by Raina Robinson
In 2019, a large percentage of sales interactions have been digitized. This means in order to see sales growth, personal branding has become less of a suggestion and more of a requirement. While some individuals have a knack for branding themselves online, a lot of companies are facing a challenge in that their sales force does not have the know-how to build a personal brand and they don’t have the time to figure it out.
This leaves modern salespeople struggling to keep up with the ever-changing digital world and looking to their employer for solutions.
One solution more and more companies are turning to? Microbrands.
Microbranding enables a company to provide their sales team with a personal brand, that makes them look professional online, while also amplifying the corporate message across multiple networks.
There’s a couple of ways this can be accomplished. The first is through a Social Ambassador program. Social Ambassador programs work by allowing the marketing department to schedule and provide social media posts for the sales team. These posts can be anything from personal promotions to resharing company content. This has the duel benefit of establishing the sales force as subject matter experts while boosting the marketing team’s content.
The second method of microbranding is providing the sales team with microsites. Sometimes these sites are as simple as a page on the corporate site with the employee’s bio and phone number. Other times, they are more robust personal sites, that fall within corporate branding.
Our own solution, Brand-Hubs, allows the marketing team to upload various types of content, including articles, ebooks, events and videos to the sales team’s sites as a whole. Our VidYard integration allows for a more personalized experience with custom welcome videos and gifs for each salesperson.
Whichever course you take, one thing is for certain: personal brands hold a lot of power, both for the individual and the company.
When a salesperson takes on a personal brand, two things happen.
First, that person becomes seen as a subject matter expert within their network. They become a credible source of information for their customers, friends, families and colleagues to turn to.
This opens the door to sales opportunities that didn’t exist before. Just because you are connected with someone on social media does not mean that they are knowledgeable about what it is that you do. By helping your salespeople develop a personal brand, you are helping them to establish credibility within their network.
The second thing that happens is that this newfound credibility that your sales team has will start to benefit your company. As they are sharing your company messaging, not only are they improving their digital reputation, but they are also improving the reputation of your company. When your team’s networks see them talking about your company in the newsfeed, it helps you to become liked, trusted and remembered.
For example, Tiffany is a sales representative with a company and believed she needed to build her personal brand to help grow her book of business. However, she was not sure that social media was really going to help her grow. She reluctantly started using a social ambassador posts from her company. She messaged the marketing team after 10-days and said,
“I have 3 messages in LinkedIn from people I have been connected to on LinkedIn for years who are opportunities for deals. I had no idea they would be opportunities and until my social posts, they really didn’t know what I did for work. Keep the social posts coming please!”
People like to purchase from individuals. As our interactions become more and more digital, this becomes increasingly difficult. Microbranding allows your customers to get to know your company on a personal level. They get a first hand glimpse into your industry expertise. They get to know the faces of your team, and they get the opportunity to establish a relationship. These relationships lead to deals closed and sales growth.
While the digital world has created more competition for sales, it has also created an era of opportunity unlike anything preceding it. We are all connected through digital. The pool of potential clients is larger than ever, and there is a level of influence that we each hold over our personal networks.
It’s time to enable our sales teams to establish personal brands that will help them close more deals, boost your bottom line and bring you into a season of sales growth unlike any you’ve ever seen before.
