setup. You just need your phone! Check out Nancy's way of engaging prospecting 10x.

Bonus tip: Take a look at my article on how to shoot professional videos from home

Once, you have shared, that’s not the end! Engaging with your post comments and other’s posts is key, it will give you an idea of what kind of content your prospects enjoy and engage with, which can help you decide what kind of content to share.

1..2..3..IDEA!

To get more ideas on what type of content your audience is interested in, seek and join groups relevant to your area of expertise. These groups help increase your knowledge, develop new ideas, test your skills, and build confidence. This way you can expand your network and build relationships with like-minded individuals. This is a crucial stepping stone in building your personal brand. Share relevant content to these groups to get additional eyeballs and engage at the right level with the audience.

There are already a lot of influencers on social media. Consider striking a chord and connection to help you get the audience. A good way to do this is to organically look for influencers in your area of expertise. 

LinkedIn is a great place to find and engage with other experts in your industry. Study them -- analyze their networks, posting habits, and content to determine what you could be doing better. Notice how their followers respond to what they post and learn best practices from their personal branding strategies and execution. Before you know it, you may end up collaborating with them on posts, videos, or podcasts.

Remember: Rome was not built in a day

There is no linear path to building your personal brand. But this blueprint will sure help you start today. Creating a personal brand isn’t easy. It takes time, though, and effort. Think long-term and remember to take note of what’s working and not working and adjust as necessary. You’ll get better at it day by day. 

Have questions? I’m all ears.