In about two weeks ago, I had the opportunity of anchoring a reunion meeting for my Alma matter where I did my undergraduate studies. As the custom is, during most reunion meetings, each person has opportunity to introduce him/herself to the group. The first thing that dawn on me was that many still do not still have a sellable personal elevator speech in this age and time. Personal selling speech is ‘insanely’ important today because it tells people at a glance who you are.

May be one day we will focus on that here. Most people that I listened to confused this great personal marketing tool with what their job titles are and  what their companies are offering.

Personally, though I learnt a great  lesson that day as a professional. Because I assumed this gathering brings together graduates who have left college for years and most of whom are gainfully employed, I played the expert game when it came to my turn to introduce myself.

Ideally on a good day, my elevator speech runs like this: I am Yinka Olaito. I help individuals, organizations to maximize values in their brands/ideas through adequate positioning of their brands to the target audience that can pay premium. My competitive advantage is in developing engaging strategy that turns customers to advocates .I am a multi-skilled individual who combines passion with right skills to make my unique difference. If there is time, I now add those skills I use that you can find here.

With the assumption that I am talking to learned persons that they are, I just used my usual byline above. The chorus of: ha ha, ha ha, caught my attention and I was wondering what I did wrong. The truth I learnt was that, while using your elevator speech, look around at your audience and break it down to their levels incase you may be sounding too big to the people you want to sell yourself to. I learnt that day to look around and see whether I need to simplify my elevator speech based on the environment. I immediately coined a simpler one for audience that may find the above too big to comprehend. So here is what I came out with: I am yinka olaito, I help individuals, organizations create, find opportunities that give them vantage position .Do you agree with me, can you share your own experience in this regard?

Personal branding has become the current buzzword since Tom Peter’s article of 1997.It is no longer news that your personal brand is your face in the marketplace. It is your ability to use your own uniqueness to help others who buy into you. Getting and sustaining attention today is huge work. Many wonder why their efforts are not appreciated as much as they want. The problem with most of such efforts is fabulous self promotion that adds little value to their audience. If your personal branding will get, sustain attention, there are basic principle to follow. The followings are what I believe will aid an individual, These 8 Rs are very vital and I think Rajesh Setty captures them very well while talking about social media. What is true for social media as proposed by Rajesh setty is extremely relevant to Personal Branding. So consider the following opinion of Rajesh Setty with modification, inputs from me to fit this context.

 1. Resources: An individual has to be a good resource point for his market. Aside from this, this resource has to be dedicated to market’s good. Being resourceful will demand that you dedicate considerable time, energy to your personal branding project. Use the resource generously for your network. Remember that a shoddy result here will affect your personal identity.

2. Relevance: Understand that personal branding is not all about you. The resources you share must be highly relevant – not just for you but for your audience.

3. Reach: What is the positive effect of your reach on the target audience? Remember the guy with the highest positive reach will always carry the day.

4. Relationships: When it come to getting and sustaining attention in personal branding; think long term and not short term, Short term approach does not work most times. Long-term relationships provide a huge competitive advantage on this or any other big project. Your audience will appreciate it that you do not just want to milk their cow and run away with it.

 5. Reciprocation: Personal branding is not just one way traffic; everyone should know that by now. It functions better when it flows in a two-way street. You give and you get (and the order is important) Giving does not entitle you for getting anything back but not giving is a sure way of ensuring that you don’t get back anything. Unleash the power of reciprocation by giving first.

6. Results: Personal branding has to show testimonials to build trust and credibility. Past results will influence the willingness of stakeholders to be willing to promote your Brand. Remember that everyone is busy with their own lives. But past results accomplished are often proofs of your relevance.

7. Resonance: You also need to ask yourself if your contributions, impacts resonate with the audience you are seeking attention from. Everyone plays WII FM. Where there is no linkage to them, never expect any attention. If you get attention that way it is a product of chance.

 8. Remarkable: Make your personal brand project stand out. Do not be one of the crowds. Everyone wants to be associated with something unique, different, hot and they sing about their association to family and friends. If you want to really get attention, I guess you should start from here.

In my bid to up my knowledge so I can be of more value to my community, I began a research on necessity of internal/employee branding. It s not  a case that I did not know how vital internal branding is to corporate branding before, but the fact remains that knowledge changes and to be relevant you need to upscale what you know today to be relevant tomorrow. In the course of my research, I stumbled on a research paper by Dr. Harquail and his research paper will form part of my discourse today.

Internal branding is the engine room of any corporate brand. Internal branding strengthens a corporate organization’s position in a competitive market place as well as enhance organization’s effectiveness.   Internal branding is highly essential because like every other branding strategy, internal brand is a form of an attempt to gain further control of niche through shaping internal audience identities. The essence of internal branding is to help employee internalize and truly represent the brand identity desired by corporate brand. It is also aimed at adequately projecting the brand to the customers and other corporate brand’s constituency members. Employee branding helps employee to develop and direct self-images that are in congruent with attributes of the brands they work for. The goal of employee branding is to induce internal branding to create a behavioral and psychological connection between themselves and the brand identity. Without proper internalizing of brand’s idea, concept, it will be difficult for employees to become brand ambassadors for any brand. Expectedly a branded employee is deemed to have the ability to truly represents, projects the corporate brand’s identity through his personal behaviors, appearances while relating with any brand constituent. Work environment has been discovered to aid or mar the effectiveness of internal branding. The management style of the executives, the support and kind of attention they receive from management, management attitudes are some of the thing that will project the level at which internal branding efficiency will be. The level of effectiveness of any internal branding efforts can be greatly marred by executives’ personal attitude and commitment to the success of the corporate brand as a whole. A corporate brand gains better visibility and achieve objectives faster when internal brands behaviors strengthen brand identity as well as promise.

