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The world of sales is changing rapidly in the age of the informed buyer. Several new books capture the current trends from social selling to storytelling. Despite these changes, many relevant principles remain the same, especially for more complex business to business sales – which are not replaced by automated purchases of transactional products. Wayne Moloney compiled his sales experience spanning over four decades into his book “Your Roadmap to Achieving Sales Success”. This publication is meant as a practical handbook and serves as an ideal reference for the seller’s library.

Wayne gained his learnings during his various positions covering Australia, Asia Pacific and Europe from sales rep to General Manager and Managing Director. Despite climbing the career ladder, his book shows that Wayne kept his mind on the ground to help both younger and seasoned sales professionals. Since leaving his corporate career, he helps customers of various industries as a...

Gone are the days when only corporations developed a brand and their representatives just used those nice slogans, shiny brochures and glossy business cards. Today all customer facing employees need to show their personal connection with the value they provide as an individual and as part of the organisation. A unique personal branding is a must to disrupt the information overflow in the age of the well-informed buyer.

How to differentiate a company brand from a personal brand? According to the Entrepreneur Small Business Encyclopedia, a company brand “creates a symbol that personifies and distinguishes a company's offerings”. That covers advertising via multi-channel marketing up to customer service. The brand needs to resonate with decision makers at potential clients. Beyond pure transactional order taking, people still do business with people in companies, not with the company. Therefore, business professionals must be visible and perceived as faces of the company.

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This book from Samantha Jansen Publishing covers various angles and insights to leadership from individuals who lead and inspire teams and individuals daily. The authors Diego Londono, Renee Giarrusso, Mihir Thaker, Con Nichols, Jim Penman and Gunnar Habitz are driven to impact society, make a mark and leave a legacy.

Lead Not Manage

My contribution describes a fictional journey from an individual contributor in the customer success team at a Sydney based software company who just moved up to become an accidental manager. I strongly believe those promoted future leaders can add a lot of value out of their fields of expertise before embarking further as an intentional leader. I added real events and occasions such as a Masterclass event of the Institute of Managers and Leaders and the new Chartered Manager designation into the story.

Six Australian Leaders Share Their Secrets

Leadership is all about taking ownership, communicating...

Small Biz Matters – a half hour program each week where you can work ON your business rather than IN it. With Alexi Boyd from Boyd Office Management Services

Personal Branding and Social Selling are two buzzwords at the moment which are somehow connected. A unique company brand is needed to differentiate the offering and communicate with potential customers, but creating a proper personal brand is also important in a small business. Social Selling comes from the enterprise world with their large sales departments. How does that apply to small businesses?

Let’s ask an active networker and LinkedIn expert who is using social media and digital tools to sell services to small and medium customers in Australia. Gunnar Habitz is a regular to Triple H being featured already talking about his cloud services.

Welcome to the show again, Gunnar.

1. How to differentiate a company brand from a personal brand?

• People still do business with people in companies, not with the...

People like to buy from people who they know, like and trust—especially on non-transactional services. The advent of professional social media sites opened the possibility to showcase what we can do for our clients using an authentic, genuine personal brand. How can we disrupt the information overflow in the age of the well-informed buyer?

According to Los Ellis, Personal Branding is “the process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others”. This is actually less about the individual, rather about the perception of prospects and customers.

Distilling the term further, “personal” stands for art and story of the professional while “brands” shows the packaging. As Nicolas Cole mentioned, “a long-lasting personal brand cannot exist without both parts: art and marketing, expression and distribution.”

Creating a personal brand for service professionals in smaller companies requires more detailed work and...

The title “Business from the Heart” perfectly describes the personal touch and mindset of Andrew Hoggard and his approach to good leadership and business. As such, this recent publication doesn’t fit into the categories of business or sales books, neither is it a management guide. Instead, it is a varied collection of snippets and anecdotes with a common mindset to reflect on and to use as guiding principles for both life and business.

New Zealand born Hoggard started his career in the healthcare industry in one of the companies his father once led. The book also tells the story of how his father rose to become an international success story through people leadership. After many years in leadership roles including relocating to Australia, Andrew was faced with redundancy as his position was eliminated after serving for 27 years. He describes the emotional journey of this period to assist readers who may be going through this journey with tools to come out even...

Within the numerous published business books about the sales profession, Cian McLoughlin’s “Rebirth of the Salesman” stands out being the only recent work covering the importance of thorough win and loss reviews as a core strategy to learn why we win and why not. In both cases this can help to improvements, actually also on the buying side. The world of sales is changing rapidly by adopting to the different purchasing behaviour in the disrupted age of the informed buyer. Therefore, Cian takes his readers on a broader journey to improve the essence of the sales arena.

During his corporate career in the software industry, Cian developed a passion about understanding the reasons behind won and lost deals which are rarely formally analysed in detail. He learnt from buyers and sellers examining both sides of the same coin. Born with a natural curiosity, he turned this hunger for information into building his own business, “Trinity Perspectives”. Today he...

From a modern buzzword to the most disruptive sales concept since the advent of “The Challenger Sales” methodology: Social Selling is a reality and works for many professionals around the world, not only on the sales side. When using social media started on the consumer side and Social Selling embraced in the corporate sector, it is time for Small Businesses to adopt and to lead in their niche.

Daniel Disney, one of the leading Social Selling experts in the UK, has recently been asked if this concept was just a fashion and would go away. In this video, he compared it with the wide adoption of smartphones with nearly nobody going back to feature phones like the good old Nokia & Co. No doubt, Social Selling is here to stay.

The other widely visible discussion is the question if it would replace other well-known instruments such as the phone. I see it as a complementing element in the sales repository. Similar as email never replaced the phone, Social Selling has been...

Can you imagine how it feels not knowing anyone after moving to a new place? Even when being surrounded by people at a new workplace, it can hurt and provide a feeling of being alienated.

What sounds exciting for a business trip or vacations, can be a scary experience at least in the beginning. There is no safety net if anything goes wrong, no advice from friends or neighbours, and you can feel totally lost and alone. In addition, things can worsen when language or culture are different from your home and a weekend trip to the loved ones is out of reach.

Mobility and travel opportunities enable your dream of moving to another location. Relocations can happen between two jobs, when a company sends their own employees as expats to another country or when planning a new life with the hope of better conditions. For many of us who dream, a move to another state within the same country or onto another continent may become a nightmare of social isolation.

The experience in a new place...

Many organisations moved over the last few years to lean structures with less hierarchies and reduced number of managers. Senior individual contributors are requested to take leadership functions without carrying a management title. How to move into a leading role without formal structure and education?

Famous statements differentiate between a manager and a leader. John Kotter, Leadership Professor at Harvard University, described leadership as “aligning people to the vision” while “Management is a set of processes that keep an organisation functioning”. Leadership pioneer Warren Bennis differentiated it by contrast: “The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing” and “The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why”. Quoting Simon Sinek for the mentioned types of individual leaders:

“A boss tells people what they can do to achieve a goal. A leader asks people what they can do to advance a...