Personal Branding Mastery and What NOT to Do as a Sales Professional with Christina Minshull

Welcome to the podcast, Christina. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks so much for having me, Lauren.

I’m so excited. Christina, I’ve been thinking about this episode for ages because obviously we’ve known each other for such a long time. Um, for the listeners, Christina and I, our paths crossed many years ago, we were working together at LinkedIn, although in different countries at the time. Um, and we got on so well. We’ve remained in contact as friends over the years. I’m incredibly proud of all the work Christina’s doing, running her own business, which we’ll get to later in the episode. But, um, one of the funny call outs for Christina and I is we’ve, we’ve kind of swapped lives a little bit, I suppose.

Um, we really have. Christina moved from Canada to London, and I moved from London to New York and it was pretty much within a month of each other that we moved. So. First thing I wanted to ask Christina is how are you finding London? How are you settling in?

I love London, like I feel at home here. I think the city has like such an intense. Chaotic, amazing energy. Um, and I’m like really happy to be here. And the business community has like welcomed me in with like open arms. People have been opening doors for client referrals for speaking, engagements for networking.

So just very grateful for the people that, um, have extended that warm welcome.

That’s amazing to hear and I’d say you are, you are very inspiring with your move because you are a queen networker. That’s what you do so well. You, you throw yourself into, you know, meeting amazing people that inspire you within business and I think. When you move countries, that’s, that’s the way to do it, isn’t it?

To, to find people within your field to, you know, in your case I’m sure it’s also looking for potential new clients. So, um, kind of on the topic of what we’re talking about, Christina, it’s kind of, you’re selling yourself to a whole new group of friends, people, businesses, um, and it’s, it’s great to see all the stuff that you’re doing in that space.

Oh, likewise, Lauren, you’re, you’re crushing it in New York, do you?

Thank

you. Very quick question actually, that I’ve just thought of. What’s the best networking event that you’ve been to in London since you, since you’ve got there? I know you’ve been to a few.

Yeah. Um, I was invited actually to the TikTok, um, global Agency Summit

and I think that one was the best one for me personally because it was creators and agencies and people that are really passionate about social media. So was very grateful for the TikTok team to invite me and they’ve invited me to a few events since then.

So, um, big fans of, of the organization.

Amazing. And if anyone is. Interested in sort of treading their toes into, to TikTok and, and using it as a social platform. Christina has got quite a big presence on TikTok, so we’ll include it in the show notes where you can follow her and get some tips and tricks as well. Um, but let’s dive in, shall we?

There’s so many good things that we could talk about, but we kind of narrowed it down to a few that we think is gonna be most relevant. But I ran through your bio at the beginning. Um, you know, you’ve worked in brand social marketing teams for some pretty big names like. LinkedIn, obviously our time together, EY WestJet, which means probably over the years you’ve probably had a lot of sellers trying to sell to you. Um, and given what this podcast is all about, that’s something I’d really love to dig in with you a little bit more. Um, so I guess my first question is around, you know, when sellers have tried to reach out to you, what’s been successful or what’s been a total disaster?

Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, and I have had like hundreds. Of interactions with enterprise sellers. Um, so I think I’m a pretty good gauge of what works and what doesn’t work. I think there’s three things that like jump off for me that just don’t work in enterprise sales. I think one is pressure. The second is being transactional.

And the third is, um, kind of thinking about only that like short term impact that you’re gonna make on that individual. And I think with the pressure aspect, um, as a like former head of a department. A lot of the sales process is already done before you’re actually talking to the sales rep. So when a sales rep comes along, you’re probably already decided as a head of the department, but what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get others on board.

So you’re trying to get your counterparts. Maybe in product or operations or your CEO or your head of sales aligned and together. And so what you really need that enterprise sales rep to do is help you along in that journey and help you along with that internal sales process and supplying you resources and making sure that they have your back.

You don’t really need them to sell to you. You need them to sell to the other individuals. So for me, like I think like enterprise sales reps need to approach that conversation very differently. And then with. Um, a lot of the sales reps, um, you can kind of see through if they’re being transactional or if they’re truly caring about that relationship.

And what I’ve seen in the past is like people that. Um, you can tell they’re just in it for that like short term sale. They’re only kind of thinking about, um, their quota or their needs rather than the needs of like your organization or your team. So for me, as like a former head of marketing, what I really appreciated was the people that took the time to like, develop more of that relational, um, activity rather than that transaction, um, activity.