To help achieve better internal branding, management needs to teach ,coach employee about the brand’s identity ,promise of value, expectation, make them understand how to represent the brand in their daily attitudes, offer them opportunity to represent the brand and a continual support to be the best they could be for themselves as well as the corporate brand. A corporate brand that frustrates personal innovation may not get the best of internal branding efforts. There is more to offer in terms of processes and management. Hope to write further next time

Is your employee properly branded?

The advent of “charge and bail” syndrome has made law profession a commodity.The law profession that used to be the right one for an individual has become a commodity and many lawyers now hang around court for a quick service to anyone willing to pay anything. We have maintained that for any professional to be successful today, individuals must embrace branding. Personal branding is now the rock start of commerce. Branding is no longer a backdrop of life but the star of the show.

Reading law can still earn an individual great dividend if personal branding principles are properly applied. Law offers room for specialization in different sub –units like criminology, immigration, human right, marine, marriage and custom etc. Every one of these units is lucrative. It is not in the job but the professional that makes job great. Personal branding will help lawyers to gain the advantage of their own market. It may not happen overnight but it is sure. The followings offer a guideline in personal branding for lawyers.

1. Passion: every successful professional has passion, but it is a great requirement for success in law. Lawyer must ask themselves why they are in the practice. Is it to fulfill family fantasy or to make money? It will take a passionate lawyer to make great name in the field.

2. Visual identity, icon: many do not know that personal branding will help them. It is true that lawyers have to appear in certain apparel when in court, but what are your visual identities ‘saying’ about you? I mean the way you dress, your personal comportment, the files you carry etc. Your corporate branding will tell your niche whether you are there or not.

3. ‘Cramming’ does not work in Branding: Understand the law; digest the content of whatever legal issues you want to be involved in. It is good to cram dates, quotation but when it is obvious that all you do is cramming and that you do not have anything to say, you may lose your identity.

4. Latin is not fashionable again: We can not deny the fact that some legal jargons are crafted and sound great in Latin. But again, speaking right language that everyone understands will enhance your personal branding. Reserve the Latin to the court room if you must use it.

5. Technology: use technology to add value. You can use technology to educate your own niche. Having an online forum where you can educate your client will be great. It is out of place for lawyers not to know how to operate a computer in this age. Personal and corporate websites should be in place to distinguish brand You among the peers.

6. Differentiate, don’t match: when a lawyer tries to match another successful lawyer, the lawyer can only be a copy. Learn to differentiate yourself. It is good to be trained by a successful lawyer, but if all that you do is to imitate your mentor, you will end up a copy and not original.

The other points will be featured in my soon to be released free e-book “Personal Branding For First class professionals”

#The photographs above are that of Chief Gani Fawehinmi and Femi Falana. Both are outstanding lawyers who have caught a niche for themselves as Lawyers in Nigeria.

Banking industry is becoming a war zone. This is not peculiar to any industry though but the crunch has heightened the effects of the war in this industry. In Britain, there is already a great reduction in the lending rate. This may eventually reduce profit after tax. Banking industry provides full financial service to their clients by processing all financial transactions. Banks staffs are saddled with the responsibility of expanding customer base. A lot of similar products are now introduced to the market while millions are now being spent annually on advertisement etc.

For banks to perform better, new skills are now being required from the potential as well as in-house staffs. Over dependence on corporate training sponsorship for individuals will rob individuals of his work, pay.

Aside from the basic skills(like analytical mindset, tough to break in, basic accounting skill , ability to get things done as fast as possible, long hours at work among others)that average worker in bank (banker) is expected to have; ability to differentiate your personal brand will go a long way to help individuals secure his own position despite all.

Our industry research has showed that a strong personal brand for bankers will include all the followings:

1. Relationship skill: Most bank jobs now hinge on individual ability to build a strong relationship skill with friends, colleagues, customers among others. The days of shouting on customers because you are under pressure are gone for good. There is a branch of another bank in the corner. So if your personal brand can offer highest value to your bank in this regard, you can be sure of greater success.

2. Communication skill: More than ever before communication is now the backbone of business. For your brand to stand out, improve on your communication ethics. Learn how to manage personal frustration particularly when you are a point of contact employee. The customers are taking note. Ability to communicate and win deals, customers to your bank will help  brand You.

3. Industry knowledge: Proper understanding of company product is important. Whatever designation you have, you are an ambassador. Most bank employees do not have proper briefing on what goes on in their own company not to talk about the industry at large. You do not have to be in marketing department to know this. Just educate yourself with all the product brochures flying around your branches. This is the age of value acceleration.

4. Creativity: Your personal brand must be creative to enjoy strong emotional attachment among your peers. How can you save cost for the bank? This goes with ability to take initiative when required without exposing yourself to danger.

5. Sales, marketing skill: Most bank workers now have target. This is the amount of deposit individuals must bring in. Developed ability to be a great ‘brand educator’ or specialist will help. You do not have to be a guru, but having a basic knowledge of marketing skills and when to apply each will help your brand among other professionals.

6. Ability to synthesize: this is personal ability to blend, amalgamate responsibility as well as create; produce ways to do the work better will distinguish your personal brand. We must note that all the qualifications and certifications alone will not help without the help of these unique differentiation avenues.

# The other points will be featured in my soon to be released free e-book “Personal Branding For First class professionals.’