“I am
a Consultant.” This declaration is probably heard more these days than the
question “What is your name?” More than at any other time in history, this
economy has compelled educated highly skilled professionals to seek to earn a
living by attempting to ply their trade as consultants. So how does the
“standout” consultant rise above the masses of tenderfoot claimants who are
just temporarily between jobs? Or, even if you are one of the freshly minted
masses, how do you stand on the shoulders of giants to pick the fruitful
opportunities that the old guys have been neglecting.
There
are “Six Keys to Success” that are
essential to building any winning success plan. These attributes are integral
to building your brand as a consultant as well. These concepts have been
adapted to meet the complex demands of modern day enterprise building.
- Information: Become known as a
trustworthy subject matter expert in your field.
- Image: Go out into the world every day and look, sound and act the
way you wish to be perceived.
- Initiative: Always act on the basis of sound planning and good research,
which leads to the pursuit of effective strategy.
- Confidence: Through dedicating your self to winning small victories, you
will be emboldened with the confidence that you've done your best; this
will be the basis of the momentum that propels you to success.
- Capital: The greatest source of future revenue and profits for your
business will be determined by the purchasing and cost decisions you make
today.
- Contacts: You must assemble a winning team. You alone will never
possess all of the skills and abilities required for perfection, nor will
you ever be able to earn every certification or degree needed to answer
every question.
Every
successful entrepreneur needs to gain a general mastery of the “Keys to
Success”. However, there are four specific tactical applications of these
concepts that you can use to help carve out a niche for your consulting brand. You
can immediately incorporate these four strategies into your practice in order to
gain a leg up on the “competition”.
2)
Building Your Brand by Effectively Using Social
Media
In the brave new world of "social networking"
websites, it can be difficult to resist the urge to mix business with pleasure.
We often hear of anecdotal references to people (especially young people in the
early stages of building a career) having negative outcomes because of decision
makers "Googling" their FaceBook pages and reading their random
Twitter "Tweets".
Potential bosses and co-workers are allowed to
bear witness to them engaging in various youthful acts of indiscriminate
activities that can hinder their career and professional mobility. Although
tailoring the privacy settings of your account should suffice to prevent these
intrusions into your online realm, the more purely social sites are not really
the proper setting to build your professional brand in the first place. Unless
of course you are a burgeoning club promoter, top bikini model or outrageous stand-up
comic.
When it comes to career and professional
branding and positioning, LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com is a more relevant social
networking tool. It can be most adequately utilized to establish a well
conceived, powerful and consistent personal branding strategy on the World Wide
Web. LinkedIn allows you to be proactive with your branding strategy, rather
than hoping that the right people see your posts on the other social sites and
that after reading the information they somehow "get" your message.
Of course with any successful branding
strategy, you must take the time to conceive and execute a plan that addresses
your desired outcome. This strategy should achieve the dual goals of
positioning you as an expert and networking with the people who you want to
make aware of your expertise. There are essentially 3
Keys to Creating a Successful Branding Strategy on LinkedIn:
1) Create a
Powerful Profile page.
2) Strategically
Build and Regularly Interact with Your Network of Contacts
3) Join the
Right Groups.
The keys to personal branding that
you will need as you start to use LinkedIn are the same skills you will need as
you pursue any personal branding strategy. As you build your profile on
LinkedIn, remember that you are attempting to position yourself as a
trustworthy subject matter expert in your field. Then as you pursue the task of
building your contacts, keep in mind that you must assemble a winning team in
order to achieve long-term career and professional success.
In summary: You and you alone are
responsible for controlling the quality of your brand. The image you present
and the information you transfer to the public are signs of your dedication to
quality and the soundness of your ideas. There are many vital aspects that contribute
to successfully building a powerful brand for your consulting practice. Whether
you are a long time practicing consultant or a novice to the field, utilizing
these helpful brand building tactics, as well as a general application of the
Six Keys to Success should definitely help you stand out from the crowd in this
economic environment.
Vince Rogers is the Principal Change Agent at Vince Rogers & Associates www.vincerogers.biz
Vince
Rogers & Associates works with businesses, non-profits and high achieving
individuals to formulate winning “Success
Plans”.
The
foundation for each success plan is tailored around optimizing the management
and mastery of the “Six Keys to Success”:
Confidence; Capital; Contacts; Initiative; Information and Image.
His books
"The
Very Best of Disguised Limits" book are available to buy or download free @ www.lulu.com
The complete article Building Your Brand as a Consultant by
Utilizing the “Keys to Success” Is
featured as the †Cutting Edge Topic in the 2013 Pfeiffer Annual: Consulting
(ISBN:
978-1-1182-7379-1)
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