How are you looking? Are you doing these 5 BIG Things to look great?
How’s your business looking?
Have you taken a really good look at yourself? Professionally that is…
For most of us, our reputation precedes us…people are forming impressions about us from the initial contact and their initial search results. Those initial searches and follow up emails often establish a position of credibility (and perhaps authority) in the prospects mind. It is essential therefore to get looking as good as you can at those points if you want people to be impressed enough to give you a chance at being their adviser.
There are a heap of things we can do to look better of course, but there are 5 BIG Things that every professional should be doing as a minimum.
Here are the 5 BIG Things
1. Look at yourself. Are you an online disgrace? Or worse, are you a non-entity? Go ahead….Google yourself…and then clean up your online brand wherever you can, and know who or what you are competing against to get found in search.
2. Look Professional. As far as online search is concerned, your Linkedin Profile is going to matter more than most other things. Get your Linkedin profile as good as you can get it….complete it all. Get a great photo. Get connected….Get it done!
3. Look like a business. It is unfortunate but true: if you don’t have a website then your credibility plummets. It doesn’t have to be an award winning website, but there has to be one that looks professional and gives people a strong sense of what you do and how you do it. No website….no credibility. Maybe that sucks, but that is just the way it is for the savvy and connected consumer today.
4. Look bigger & smarter. Leverage your image by looking like you are a switched on business that doesn’t miss a trick. Introduce branded email into your communications as soon as you can. Boring old plain vanilla text only emails are less interesting than a text today. And great branded email can have links embedded to your website, social media channels – you Disclosure Statement….whatever!
Smart email systems can also provide a brilliant audit trail, which is a superb compliance (or risk management) tool as there are automated receipts, auto-responders and analytics which all minimise human effort and maximise the evidence trail when it comes to client communications.
5. Look like an Authority. Get Blogging. Blogging is a surefire way to establish expertise and authority…and oddly enough even though most smart consumers know that anything can be put onto the internet, there is still a strong tendency for those same smart consumers to believe what is written and published. It generates authority, and authority generates business opportunities.
So….how are you looking?
Tony Vidler – http://financialadvisercoach.com/
