Storytelling: My Personal Brand – Death of the Resume

Michele Hudnall June 13, 2018 0 Brand, Marketing

S Y N O P S I S

We have all had the opportunity to prepare for the half – full day interview with a half dozen individuals in various roles and levels of leadership in an organization, or maybe it was to land a new client as a consultant. Each of these meetings are short on time and as a senior consultant, you are posed with conveying the right information, persuade each person you are what they seek in adding value to the team and also learn another facet about the organization. This will be performed repetitively, with passion and enthusiasm, without being rushed and closing ON TIME!

The key is to be concise and memorable, while you also learn too.

As a marketer this sounds an awful lot like branding, positioning and storytelling – the same thing I’ve done for my products / services / solutions most of my career. There are many articles and books dedicated to personal branding and as a marketer this should come naturally, but it is more difficult than expected. I could hear former colleagues and mentors whispering in my ear, “Just whiteboard it”.

Your brand is what people say about you
when you are not in the room.
– Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon

Technology is no longer the differentiator in B2B marketing. Your website is your media asset to the market who wish to engage with you, but they seek content with value to engage. They are seeking partners and thought leaders who can help them solve challenges that will drive and add-value to their business.

Storytelling is the most memorable way to present your brand, position, capabilities and value to gain the engagement of your audience. The best way to tell a story is on the back of a napkin or whiteboard, it illustrates you are a thought leader and can have a personalized conversation. The original whiteboard was the UPS Whiteboard Campaign in 2007. These were a series of 30 second messages, succinct and memorable – we all remember them.

An all time master storyteller was Steve Jobs with a clear articulation of brand and separation from campaign messaging and product positioning. While Steve did not use a whiteboard, his presentation style is summarized in the book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, and this video. This style takes practice and feels uncomfortable.

I find that when I feel uncomfortable, that is the right strategy to follow. Customers don’t want to watch anyone present a multitude of techno, product slideware or walk through a resume job by job. Someone who speaks conversationally is someone a customer will engage with and trusts when you have to be eye-to-eye, pen in hand, afterall, they are seeking a partner and relationship.

I started my career as a consultant and am much more comfortable having a whiteboard conversation. Storytelling requires practice to be succinct, the trait I work on with every story I put together. I have been challenged more than once to “just whiteboard it”, instead of producing slideware. It is a bit more than just standing at the whiteboard and drawing.

Positioning, whether it be yourself or a product / solution / service, is the same. It is the art of conveying to your audience value and leaving with the feeling about your brand in the manner you desire. The story can be broken down into four key components:

Why
What / Who
Validation
Close

I will use my “one pager” as the example for this post.

WHY

This is the most uncomfortable shift for most, starting with WHY. Simon Sinek explains it well in his TED Talk. Your audience doesn’t require you to start with your long list of background credentials or a case study of numbers to justify the discussion.

Simply provide the statement of value upfront. Begin with the end in mind. This should be your very short elevator statement, not the explanation of it, just the statement, in their terms of value. If you have to explain it, it is not understandable. We are all wired for the Tweet to capture attention. The response you seek is a, YES, let’s discuss further.

I lead with:

I help companies tell their story and align sales
and marketing to drive the revenue engine

This captures my strengths and passion for:

Branding and positioning and telling the company’s story in terms of customer value
Sales and marketing alignment with a common goal of driving business value, revenue

The sales and marketing misalignment is the most written about divide most organizations struggle to overcome. I do not need to state the obvious or the lead with pain, lead with the value you bring to the table for the position you are seeking.

The goal is a succinct statement and to further the conversation.

WHO / WHAT

Now move to introduce who you are (in this example) or what the solution is (in a product example). What makes you unique, not a laundry list of your credentials or product features. This is the unique value proposition that you offer the audience.

This is where I use a picture and tell mini stories that I believe are relevant to the situation. This is my passion and what I do in my sleep. This is how I describe WHO I am and my unique differentiator:

A marketing leader with a rare combination of technical, sales enablement, product management and marketing strategy . . . . .

I have had the opportunity to sit at all sides of the table

This is my whiteboard picture that I speak to with a brief mention of each of these four key pillars to my career success. This is a succinct mention and in their terms as to the value of a marketing leader who is grounded in technology, has been an industry influencer and has also owned the product line.

Discovering your unique value proposition requires getting out of your own head and office. It requires hearing what your customers and/or colleagues (in this example) say about the value and impact you brought to the previous situations.

