Personal branding is a major factor in determining success in interim management. Find out which factors you should focus on to create an effective interim manager personal brand.
With competition high among job seekers and the self-employed alike, the concept of personal branding has suddenly become critical. Many careers experts will tell you that individuals have to find a way of standing out from the crowd to land new clients or that dream job. In other words, unique selling points/propositions (USP) don’t just apply to businesses; they’re also essential to successful interim managers.
It’s possible for interim managers to understand how they’re different from their competitors but to fail to communicate it effectively. There’s something to learn from the USPs of large companies as they’re often expressed in a short and snappy way. For example, FedEx used this USP for some time: If it absolutely, positively has to be there on time. Another famous USP is M&Ms’ The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
However, brand-enforcing slogans aren’t just for companies with deep marketing pockets. A niche business called Nerd Fitness, with the strapline ‘Level up your life, every single day’, differentiates its brand in how and to whom it offers its services.
The Institute of Interim Management suggests that USPs in the interim management field should focus on value. This means communicating clearly what you can offer in terms of speed, objectivity, accountability, expertise, effectiveness, commitment and (arguably most important) return on investment. Whatever specialism you work in, the question is: do your marketing materials express your personal qualities in terms of these aspects of service delivery?
An Interim Manager Personal Brand that Works
Personal branding, including your USP, matters because it’s the public projection of your skills and aptitudes. It’s what persuades organisations to commit to using your interim management services. Everything that you adopt – CV, logo, business cards, website, email, social media pages, etc – should be consistent in terms of message and visuals on what makes Brand You so appealing.
Tips for Creating Your Interim Manager Personal Brand
Research into personal branding has revealed that there a number of key aspects to address. These include:
- Being distinctive: How do your competitors market their personal brands? Are you any different?
- Having a specialism: This doesn’t automatically mean a subject specialism. Perhaps you have a particular approach to change management that gets quicker results. Selling this as part of your personal brand makes your pitch much stronger as it tells businesses right away how they can benefit from your services.
- Authority: Which achievements from your work history say the most about how you take command and deliver excellence?
- Personality: It’s important to inject some of your personality traits into your branding. After all, companies are investing in you and they need to know that you’ll get on well with them.
- Being visible: All the branding in the world won’t matter unless you get its reach to the right places. The other important point about personal branding is that it needs to be repeated regularly to ensure that your target audience remembers it.
- Credibility: Personal brands that claim to deliver everything to everyone just aren’t believable. Make your branding messages realistic so that potential clients will be sure that you can achieve what you say you can deliver.
By shaping your personal brand so that it declares who you are, what you stand for and what makes you unique as an interim manager, you should experience an increase in demand for your services.
What tips can you pass on about developing your personal brand? Please share them below.
photo credit: Jerry Silfwer via photopin cc
