The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide

CHAPTER 18BUILDING AN INDUSTRY‐LEADING PERSONAL BRAND

The term ‘personal brand’ is tossed around a lot at the moment.

Lots of experts shouting that everyone needs a personal brand, that all salespeople need to invest in their personal brand, etc. But what does it mean? What IS a personal brand? And why should you care about yours?

I'm going to give you a few examples in this chapter about why and how a personal brand is important; however, I want to start with this one.

Throughout my early sales career, I spent a lot of time introducing myself to prospects.

The process of doing so would often take up the first 10–15 minutes of every meeting, or the first few minutes of every cold call.

‘Hi, my name is Daniel Disney, I work for X company. What we do here is blah blah blah’, you get the idea.

It is what most salespeople have to do all over the world, and whenever I get approached by a salesperson this is often how the conversation starts.

After a few months of being active on LinkedIn during my early social selling days, without realising, I started to build a personal brand. I had been sharing content nearly every day, growing my audience and engagement along the way.

One day I went to attend a prospect meeting that I had booked a few weeks ago. Now, usually when I walked in, the conversation would start as I mentioned earlier, ‘Hi, my name is Daniel Disney and I work for…’. However, this did not happen that day …

As I walked in, before I even had chance to sit down, the prospect ...