Words from Web Worker

Paul Sloane recently wrote about becoming an Ideas carrier at Blogging Innovation. To become an ideas carrier you need three things: An interest in the challenges that other people face. You can find out about these with intelligent, sensitive questions. Most people are happy to open up about the business issues they face. An open, inquiring mind. You need to be on the look out for new ways to do things and fresh ideas. The willingness to offer the ideas, put them into context and communicate them in a positive manner. You can build your success in business with a combination of three things. Firstly your understanding of the needs of the key people you meet. Secondly your industry knowledge & contacts with other people. Thirdly your imagination and ability to spot connections. You can construct your own unique selling proposition with this combination. By carrying innovative ideas from one place to another you can help your customers, build your relationships & advance...

How do you answer the question – “what do you do?” If you attend an event where you are meeting strangers, you will be asked this question – ‘so what do you do?’.  At this point do you say state the features of the service you provide?…e.g.  I am an accountant. Or do you state the benefits of the service you provide? E.g. I help my clients pay the legal minimum amount of tax, not a penny more, not a penny less. So, which is it? You need to state the benefits of the service you provide, in one short ‘sound bite’ or tag line. E.g. “I help professional advisors achieve better results for less effort” OR “I help professional advisors generate more profitable revenue for the same amount of time”

Think cars: You never hear an advertiser say, “Buy my car, it’s good for everything!” Volvos are safe. BMWs are fun. Saturns are easy to buy. Just as successfully branded products offer specific benefits, successfully branded careerists offer specific talents. You get to the top by being the best, and you can’t be the best at everything. One of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, professor agrees — and has the research to prove it. In his study of typecasting in Hollywood entitled “Robust Identities or Nonentities,” he found that specialization leads to longer, more productive careers. Contrary to conventional Hollywood wisdom, big bucks come most often to people who become known for a certain type of role. He finds that typecasting, as this practice is called, is also a moneymaker in the business world, where the hiring system is set up to reward those who differentiate themselves. “Headhunters are specialized,” he says, “and they look for something they can package and sell.” General...

What's the future of You? It's over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That's not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It's full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand. As you scope out the path your "career" will take, remember: the last thing you want to do is become a manager. Like "résumé," "manager" is an obsolete term. It's practically synonymous with "dead end job." What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocative projects. When you look at the progression of a career constructed out of projects, directionality is not only hard to track - Which way is up? - but it's also ...

What's loyalty to You? Everyone is saying that loyalty is gone; loyalty is dead; loyalty is over. But, I do not agree with that. I think loyalty is much more important than it ever was in the past. A 40-year career with the same company once may have been called loyalty; from here it looks a lot like a work life with very few options, very few opportunities, and very little individual power. That's what we used to call indentured servitude. Today loyalty is the only thing that matters. But it isn't blind loyalty to the company. It's loyalty to your colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers, and loyalty to yourself. I see it as a much deeper sense of loyalty than mindless loyalty to the Company Z logo. I know this may sound like selfishness. But being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to act selfishly -- to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself. Of course, the other side of the selfish coin is ...

What's the real power of You? If you want to grow your brand, you've got to come to terms with power -- your own. The key lesson: power is not a dirty word!  In fact, power for the most part is a badly misunderstood term and a badly misused capability. I'm talking about a different kind of power than we usually refer to. It's not ladder power, as in who's best at climbing over the adjacent bods. It's not who's-got-the-biggest-office-by-six-square-inches power or who's-got-the-fanciest-title power.  It's influence power. It's being known for making the most significant contribution in your particular area. It's reputational power. If you were a scholar, you'd measure it by the number of times your publications get cited by other people. If you were a consultant, you'd measure it by the number of CEOs who've got your business card in their Rolodexes. (And better yet, the number who know your beeper number by heart.)  Getting and us...

What's the pitch for You? So it's a cliche: don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle. it's also a principle that every corporate brand understands implicitly, from Omaha Steaks's through-the-mail sales program to Wendy's "we're just regular folks" ad campaign. No matter how beefy your set of skills, no matter how tasty you've made that feature-benefit proposition, you still have to market the bejesus out of your brand -- to customers, colleagues, and your virtual network of associates. For most branding campaigns, the first step is visibility. If you're General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler, that usually means a full flight of TV and print ads designed to get billions of 'impressions' of your brand in front of the consuming public. If you're brand You, you've got the same need for visibility -- but no budget to buy it. So how do you market brand You? There's literally no limit to the ways you can go about enhancing your pro...

