Transcript
Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teamsâŚteams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real-world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Today's part two of a two-part series with Johnathan Maltby. Last week we spoke really heavily around the importance of creating a personal brand, not just for your own career and your own alignment, but for the business that you work in. Whether it's your business or you work as part of a larger business, but most importantly for the outcomes that you create for your customers. We spent a lot of time really unpacking how value, how credibility and how visibility are just crucial in building your own personal brand. But we didn't jump into how we do it. So that's why we've welcomed Johnathan back today for part two. And for those who missed part one last week, I absolutely encourage you to jump back to last week's episode and listen in to exactly why a brand's important. But if you wanted to know a little bit more about Johnathan before we jump in, he is a business and career coach, lots of them in this market, but not many who specialise in personal branding, which is exactly what Johnathan does. So he's helped hundreds of people in the last decade or so go from anywhere from little micro changes to full transformations in terms of how they see themselves. And I think the important takeaway here is that they've extended their capabilities and their performance as a result of this beyond what they would have on their own or what they believed was even possible on their own. So Johnathan, he has a whole lot of tools and techniques and I know he's going to reference some of those today that help you cut through all that noise in your head, that voice that just sits there. Sometimes it's positive, but sometimes, and I'm certainly guilty of this at times myself, is it can be negative and a little bit limiting in terms of where you go. So he'll cut through that. He has a lot of experience doing that, which is why we've got him here today. Also, he's got a really nice mantra that resonates with me. It's not what you know, it's not who you know. It is who knows you. So, Johnathan, welcome back to part two of our series together. Lovely to have you on deck again today.
So before we jump in, would you mind, for those who weren't listening last week, a really quick introduction into yourself and why you're successful.
Johnathan Maltby:
Alright. My name's Johnathan Maltby. I am a business and career coach. I love helping people find clarity in themselves, clarity in their purpose and clarity and their path, so that they can design a fulfilling career and find work that really gives them meaning. I have such a varied background that I've been in the last 20 years. For the last ten years, I've been running my coaching practice. I love getting into branding and I love helping people really understand that they're probably so much more than they ever dreamed possible. And what I find with a lot of people is they don't realise that there is a river of gold running inside of them at all times. And if they can tap into that river of gold, if they can bring that out, if they can brand that, wow, you're going to see some massive changes. And one of the things that I love doing is helping people unpack all that and connect all the dots to create a really powerful impact in their lives.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, excellent. And for me, I certainly wasn't one in the early stages of my career. I'm 41, I'm 22 years into my professional career. I wasn't one who invested heavily in a personal brand. But it's funny how time can really evolve your thinking. And for me personally now, it's actually one of the most important things I work with across myself, across the leaders I work with, and then the teams as well. So before we jump into how we're creating our personal brands, can you remind everyone again why having a personal brand is just so important?
Johnathan Maltby:
I think in a crowded world where there's a lot of people potentially doing what is perceived to be the same things as you're doing, you have to find the differentiator. It's not what you do, but it's often the how you do it and what you bring to the table in terms of your delivery could be your personality, could be other aspects of that. All that wisdom that you have or sometimes it's even your quirks, you know, that you can bring into that and embrace as part of your brand and your story. And it's how you show up. And I think in a crowded world, in a noisy world, in a noisy environment and industry, your brand, I think, is the biggest differentiator. And when you understand and you can harness the power of that brand, not only can you do amazing things for your customers, for your business, but also for your personal life too. And that satisfaction that you can get from living your best career, as I call it.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, fantastic. You mentioned a buzzword in there that is definitely in vogue and that's storytelling. In fact, I think it was episode 58 we had with Akeem Shannon. He's the co-founder and creator of Flipstik, and some fantastic stories in there around storytelling. And how, whilst we may not all be great storytellers, we all have stories to tell. So certainly an element of personal branding, but today, what we'd like to focus on is how you go about defining and building your personal brand. And I think it's really easy to understand the importance of a personal brand, but how we can practically create one for ourselves or set the right culture or the right framework for our team to create compelling personal brands is really important. So for you, how would you go about creating a brand for yourself and for your teams?
