Become a Thought Leader

For the seventh characteristic of our Authentic Selling model, again following the AUTHENTIC acronym, we’ll look at the second T, which stands for Thought Leader.

Buyers today want a lot from their business relationships. They value specialists—people who are experts in their field. When these professionals talk, people listen. Their opinions matter. These are the people media folks call on when they need a comment or an explanation regarding a particular industry. Whether they are talking about business trends, current market conditions, innovations, deal flow or other industry info, what they say carries weight and brings added value to a relationship.

I believe being a thought leader is independent of age. I’ve coached people who have worked in an industry for 30 years and yet don’t seem to fully understand the real potential of their profession. On the other hand, I’ve coached people who assumed they were too young, too inexperienced or simply too new to be an expert in their field, but they were wrong. I’ve found that being a thought leader actually has little to do with the number of years spent in a job, an industry or a market and much more to do with the amount of time a person spends making himself or herself an expert. Becoming an expert is a focused process that takes commitment, study, practice, “game experience” in front of customers, a willingness to work outside your comfort zone and a whole lot of pure “want to.”

But it’s not enough to just gather the knowledge and share it with a select few. To be viewed as a real expert you have to engage on a larger scale. You have to write about what you know; you have to speak on your subject and blog about it. You need to specialize in your subject at work and outside of the office.

So it’s a twofold approach—a micro and a macro method of working within your industry. You have to know what’s going on in your industry, niche, market segment, etc. Then you have to take your better-than-average understanding and apply it to someone else’s business with an eye to helping them do what they do better. You have to work with the bigger picture in mind.

Being a thought leader and an advisor go hand in hand. Taking an advisory approach to a relationship requires that you be a thought leader, too. You have to have that extra working knowledge to properly advise your customer. And having that knowledge, expertise and recognition makes you more attractive (and more valuable) as an advisor.