That is, that’s amazing. Um, I think there’s twofold, my, my answer to that one, or maybe even spinning off a few questions.

So pressure is a really interesting one. On because, um, it’s, it is, uh, in our industry, in my opinion, from a sales perspective, it comes from top down, right?

You know, the quotas, the targets are set and they’re put on the teams. I think what they’re not factoring in is, is looking at things like the average sales cycle and how many decision makers are involved in buying. And I think what’s really interesting. For me as I sell to marketers. So a lot of the time I’m bringing educational content to marketers about tech buying and we talk about how many people are involved in tech buying decisions and how many people you need to be influencing. But it’s so funny how many sellers don’t use the information they tell their clients for

themselves. You know, for me that is the most important thing, is making sure that not just the one stakeholder that I’m working on building a proposal with is in the know of everything we do. But to your point, I mean, one of the things that I do is I might build them a business case that is everything that I’ve heard.

So all of their goals, all of their KPIs, all of the metrics of success for that program work collaboratively with my stakeholder. But build something that they can share internally with all the other people that they’re gonna have to get on board and say, this is the right partner for us. You’re kind of doing that work for them.

Um, but I think, hmm.

Built out resources you can give, the better that person’s gonna be able to sell internally. And like I’ve had, um, like social management platforms, CRMs, uh, other SaaS based software sell into me. And I’m like, literally just build me a deck that I can give to my CEO, um, that’s polished, that’s concise, and that like articulates the why behind the software.

Um, so that. That can ease my workload and being able to like sell internally. Um, and I think like an important part of that process too is like not over promising. Within that, um, product set. Um, ’cause I’ve also had sales, um, professionals like promise me features that were like actually on the roadmap and not actually integrated.

And then I bought the software, tried to use it for a particular task, and then realized, oh, my team actually can’t do that right now because that’s a feature. On the roadmap, not a feature actually implemented. So I think another thing that I didn’t mention is kind of that overpromising, um, that really hinders that sales relationship.

So I think for sellers as well, where you feel under pressure, you have numbers to hit, right?

You are influencing your clients. I think it’s really important to also be selling internally. What I mean by that is going back to your business. And explaining all of the things that you are doing to add value, to educate your buyers, to influence all the right stakeholders and how actually that part might take a little bit of time,

but if it’s done correctly, you’re gonna get to the goals that you’ve been set. ’cause I think that’s an interesting one to touch on, Christina, where some of the things that you’ve mentioned I’m feeling are potentially indicative of sellers that are just so worried about hitting that number. They’re so afraid that they’re not gonna get to that. To that target. Um, and I think that culture shift is something that we really need to, to focus on.

And I think for sellers listening, and I’d love your advice on this too, but for sellers listening, I’d say, you know, if you’re interviewing for companies. Always talk to them about, um, you know, like I said at the beginning, the average buying cycle and, and how they need to be on board with your journey.

That building relationships and, and educating your buyers and influencing all the right people takes time.

And if they don’t seem to be on board with that, then maybe they’re not gonna be the right business for you. Do you have any thoughts on that for sellers who are maybe a bit concerned and are using the wrong tactics?

’cause that’s what I really want sellers to avoid is doing things properly and well.

Yeah, I think you’re right. That. The sales culture really comes from the top down. And so if you’re at an organization that doesn’t like recognize that sales is a relationship and it’s not a transaction, then you kind of like encourage that transactional behavior and it’s hard to break that habit. So as sellers, I would like, like.

Educate up and like tell your leadership like how many decision makers are actually involved and how complex the purchase decision is because. A lot of the, um, software decisions that I would personally be responsible for making, they’re in my budget. I would still have to get approval from procurement teams, operational teams, legal teams, product teams, my CEO, um, it could be up to like 15 people that I had to get buy-in from in order to say, okay, I’m gonna go ahead and purchase.

This software and some of the processes, like I implemented brand new tech stacks for a couple of companies. So I was implementing new CRMs, new social management, new SEO analysis tools. Um, some of those processes would take up to a year and. I think a lot of sales organizations are not structured in a way that aligns quotas for that year buying cycle.

They’re more aligned for like that quarterly quota or like some are, are, are, um, like. Some are less than that even. Right. So I think there’s, there’s a problem also with like sales team structures and that that sales leadership and then that’s filtering down.

Agreed. Agreed. And, and let’s just touch on, Christina, you mentioned three things at the beginning of this episode. Do you wanna just cover those again as the takeaways for this question?

