101 Best Sales and Marketing Ideas
IDEA 65:
DRAMATICALLY MEMORABLE
No doubt you work at creating a positive persona and profile for yourself with your customers. If you do so, they will think of you as professional. They may know other details about you too: where you live, something of your family, the fact that you have a new car, or recently went on holiday to American. If customers have a general picture of you as a person, it may help enhance your image, but can you do more?
Idea
This was prompted by the television news station Channel News Asia….
As I write this I am appearing regularly on an overseas morning program on ChannelNewsAsia to talk about building a successful career. This is linked to my book Detox Your Career (which is also published by Cyan, and sets out an action plan of active career management to help you survive and thrive in the competitive workplace. Buy one soon –sorry, another plug and an example of persistence!). There are posters in bookshops in Singapore and other parts of South East Asia featuring my picture, and the description “ChannelNewsAsia’s Career Guru”. Fame at last? Hardly! It is doubtless transient, but such things do have an effect on your personal profile. I write books not only because it earns me money, but also because the profile it gives me makes it easier to sell other things that I do.
Matter much more routine than brief appearance on television can do this job if you tell people about them. You might run a marathon for charity, write an article for a trade journal, join an industry body committee, speak at a technical conference in your field, or more: all such things can be worthwhile, and assist in building a profile that facilitates your selling successfully.
Such things may be directly related to your product, job, and organization, or more general. You can seek out opportunities that match well, but even peripheral things can assist. A very difficult book of mine was published just before this one –a humorous book of travel writing, titled First Class –At Last! (Watch out for it) –and one of the things I have been thinking about as I plan promotional activities for its publication is how I can link it to other aspects of my work. Such links all help. Enough plugs; point made.
In practice
- The starting point is to think, honestly, about how you are seen now.
- Then consider activities that would boost your image in whatever area needs strengthening. Even if something like television is an impossible dream, you can find smaller things that can have the desired effect.