YOU BE YOUR OWN BRAND AMBASSADOR!

YOU be your own brand ambassador! This is my vision at Savoir Faire and through this I hope to convey its importance to each one of us.

If you want to get to the top of the career ladder, you need to build your personal brand! The way you project yourself is how your brand value will be worth. And when you are a representative of a well renowned company, the manner in which you represent your company's brand is important. In a business pie chart, 55 per cent judgement happens in the first 10 seconds of meeting someone and it's all visual i.e. body language, grooming and dressing followed by 38 per cent conversation skills, fine command over the language and the pitch of your voice. Only 7 per cent is technical knowledge. Now let's say, you cannot meet the person and your opportunity hinges on an e-mail, then you don't have 55 per cent visual impact and 38 per cent conversation skill. In such cases, your e-mail has to be impeccably written because that is now the first impression. Lastly, everything you do on social media, do it as a brand ambassador for yourself — take care to create a personal brand that is professional, trustworthy and respectable. Who knows: your social media activity may just lead you to an ideal job!

There is one more point I really want to stress on — relationships is the bread and butter of success. When we meet anyone for the first time, we look for credibility, trustworthiness and likability — covered within that 55 per cent visual impact. These qualities can be easily mastered with a little training from a finishing school. For any professional or representative of a company, success is not completely dependant on technical information or product knowledge; that is a given. The impression you leave at the first meeting, conversation or e-mail determines whether you would be closing the deal! People do business with people they like, that's how companies and relationships are built, no matter how good your product is; it's the connection between two human being that cracks the deal. This is where I want to put a thought across — companies hire renowned celebrities to endorse their brand, spend millions in marketing and advertising, do celebrity brand ambassadors meet potential customers to convince them on why they should buy the product? No. Your sales force do! Train the real brand ambassador — the sales force. Empower them. xoxo