Building a personal brand – Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley

Posted on: October 18, 2017

At the 2017 Professional Marketing Conference http://www.pmforum.co.uk/conference.aspx Daniel Priestley, co-founder of Dent and author of the book “Key Person of Influence – the Five Step Model of the most highly valued and highly paid people in your industry” presented one of the overview sessions on personal effectiveness. In essence, his talk provided a process for building a personal brand.

His talk was littered with references to neuroscience such as whether our hippocampus is bored or excited when we meet someone and how our limbic system decides when we know, like and trust someone. He made an interesting observation that depression follows our brains freaking out about survival and elation when the visionary part of the brain is activated.

He offered some interesting insights into how people make purchase decisions – with the “pre-purchase content gorge” typically involving seven hours searching, 11 hours interacting and four locations of information. He advocated having a content management plan and capturing your content into digital assets that included podcasts, videos, live events (he saw a conference speech as cramming a year of networking into one event) as well as written materials.

He outlined the entrepreneurs’ journey:

• Wilderness
  • Concept
  • Value
• Lifestyle and Struggling boutique
  • Influence
• Desert
• Factory and Performance
  • Assets

He described how to de-commoditise your personal brand (moving from being a Newbie to a Worker Bee to a Key Person of Influence) and shifting from functionality to vitality by using the SALT process:

• Social footprint
• Awards and associations
• Live appearances
• Third party media mentions

He discussed the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and we all enjoyed his exploration of the George Clooney effect on the Nespresso coffee brand. And his illustration of how an accountant transformed his introduction pitch was marvellous.

His simple and elegant five step model was summarised as follows:

1. Perfect Pitch
2. Publish your ideas (Content management)
3. Productise your value
4. Profile raising
5. Partnerships