Position Yourself/Your Company As A Leader In Your Field

From job-seeking students to ambitious corporate executives, the hunger to stand out from the crowd is within all of us.

Those who have the foresight to position themselves as leaders are always seen as “lucky” or “gifted,” when the reality is there are millions of others who are far more worthy, yet lack a single necessary skill.

Being seen as a leader in your field is the cornerstone of true success for companies and individuals who seek dramatic business exposure and business growth. Chris Guerriero's newest book: iLead clearly details, step-by-step, a plan that automatically builds real credibility in today’s world of connected customers, the kind of credibility that creates leaders, drives new growth for a company, new income streams for an entrepreneur and votes for an individual to be elected to office.

****** Here's a Sneak Peek Inside The Book ******

iLead

How To Position Yourself And Your Company
As A Leader In Your Field Faster Than You
Ever Thought Possible
by Chris Guerriero

I’m just like you.

I’m not talking about that celebrity “I put my pants on one leg at a time too” baloney. At the heart of it all, we’re all just people who are trying to get a message out to the world.

How we communicate these messages varies from person to person. Some of us build businesses around our message, assembling teams and leveraging our employees’ strengths to help push our message out to the world.

Others work alone year after year, never quite communicating their message properly – sometimes never even figuring out which message they really had to offer.

Why is communication so important? Why not just focus on the product, the service, the marketing, the business plan?

It’s simple. The business that communicates their message better is always seen as the leader in their field.

No exceptions!

But to truly be seen as a leader – and enjoy all the corporate and personal benefits that follow that title – we have to look deeper. Being able to communicate well, as an individual or as a business, is just the start. It’s the net which catches the attention of the masses.

Once you grab the attention of another person – whether you’re speaking to a colleague, a friend, a potential client, or to a pack of hungry customers – you have a very short period of time to create a common bond.

Many marketing experts claim that you have a fleeting 28 seconds where that common bond will either stick or be forgotten. Think of it this way: how many commercials do you remember on TV last night?

Whether it’s 28 seconds or as long as a few minutes before people decide to listen or not, the message in your marketing – your elevator pitch – or even the first sentence you say at a party must create a bond. A relationship.

The greatest companies in the world have grown, in spite of the economy, by persistently communicating messages that build relationships with their target audience.

But  with thousands of competitors communicating similar messages, the art of building relationships has changed significantly.

Because of all the noise created by competitive marketing, the rate at which a person or a company can build a relationship with their audience is directly related to their ability to uniquely align themselves, in the eyes of their target audience, with current social trends.

Doing so adds a power to your message that will position yourself, your company, or your product as a leader in your field, no matter how successful or unsuccessful of a communicator you’ve been in the past.

Great Leaders Are Flexible As Trends Change

With that said, understanding trends begins with understanding that trends change. The greater the change, the greater the opportunity, and the easier it is for the least likely to slip into leadership.

Today’s changes mark a true evolution of everything; an evolution of the way customers look at companies, an evolution of how customers buy, an evolution of their thought process, and an evolution of their decision-making process.

Like all changes, this evolution is going to create leaders in every industry while squashing the big players still using yesterday’s playbook.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the big players don’t have big advantages. In fact, I’ve helped many large corporations think outside the box and grow 5%, 10% sometimes up to 30% in a year.

But that’s hardly exciting when your company already does hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars a year. On the other hand, someone who’s pulling in $200,000 to five million a year will have the real fun.

Smaller companies can sometimes add 50%, 100%, or even a 1,000% growth to one of their product offers just by implementing one or two simple strategies.

Why? Because the big players don’t, or can’t, make the necessary changes fast enough.

There’s just too much red tape to go through in a large company before a great idea can be enacted. That red tape usually transforms the best ideas into a very ineffective subset of the original idea.

On the other hand – the Internet is morphing into a tool that both large and small companies can use to keep their finger on the pulse of their audience and cut years off of their growth curve.  Here’s what I mean…

The New Internet Rules

When the Internet began, it was all about “information.” People could use it to get information about anything they were interested in. But today, accessing the Internet is like driving down a road where all the beautiful scenery is blocked by billboards. Over 88% of today’s web sites are sales websites with no real information. Internet users are frustrated.

Consequently, they’re changing their web surfing habits and creating a new wave of connected customers who frequent social websites where they can “chat” amongst themselves and discuss where the real content is found.

This is an amazing change that is already impacting the world globally and affecting businesses, government, and society.

These “connected customers” are sharing their thoughts with others through their computers, or texting from their cell phones while at work, while in the car, while eating in restaurants, while in the gym—while doing everything!

They are constantly sharing insights on companies, people, products, movies, foods, etc.

This connection has created massive opportunities for everyday folks to become famous; it has enabled startup entrepreneurs to compete with industry giants, and it has allowed local leaders to stretch their reach across the globe in a few short weeks.

These people are succeeding with less money than most of us carry around in our pocket and no more talent or luck than all of us have.

This book is a blueprint – a look back over the exact formula I used to build three global organizations; a current look at what’s working now for my companies and for the handful of other companies I consult for. And it’s also a look forward at the formulas we’re testing that promise to change the face of leadership and how we do business.