Johnathan Maltby:
That's a really, really good question and something that I've spent a good many years kind of formulating and putting together. And I think to really create a good, strong personal brand, you have to first and foremost become what I call an authority on yourself. Really become more self conscious, not in a negative way, but becoming more conscious of yourself in a positive way. And that means unpacking yourself and figuring out all of the amazing things that you bring to the table. So I call these like the six pillars of your professional identity. Your professional identity is the foundation for your brand. You can't build a brand until you know what exactly you're building it on and your professional identity as the foundation. So I'm happy to talk about those six pillars if you're interested.
Ben Wright:
And the reason I think this is so important is because it's not something that a lot of us have spent conscious time building. So if there's a framework out there that's easy and that we can implement, then, yeah, I think it's really valuable.
Johnathan Maltby:
Definitely, definitely. Well, so there's what I call that six pillars of your professional identities. The first thing you want to do is figure out, what am I going to call myself? Because this is a really important thing. Human beings love to work with labels. It's how we make sense of the world. If we pick something up and we look at it and weâre going, I know what this is. It's great. I know how to use it and I know its relevance and value in my life. But if I pick up something and I go, I don't really know what this is. I don't know how it's relevant in my life. Well, it's probably going to end up in the too hard basket. I'm going to miss an opportunity there. The same thing comes of how you're going to pitch yourself as part of your brand. What are you calling yourself? What are you going to call yourself? And you're not going to call yourself your job title, by the way, because, ladies and gents, you're not your job title, are you? No. You've got to think bigger than that. But it's got to be something that can connect with your audience, something that's relatable. So that's the first thing you want to talk about is, hey, what I am a, I think that's a really good place to start.
The next thing is what do you do exactly? And as I said, I think in the last episode, you know, people don't care about what you do as much as you care about what you can do for them. So the second part of your brand or your identity is figuring out what do I do for others. I call this creating like a customer centric brand message, putting your customer at the centre of the message and then wrapping your brand around that because that's what they're listening for. They're going, what is your relevance in my life? How can you create a better situation for me? How can you make me feel better or create that better situation? So what do you do is really about the problems that you can solve for your customers. I can help you go from this state to this state.
The next part of the brand is really understanding what are my capabilities, you know, what allows me to be able to solve those problems. And this is where a lot of people really get stuck because they only know the surface level of their capabilities, but they don't realise there's a whole gold mine sitting underneath there. And when I work with my clients, one of the things I love to do is unpack all of those sort of things and get to the real good, solid gold that's sitting in there. The ones that can really make a change, not only for your career, but for your customers as well, so figuring out what your capability is.
The next thing is, do you have an area of specialisation within your field? Is there an area that you have a great depth of skill and experience in? And you find that specialists tend to get sought after more than generalists, and they're also paid a lot more as well. I mean, if you think about it this way, right? You got to go to the doctor, you go to your GP and he says, oh, we've got to run some scans. Oh, this is outside of my field. I got to send you to a specialist and you go, first thing you're going to go, how much is this going to cost me? Because the specialist tends to command the next level of salary and respect as well.
The next thing you want to think about as part of your brand is, well, what is my value? And this is where a lot of people really get stuck, is going, well, what makes me valuable? And if you don't understand your value, you end up often underselling yourself. That means often being stuck in jobs below your capability or not being able to offer your customers the true value that you can bring to the table in terms of whether you're selling a product or a service. It's a means to an end. You know, you've got to think about what is that going to help my customer achieve? What is the value and what is my value in delivering that solution. As they say, people don't do business with businesses, they do business with people. So you ought to think about what makes me valuable. Your value is really associated or attached to the outcomes, whether it be a create a different situation or create a different feeling within your customer as well. You know, most times people want to buy something or change a situation because they want to change something internal inside of them. You know, they want to change something. They want to feel better or have that excitement or have extra time to spend with their kids. So this product or widget is going to enable you to do that. That's what they're really buying, is a sense of feeling, and the situation is something that produces that sense of feeling as well.
