the brand dame

Brand Your Acheivements, Not Your Skills

You've all heard that you're buying the hole, not the drill; the sizzle not the steak--that in selling yourself, it is achievements not skills that matter. Here is another way of looking at this, courtesy of one of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk.

In a recent post, Career Lessons from Eliot Spitzer’s Call Girl, Ashley Dupre, Trunk points out that "call girls aren't selling sex, they're selling discretion......Of course a guy like Spitzer could get a mistress, no problem. He’s not great looking, but being the Governor of New York makes up for that. But the mistress is dangerous—she could talk. In a call girl, you buy discretion."

The point here is to know what you are really selling. What problem are you the solution to? What question does your service answer?

Trunk talks about this in terms of writing a resume, but her clear-eyed wisdom applies equally to personal branding:

"You know why most people have terrible resumes? They can’t figure out what they really bring to the table. If you really know what you are selling, then most of your resume is not going to be relevant. But people get mixed up about what they are selling. And they start just selling what they think they should be selling that second instead of analyzing the situation."

Stand by Your Man?

As the columnist and writer Katha Pollitt opines in the current issue of The Nation:

Just once I'd like to see a male politician caught in a sex scandal stand up there at a press conference all by himself. You want to be an alpha male with extra helpings of testosterone and appetites that cannot be denied? Fine.......but if you get caught, don't drag your wife in front of the cameras to prove how strong your marriage is. Practice saying these words: "No, darling, I could never live with myself if I let you humiliate yourself in public....."

There was Silda Wall Spitzer, the wife of the now-former Governor of New York, not once but twice (!), at her husband's side, looking stricken and shell-shocked. And the same thought occurred to me -- be a man! Stand up there on your own. There's no political face left to be saved. Maybe Suzanne Craig, Dina McGreevey or, oh yeah, Hillary, should have flown to Paris when they faced similar photo-ops. Or maybe stayed home to deal with the rage and anguish of their children.

In the end, it doesn't matter.....the outcome will be the same! As Pollitt so rightly (and indignantly) says, "People may use the words like stoic or dignified, but really what they're thinking is doormat or enabler."

As we move towards the possible election of the first woman President of the United States, isn't it time we gave political wives a permanent pass on this uniquely arcane form of political theater?

Personal Branding and the Small Business Owner

Last night I spoke about personal branding to a group of fabulous women -- members of NEWBO, New England Women's Business Owners -- the first such group in the United States.

  The room was electric from the moment I walked in, and I was blown-away by the passion and purpose of every woman that I talked to. Their businesses ranged from professional services to retail, from coaching to lingerie--with almost everything in between.

The common thread here is that each was the chief flag-waver of their endeavor. They knew that one of the key ingredients to their success would be to market themselves successfully. They knew that perception was, in fact, reality in the minds of their customers. And they knew that the power to shape that reality was in their hands.

In celebrating its 30th anniversary, NEWBO has launched the QUEST Awards -- among the awards are Entrepreneur of the Year and Most Innovative Company of the Year. I encourage you to nominate any excellent women you know.

Blog Radio Makes a Move

Now that you can't live without National Public Radio, broaden your horizons even further with BlogTalkRadio. The indomitable  Diane Danielson put me on to this phenom, which takes blogging a step further. She has a show called Smash the Ladder, and will be interviewing me about personal branding and careers. Tune in on March 11th at 11:00 a.m.

And while you're at it, cruise on over to another great Diane venture, Top Shelf Reading Picks: Book and Blog Reviews for the Savvy Entrepreneur. It is featured on entrepreneur.com.

Branding Thought for the Day

“Your brand is what people say about you after you leave the room.”
          -- Jeff Bezos
              Founder and CEO of Amazon

 

 

Branding the Non-Profit

I've been working with several national non-profits lately, helping them to refine or redefine their brands. Many non-profits don't think of themselves as needing a brand -- they've ingested the "because we're good, they will come" Kool-Aid.

Too bad that the world doesn't work that way anymore--if it ever did. An interesting article in Shelterforce Online, has this true/false quiz:

                   

                    Our organization understands the value of
                    raising the visibility of its brand among
                    clients, constituents, policy-makers and
                    funders.

                    Audiences we’d like to reach clearly
                    understand who we are and what we do.

