David Díaz: “The best personal brand is the one that reflects you”

You define yourself as a lover of helping through formation, when did you know that this was your vocation?

Unconsciously I have always been training the people I have worked with. And it makes me very happy. I became aware of that when I broke up with my company.

It was an electric heating manufacturing company that I assembled with other partners. We went from 0 to almost 12 MM in 6 years and a year and a half later I went bankrupt. Another company bought the assets and changed the commercial policy: a more expensive product and a cheaper product.

The challenge was that the shopping centers to which we sold could sell not 5% of the high-end product (what we did at that time) but 20%. I had to do the training of that new product. It was in summer 2014, it was very hot and I did not want anything to travel throughout Spain forming.

But, as it was my turn, I decided to have a good time. I had competing products, a hair dryer, an infrared bar, our product and I mounted some very dynamic formations. All the people participated, they talked, they asked, they touched the product, they could throw it on the floor, they felt what is convection and what is radiation, we also went to the line to ask more questions.

It was and I had a great time. The result, we almost reached 50% sales of the high-end product.

What work does a facilitator do? Can you tell me more about your work?

I think that for people to learn (not only to listen but to put into practice), the protagonists of the formations have to be them. It is the people who have to tell, do and feel. My goal as a facilitator is to stir people so that when they finish their training they incorporate 1 to 3 new things in their day to day. And that is not achieved by listening. It is achieved by doing things in training. That’s where the difficulties come from, where problems are solved and where action is taken.

In that same line, what is for you the most satisfactory moment of your projects? What results must be obtained so that you feel that the work is well done?

Like the example I gave you earlier with electric heating, I need results to feel satisfied.

With the digital sales training I am now giving, I notice two things:

• In which all the evaluations at the end of the course are in the line of: “has been useful for my day to day” or “has been useful for my day to day and I loved it”. That is, no person value the course as a waste of time or feel that nothing would have happened if he had not attended.
• In the follow-up, observe that there has been a change both in the way of communicating in the profile and, above all, in the way of sharing and creating content.

And, above all, I feel satisfied when I receive messages telling me that they have obtained new clients, that they have changed jobs, that they have raised their salary without having asked for it…

Who should have a better personal brand within a company?

There is no better or worse personal brand. The best personal brand is the one that reflects you as a person. Who and how are you in all media: the real and the digital. For example, there are people who challenge, others like to accompany others, others give security. Some like personal relationships, others are more entrepreneurial and creative. And all the profiles are necessary in a company.

What do you recommend when a member of the company has a better personal brand than the company itself?

If the personal brand is authentic, which generates trust and helps close sales or attract talent, it is a problem for the company.

It would not have to have a person with a powerful brand, but many people with a good brand and make the company much more visible.

There, what I recommend is that it encourages more people to have their personal brand, and this member of the organization may be their mentor.

If the personal brand is for posture, to appear or to collect prizes; for me it is not an authentic brand. Personal branding has to have an impact on people and organizations. You have to improve your environment.

You highlight your work to help your clients to stand out in Linkedin, why is this network so important?

It is the professional network and, from experience, when you are going to have a professional meeting of any kind (sales, alliances or even work), we all look at the profile and activity of the other person. We have to be aware is that other people also look at ours.

If we are not in the network, other people will be. It is a good tool to be in the mind of the consumer.

It does not differ much from the behavior we have as consumers. Before buying anything, we inform ourselves on the web pages, in the forums, in the evaluations and comments of products. And, once informed, we will buy the product and ask about everything we have doubts about. We do not want to be told the “commercial roll” anymore. We want you to solve our doubts.

Are companies really working on digital sales? Where do they fail and where do they usually succeed?

The tool is confused with the end. I mean not because of being on social networks, by contacting through LinkedIn, buying sales navigator licenses, publishing regularly or having video strategy; We are doing digital sales.

We are using digital tools, but we do not make digital sales.

The important thing is everything behind the tool, the what for. In the mentoring that I do, the part of the computer we do not touch it in person. That’s what my tutorials are for solving technical issues. The important thing is how we are going to use the tools.

For me, the basics of a good digital sales strategy are three:

DIFFERENTIAL VALUES: Do we already know what customers value about us? What do we have to communicate? The previous step if you have not done, is to know what we have to communicate as a company. People have to be the speaker of their company.

When I prepare the profiles of LinkedIn of the people of a company, we do a previous work on the subject of values. We give them a name. Magically, they are present and coincide. There is a way to do things and treat customers. The good thing is that the whole company communicates the same differential values, but that each person does it in their own words.

CONTENT: There are two types of content. On the one hand, marketing content is the one we see the most. It is the one that positions the brand at a prestigious level, the work to be in the mind of the consumer. On the other hand, the sales content is what helps to close them. The client lies and finds it difficult to recognize their problems. That is why it is important to create content that responds to all those problems that the client does not want to tell and that challenges him to get things that he had not even considered.

Many times because the relationship between marketing and sales is not good. Marketing brings potential clients and complains that commercial is unable to close them. Sales complains about having poorly qualified leads from marketing. How nice it would be if customer objectives were shared between marketing and sales so that the center of the strategy is the customer and not the department.

INTERACTION: Respond to everyone and be present always. It is not enough to classify the interactions between those that I think will buy me and not. People who do not buy recommend us. If they receive bad treatment from us, they can spread very negative information about us.