The next thing you want to think about is your pillar, is, what is my goal? You've always got to have a goal. Always got to have some sort of goal. If you don't have a goal, you end up just being on autopilot. You drift or stagnate both in your business or in your team as well. So getting together those kind of things is really, really important. And Ben, one of the things that I absolutely love to do is going into organisations and working with their teams, first of all, on an individual basis, unpacking them, figuring out what are the key aspects of your brand, your professional identity, creating that brand message, that's the first thing helping people realise those sort of things. Becoming an authority on themselves, that's where the power comes from. Then the next thing is taking all those individual brand messages and amalgamating them together into one, like super brand. That becomes the brand for your team and the culture for your team as well. And that's when you go out to your customers, you've got a unified sense that you're bringing the whole team with you as well. And it's a great way for building culture with inside an organisation where people feel, hey, I understand what my value is, I understand what I've got greater purpose. I understand where I fit now within my team as well, because somebody's worked with me to figure out what my brand is. And when you put those brands together, amazing and powerful things can happen within an organisation. It also helps you boost staff morale and hang on to your staff as well.
Ben Wright:
Okay, great. So we had, I think, six pillars there.
Johnathan Maltby:
Yes.
Ben Wright:
There was a lot of information in there, so let's just go back to that top line summary, if that's okay. Could you please rehash those six pillars so everyone can write them down if they were busy listening?
Johnathan Maltby:
All right, excellent. First one, your professional label. What are you calling yourself? Number two, what do you actually do? In other words, what are the problems that you solve for your customers? Number three, what is your capability to solve those problems? These are your skills. Number four, what is your area of specialisation? So within your field, what do you do exceptionally well? Number five is, what value do you bring for your customers? How can you transform their pain to gain through your product or your service or whatever it is that you're selling? And number six, what are your goals? What do you want to achieve for yourself, and what are your goals for your customers as well? And those are the six pillars of your professional identity that becomes your brand.
Ben Wright:
Excellent. I really like that because it's a practical and chunky way to go about building out your personal brand. And for those who missed writing them down, we have show notes that transcripts are really easy to find. They're on the podcast, whatever platform you're listening to. Or you can go to strongersalesteams.com/podcast and you'll find transcripts there as well. To add flavour to what you've said, I think there's a really important piece here around the outcomes that you're providing with your customers. But in particular, we spoke about being specialised in terms of our specialty and knowing our goals. Without question, the salespeople that I have worked with, and there are hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of salespeople that I've worked with over the last 20 years, those who come across as having the strongest brand know their secret spot, where they are really passionate about. The bit where they are, they are often passionate about it just because they're good at it, or it may be a strong personal interest to them, but it's their spin or their little secret around how they go about building relationships. And it doesn't even have to be related to the product. Certainly for me, mine has always been having a level of genuine care that has stuck with me since I was 19 years old and started my first professional sales role where having that genuine want to build relationships and though I drive hard and teams that have worked with me know that I drive really hard, is that there's a level of care that goes beyond that to make sure they succeed. So I drive hard and I work hard for customers because I want to make sure that they get good results. And when you know that, and certainly I think those six pillars are a way to find that when you know it and can articulate it, that is on its own, a way to have a level of competitive advantage over others, because you just have such a strong presence of a genuine willingness to be in that conversation. So I really encourage people to take those six pillars, and certainly at the end, number six, there is, if you can get your goals right with a special focus on how they add value and outcomes for customers, then you're doing really well.
So, Johnathan, what about if we were to now take this from an individual level and talk about how as leaders, sales leaders or business leaders, we can then create the environment for our teams to build a really strong personal brand.
Johnathan Maltby:
I think taking these concepts and thinking what culture do I want to create within my team and how can my brand almost demonstrate the culture that I want in my team as well? I think that's really kind of important, too. So every time you interact with somebody and the words you say in your interactions and your behaviours, all those kind of things, they create a perception of you. All right? And your job is being, managing your brand is to be able to influence people's perception in the way that you want them to see you so you can achieve your goals. And perception management is such a key part of a brand. So, you know, you're going to go into a sales meeting, for example, you want to think, right, I want my sales team to think this about me and this is going to solidify and further reinforce my brand. How do I need to act, think, behave? That does that. And how can I model best practice behaviour so my team can take that and go out and do that? I remember being in sales teams years ago and if I think back to two incredible sales managers that I had, branding was absolutely everything for them. They were always questioning me, you know, how do you want to show up, how do you want to be seen, how do you want to reflect our company's values, how do you want to achieve your goals, for example, as well. And they're making me really kind of conscious of these sort of things. And those managers that really invested in me as a person and my brand and my skills and my capability, they were the best managers I ever had. Not the ones that were so focused almost on crunching the numbers, being the performance. It was investing in me because that made me motivated to reach those targets as well. So that's probably the best thing is be conscious of what your brand is doing inside your organisation and is it creating the environment that you want your people to have in order to make them be successful within your business.
