September 20, 2012

What’s their one sentence about you?

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing

Yesterday, I was sitting at Caribou Coffee, chatting with a business colleague.  As it always happens at Caribou, several people that either knew me or the guy I was with walked in…and walked over to the table to say hello.

Most of them were already with someone else and I got an awesome lesson in branding.  In almost every case, the person who knew one of us made an introduction that sounded like this:  Bob, this is Drew, he’s THE (fill in the blank) guy in town.

Now, we’ve all heard about personal branding and having our :30 elevator speech.  But this is THEIR elevator speech about you.  Typically, it’s much shorter than :30 (maybe we should take a cue?) and gets right to the point.  They are, in one sentence, summing up your unique offering.

Or not.

If they just state your title or your name — you probably haven’t left that significant of an impression on them.   Start paying attention to this.  If you get the blaise introduction — you need to do something different to plant in their head a stronger statement about who you are.

How do you do that?  Here are some ideas:

  • Start introducing yourself in a single sentence.  “Hi, I’m Sue and I’m the “how to save money on your health insurance” expert in town.”
  • Have a title that makes it easy to remember and label you.  (Over at McLellan Marketing, we’ve got a Warden, Brand Warrior, Sgt. of Strategy, etc.!)
  • Change your e-mail signature to reflect how you want to be known.
  • Use the language in your company name (like local business that video guy), Twitter handle, or on Facebook.

Bottom line — naturally, you will  influence the way someone introduces you the slow way (behavior, results)  but there’s no reason you can’t give it a purposeful nudge as well!

My IowaBiz post from late May 2010.

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