As adapted from Jeffrey Gitomer’s book (titled The Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness) the following steps will enable you to build your personal brand image up. These steps, however are not a guarantee or a cure-all way to become the most recognized, greatest professional at what you do, they are just steps you can take to start building your brand image up.

• Register your name.com—(go to Godaddy.com one year is only $9.20) Think about it. You don’t want someone else getting a webpage with your name on it. If you become famous and want it back, the person who owns your web name (a.k.a. domain name) they will make you pay them a lot of money to get it back.

• Volunteer to do things. Get involved in community activities that may/ may not directly benefit you. By doing this you build good karma and  you help to create a positive change in your community. If you care, it attracts positive PR (which means others talk about how good you are and its FREE). Volunteering may also inspire others to follow in your footsteps (because you’re a good example).

• Dedicate time to make it happen…or it won’t happen. If you don’t work hard at what you want to do, you can’t be successful. You need to create a master plan.

• Get others to help you. List the people you think can help you or help you connect and ask for their support. (The easiest way to get support? Give it first—without keeping score.) Volunteer your time for them and they will connect you with people they know in the industry.

• Make a brief 30 second commercial about what you do and how you can help others.

• Be creative. Do everything with a creative flair. If your presentation (of yourself, your album etc…) is plain, it will be boring and people won’t remember it. You need to be memorable to build your brand image and awareness.

• Get the best business card money can buy. It’s your image and it makes an impact every time you give one—either wow, positive, mediocre, or negative. Engrave it, blind emboss it, foil stamp it, logo it, graphic design it, multi-color it. If someone doesn’t look at your card and say “Nice card,” get it re-done.

• Be around the “right” people. Stay in front of the people you want to do business with…By combining your outreaches, you can create a steady flow of your images (in the paper, weekly online blogs/column, on TV, your newsletter, etc…) to your target market. It takes between 5 and 10 images to create awareness great enough to make a buying decision.

• Become a resource. Know everything you can about your industry.

• Be persistent and consistent. If people don’t call you back when they say they will, you call them back. This not only shows that you care about what you do, it tells them that they should care about what you do. Being consistent means constantly giving 110% in everything you do, all of the time (ex. If you’re an artist, each time you perform, give the best performance possible.)

• Enjoy what you do. People who take it too seriously have problems sorting out what’s important in the world. Treat your career and your life as an important game. Play as hard as you can to win.

• Strive to be the best at whatever you do. Go for the personal goal—be the best. Not the material goal—make a lot of money. Be the best and the money will automatically show up.

• Ignore haters. There are a lot of jealous people and nay-sayers in the world. Ignore them. People rain on your parade, because they have no parade of their own.

 

Additional Information

If you want some more steps to branding success go to this website: www.gitomer.com Register if you are a first time user and enter BRAND ME in the RedBit Box.