Ben Wright:
So if we're really narrowing that down, what we're talking about is creating the environment that you want your team to flourish in. So that comes from setting the example in terms of how you behave. And the second piece there is being prepared to invest the time and the conscious presence or the conscious thought in how you can help your teams grow and look. No doubt Johnathan, I've worked with a large number of sales leaders over the last decade and particularly over the last twelve months. I've worked with some in multibillion dollar revenue organisations and there is without question a general appetite from leaders around wanting to make sure that their teams grow. And I've worked with some fantastic leaders who have me involved or my team involved in their business to help them do that. For those leaders that have the will to be wanting to create that environment where personal branding can grow, but they're still working on the skill to be able to create that, are there any tips you've got as to how they can actually create that environment? As to how they can ensure that they spend the time helping their teams build out personal brands?
Johnathan Maltby:
I think it's really getting to understand what are the drivers and the motivators of the individuals within your team. Why are they showing up? What do they want to get from this role and how can you enable them to do that? I think it's really having conversations with people and getting to find out the human behind the job I think is really, really important. When I think of when I've thrived in sales roles, it's because my sales manager has taken an active interest in me. They've got to know me as a person and what my drivers and my motivators are. And they want to know how can I play a part in helping you become successful? Because if your team is successful, you're successful as a sales manager as well. And that's going to make you look good for your boss as well. So it's going to create that perception that flows all the way up the chain of command and you want to look good for your boss too. Look good for your boss by empowering your team to be the best that they can be and that is really understanding what their brand is and what they want to get out of their roles as well and being there to support them on that journey.
Ben Wright:
It's interesting. We spend, well, the best salespeople I know spend so much time preparing for their customer meetings and really trying to understand the value they can provide and then the outcomes that result from that for their customers. But sometimes we forget that that's actually an approach that works for our team as well. Just by investing some time into showing that you genuinely care. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. A one liner I live by and repeat constantly that by doing that as leaders, that is all about creating the environment for our teams to grow. For me, I'd love to extend that though to people within a team. So if you're part of a team, you don't have to be the leader, but you're wanting to help grow your personal brand and those around you, then investing time into those you work with is equally as important because no doubt that there are lots of ways to learn and we certainly spend a lot of our time trying to learn from leaders within our business. So when we can learn from peers and that's them learning from us, or in reverse us learning from them, that becomes really impactful in how we develop as individuals. So thank you, Johnathan. Really like the six pillars, really like the focus around creating the environment for our teams to flourish in their personal branding, but also investing the time into them to succeed. For those who would like to learn a little bit more about you, where can they go to do so?
Johnathan Maltby:
Probably the first place is go to my website, johnmaltby.com.au. I've also launched a new career management program or class that's at careermasteryclass.com. and obviously LinkedIn. LinkedIn is probably my favourite tool to use when it comes to connecting with people, helping them build their brand on LinkedIn as well. I do a lot of brand building on LinkedIn, not just in terms of your profile and all that sort of stuff, but the actions you take on LinkedIn and the perception that you want people to have. So go and visit those three platforms. Love to connect with people.
Ben Wright:
Thank you Johnathan for your time today. Very grateful. We've had a couple of jam packed episodes with some really chunky outcomes that I really encourage everyone to grab the transcript if you haven't been able to note them down, or to get out and practise those six pillars on yourself. Even if it's when you have a moment of quiet or you're on your commute home, even if that be from the home office to the rest of your house.
So that's it for today. For everyone listening. Keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.
How Do We Build the Personal Brands of Our Teams to Generate Customer Value, with Johnathan Maltby