                    Our brand generates a positive feeling
                    about our organization to the point that
                    people trust and respect what we say and
                    do, and therefore want to help, support
                    and do business with us.

Unless you can answer TRUE  to each of these statements, your non-profit probably can't respond effectively to the question, "so what does your organization do?" Seemingly simple, but it's surprising how tongue-tied most of us get when the brand itself is unclear.

What, No Cummerbund?

A friend of mine, who has happily traded-in her corporate pins stripes and heels for the clean shirt and jeans of her successful pet care business, responded to my post on flip flops and other outrageous branding faux pas with the following true story:

"As an executive recruiter, I 'll never forget the young man who had just graduated from an electronics school, probably interviewing for a manufacturing position. His school counselor told him to dress up so he rented a tux (with ruffled shirt) because he did not own a suit, and that's what he wore to the interview! "

Moral of this story? Assume nothing.............

Why I Hate Elevator Speeches

Whenever I hear someone say "elevator speech" I cringe. And I hear it plenty. Whenever I talk about branding, at least one person's eyes will light up and say, "oh, like an elevator speech?" I grit my teeth, sit on my hands, and try hard not to disabuse them of this much-beloved concept.

Why, you ask. Doesn't this mean that the idea that people should be able to say what they do and why it matters in 50 (100, 250) words or less has caught on? Isn't that a good thing? Yes, as far as it goes. But ask someone what their (cringe) elevator speech is and, I promise you, you won't have a clue what business their in.

First of all, how many of us find ourselves in elevators anymore? Wouldn't a better name for this be the riding shot-gun speech, or the waiting in line in the supermarket speech? Or how about the middle seat of an airplane speech ?

But my real problem is the word speech. If it's a speech you're giving, you better be preaching to the choir or running for political office. Anything else and I want two short sentences that I "get" right away. If it's a speech you have to give, there's way too much information -- and wasn't that the problem that elevator speeches were supposed to solve?

Flip Flop Branding

Call me old-fashioned, but I've always believed that you have to dress the part. Gen X, Gen Y or Gen Boomer, what you wear on the job, in front of a client or at a job interview MATTERS. I'm still smarting from the pictures of the championship lacrosse team who, back in 2005, wore flip flops to the White House.

My colleague Gretchen Neels has made a business  of telling folks what to wear, what not to wear and what to do with that second fork. A former executive recruiter, she founded Neels & Company to un-do a lot of bad business habits.

In a recent article in The Wall Street journal  entitled, Law Without Suits: New Hires  Flout Tradition:

Ms. Neels notes that business-school grads share law associates' casual sartorial attitude, and she tries to connect the dots between what they wear and how they come across. When she was coaching M.B.A. graduates at Harvard last weekend, she says only about half came in a suit. One young man showed up in cargo pants, and his cellphone rang during the interview.

"What I'm getting from you is that you're a jerk," Ms. Neels told the student as part of her feedback. "Can you see how I'd get that?"

"Yeah, I guess," he responded, she says.

Check-out her handy pocket guide for a refresher of your own: Business Etiquette 101 – 30 Absolutely, Never Evers For Business, Dining & First Impressions.

Does Your Brand Pass the Test?

I held two of my personal branding seminars yesterday for a group of senior executives and entrepreneurs at New Directions, a leading outplacement firm in Boston. I was reminded why personal branding is so difficult: we get stuck in the briar patch of our own language. If you have to explain what you do, if you have to explain what your value is, then you haven't  nailed down your brand.

A brand should need no more than one sentence, and that one sentence should produce an immediate "Oh, I get It" response.

As blogger Jeff Gwynne says in his Science of Marketing blog:

On the way to driving my daughter to high school, I passed a commercial van with the slogan: "If it’s in stock, we’ve got it". I didn’t think much of it until my daughter asked: "What does that mean?" I immediately said: "they have whatever you want as long as they have it. Get it?" "No." was the reply. Further attempts to explain were met with "whatever’s" and blank stares.

The van also had the company’s name (made illegible by the salty grime that we endure during New England winters) but there was no other evidence of its business. So even if I could understand the slogan, I really had no idea what the company does.

Forget elevator speeches--I'd like to set fire to that maxim and make its use in all future business seminars and how-to books illegal. If you have to make a speech, the only person listening will be you.