What makes You different/special? Start right now: as of this moment you're going to think of yourself differently! You're not an "employee" of General Motors, you're not a "staffer" at General Mills, or you're not a "worker" at General Electric. You don't "belong to" any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular "function." You're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description. Starting today you are a brand. You're every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop. To start thinking like your own favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my product or service does that makes it different?  Give yourself the traditional 15-words-or-less contest challenge. Take the time to write down your answer. And then take the time to read...

It's a new brand world.   That cross-trainer you're wearing -- one look at the distinctive swoosh on the side tells everyone who's got you branded. That coffee travel mug you're carrying -- ah, you're a Starbucks woman! Your T-shirt with the distinctive Champion "C" on the sleeve, the blue jeans with the prominent Levi's rivets, the watch with the hey-this-certifies-I-made-it icon on the face, your fountain pen with the maker's symbol crafted into the end ... You're branded, branded, branded, branded. It's time for me -- and you -- to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that's true for anyone who's interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world. Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head market...

Apple Computer, now celebrating 30 years of innovation, has revolutionized the way we use computers and listen to music. Now its charismatic co-founder, Steve Jobs, has transformed the corporate pitch. Anyone who has watched a Jobs keynote will tell you he is one of the most extraordinary speakers in Corporate America. Jobs learned a long time ago that a leader must be a company evangelist and brand spokesperson. He is magnificent. But whether you are pitching a hot gizmo, such as the iPod, or a hot sub sandwich, a story is a story and your goal is to win customers. Here are Jobs' five keys to a dazzling presentation. Sell the Benefit Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience. Instead of focusing on mind-numbing statistics, as most technologists tend to do, Jobs sells the benefit. For example, when introducing a 30 GB iPod, he clearly explains what it means to the consumer -- users can carry 7,500 songs, 25,000 photos, or up to 75 hours of video. In January ...

The other week I had the pleasure of speaking to a large group of luxury-home builders. When the conference organizer first contacted me, I thought, "Why would high-end custom-home builders want to listen to a speaker discuss business communications skills?" I soon learned that homebuilders are pitching themselves and their projects all the time -- whether it's proposing a project to a developer, communicating their vision to a buyer, or asking the bank for a loan. These master craftspeople need help crafting the story behind their brand. Make no mistake, we all represent a brand. It's the brand of you. How you talk, walk, and look reflects on that brand. Do you come across as trustworthy, confident, and competent, or do you fail to captivate your listeners? As I told the custom-home builders, your work, references, and portfolio set the stage, but when you take "the stage," you are the sole experience a listener has with your brand. Whether you're pit...

Really what you’re saying here is that you want to use your blog to 'sell yourself' instead of to sell a product or ad space. Here are a few things to work hard at: Build trust - increasingly marketers are finding that people want to know & be in some sort of trusting relationship with those that they buy products or services from. This is particularly true for a personal service like consulting. Be open about your agenda and about what you do and don’t know. Talk both about your successes and failures. If all you do is use a blog for ’spin’ you’ll present as too good to be true. Be personal - building on the last point - one way to make a deeper connection with potential clients is to show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human injecting humor, a photo or two of yourself and showing your personality. Use story - I find readers respond very well to story on blogs. Stories of my own experience, stories of...

Having a good professional reputation is an obvious key to success, but many people don't take the time to nurture it. Or they don't know how. I find it helpful to think about a reputation as a personal brand. Developing your own unique brand is considered not a luxury but an essential for future employability and success.  The basis which guides the development of a brand, also applies to individuals as well as to products and organizations.  To get you started on your journey of ongoing individual brand development, contemplate these three concepts, which form a similar acronym:  Dependability A good brand is consistent. With a good brand, there are never any unpleasant surprises. You can count on a brand to help you quickly sort through an unlimited list of options to identify "a sure thing." In the old days, there was a sales adage that went something like this: "Nobody ever got in trouble for purchasing IBM." If you aren't old enough to recall exa...