This will take time to hone in on and will evolve with time. Listen when others react to your value proposition and positioning statement, perform it indirectly when you can with those who know you best. Do they respond positively? Does it take explanation? Ask questions about the impact they seek and assess your ability to deliver.

In my research, I discovered a pattern with endorsements I had received, I continue to read on the topic and I took the responses of clients and potential clients. Potential clients honed in on the value proposition enthusiastically enough to tell me why, while I listened, took note and decided which story of validation would best fit the situation.

VALIDATION

In Simon’s talk, he closes with HOW the solution works, but I stray a little at this point and provide a few proof points and stories to my strengths and passion. Customers want to hear how other’s have solved common challenges and how you have been a part of that team.

Always be succinct and stay to stories that are most relevant to the current situation. I admit, being succinct is a challenge for me and thus why practice, practice, practice is important. The last thing you want is to sound rushed and not able to close on time.

I include metrics that illustrate business value, remember the challenge I covertly opened with is the misalignment of sales and marketing. Marketing measures number of things and sales is measured on revenue. I want to illustrate the business impact that resulted from branding, positioning, executing, etc.

CLOSE

I close with a page two of HOW I would approach the situation and provide personal endorsements, this is how I want to be remembered – how others speak about our work together. I hand it out and use it as a leave behind to wrap up the story.

The three words and experiences I chose out of my endorsements that I want to be remembered for are my:

PASSION – Enthusiasm for telling their story and aligning sales and marketing to drive the revenue engine.

IMAGINATION – Creativity in telling the story, bringing products / solutions / services to market and delivering customer and business impacting value.

COURAGE – Embracing a challenge and taking the risk to lead change that delivers results.

LET’S WRAP THIS UP

Expectations have changed, regardless of the audience in a persuasive presentation. This example is the start of the evolution of my personal brand. I have been using this approach for a long period of time for products / solutions / services and a shorter period of time applying it to myself.

Applying it to myself is the creation of my personal brand and accomplishes two things:

Tells my story, identifies my unique differentiator and illustrates the business impact delivered.
Acts as an illustration of HOW and WHAT my passion and strengths for marketing deliver.

Brand and positioning are the foundation to go-to-market execution. Many are realizing this as marketing is taking a bigger role as the growth leader in many organizations. Personal branding and positioning is growing in relevance as employers and clients evaluate for delivery value – exactly as their customers do.

TAKE AWAYS

As marketers preparing to lead your organization to growth or in working to define your personal brand, I would offer the following advice:

RESEARCH – Perform the market research to understand your market, competition and customers.

BRAND – How do you want to be remembered and spoken about? What do you stand for personally or as an organization? As an organization, build it into the culture of the organization.

POSITION – Define the positioning of yourself or each of your products / solutions / services. What do they do, for who, for what value and what makes them unique? Positioning is different than your brand.

SEGMENTATION – Who are you selling to? Who is your audience and what are their pains and what do they find of value? Focus, target and personalize.

GO-TO-MARKET – Select the segments and use cases that will deliver the greatest return. Focus to target the audience and personalization to the customer journey or your situation.

This advice is about getting back to basics and setting a foundation from which to execute consistently. Misalignment of sales and marketing stems from the measurements of revenue versus number of things, respectively. However, it is more deeply rooted in the missing, out of date or inconsistent foundational elements.

So what about my social accounts, activity, blogs, etc.?

This is the activation of your personal brand, much like the execution of marketing tactics. The activation and execution of tactics leads to confusion and inconsistency without first defining your foundation. This is not to say that you need to get into analysis paralysis of research before moving forward. It is a constant process of defining, executing, assessing and refining. A post for another day.

The absolute key to success is consistency. Every refinement requires currency updates to your outlets of external presence. Refinements are easier to make than 360 degree pivots, choose pivots wisely for yourself and your products / solutions / services.

In closing, I started out by stating when I feel the most uncomfortable, that proves to be the best strategy. Why? I’m doing something different and when you put the customer and their values first, you have greater success.

Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

Defining and illustrating your personal brand is the same process we as marketers go through for products / solutions / services. It is your blueprint and strategy to your professional growth and success.

The chronological resume is now my “Data Sheet” of facts.

* * * * *

Now I ask you: How do you tell your story?

Share your comments below or connect with me!

Michele Hudnall