Yeah. I think the 3 things that enterprise sellers need to be cognizant of. When they’re selling is not over promising, not being transactional and focusing on that long-term relationship. Um, and I think being those 3 things, you’re going to naturally have better success with enterprise teams because they operate a lot differently than selling into a startup or selling into a small or a medium sized business.

Amazing. Thank you so much for that. Um, so let’s talk about how you’ve used your own advice, right? Because. You’ve been a marketing leader and then you’ve transitioned to a founder of your own business. You’re the CEO of the brand audit. So in a way, Christina, I think I, it probably makes sense if I actually could even call you a CEO and a sales professional because that’s what you’re doing.

You’re trying to acquire new clients for your business. So talk to me about how you’ve taken on board your own amazing advice that you’ve just shared, and maybe you know, what’s working for you or maybe what have you found more challenging than previously thought in our, in our world?

Yeah, the transition has actually been quite an easy one for me because I feel like internally at these enterprise companies, all I was doing was selling. I was selling. My strategy, I was selling my team. I was selling internally to get buy-in for tech buying decisions. So I feel like a significant part of my job as like a former head of marketing, a former head of brand, I.

Was kind of selling internally and now I’ve kind of shifted to selling externally and kind of advocating for my own company and getting new clients, getting new partners. And really I’ve taken that same advice of I. I’m looking at that long-term relationship orientated approach. Um, and I’m a big fan of the mantra of like, give more Than You take.

And so I’ve really approached my business as such, and I think about when I’m like prospecting for new clients. I think about. Who do I actually want to help and I, who do I want to impact? Because my time is super limited, so I can only take on a certain number of personal brand clients. So I really wanna work with people that are naturally disruptive and innovative, and have a unique voice and a unique lived experience, and I’m genuinely gonna help their voice come to the forefront.

And I’m a big believer that like visibility, um, turns potential into reality. I say that a lot to my, to my clients. And so I’ve just really approached the sales process as such, as just being super visible in my new country and my new community. Um, I try to go to at least 10 networking events a month.

And then, um, as you know, I create content on LinkedIn and TikTok and just really put my. My, myself and my company out there for people to hear, and I just really focus on like giving value and helping others. And that is really like in turn, um, generated client referrals for me and like Mo actually most of my sales this year.

Are just client referrals. There are people that have done my masterclass or done consulting with me or, um, hired me as a executive ghost writer, um, or have had some enterprise social help, um, and really just like opened doors for me because they’ve seen the work that I’ve done. So I really approach the sales process really organically and I think that, um.

Salespeople that do that, like are naturally more successful. It might take, it might take a longer time. Like I’ve been in business now almost four years, so I’ve kind of gotten over that initial hurdle of starting a business and getting those initial clients. But I think like once, once that ball gets rolling, um, it doesn’t, it doesn’t stop rolling.

It really doesn’t, and you know, you spend a lot of time producing amazing content. You know, your, your blogs are taking off a lot at the moment because obviously it’s very human, authentic. Content that you’re producing out there. But also what I love about what you do, Christina, is you build a really strong community, um, and everything that you do in your community is about helping them. Um, and I think that’s a really big call out for sellers is Christina is the CEO of her own business. So she could spend a lot of time writing blogs about the brand order and how amazing her company is. And talk about all the products that she has within her company. She doesn’t do that. She approaches it from a community angle of, Hey, you know, if you’re looking into your personal branding strategy, this is what you can think about.

This is what you should be doing. Here’s some interesting content to help you along that journey. Um, and I think sellers need to, to remember that carving out time in your diary to consider how you are going to give back. Is far more valuable than pushing product and pushing your company front and center. Um, so I guess the spinoff question for that, Christina, and then I’d love to talk about personal brand, but the spinoff question for that is how many hours do you dedicate per week to producing content, sitting down and writing or giving back to your community?

Yeah. Um, it’s hard to quantify ’cause I actually do it in batch content, so I usually do it quarter. Really, and I’ll sit down and maybe take like five, six hours to like record videos, um, and then write my content and then edit it. And then I will probably, um. Spend maybe like two hours, um, a month kind of scheduling that content.

I’m lucky to have a partnership with Hootsuite, so I schedule it all through a social management platform and actually have like content ready to go to like the end of this year. Um, so I, I don’t spend a ton of time on like that initial, um, like weekly content because I batch it kind of quarterly.

Yeah. That’s amazing. Really great tip. Then batch content. Um, you know, every day we’re absorbing ourself or learning something within our field. Write it down. Think about how you can shape that into some content you can put out into the world. So thank you for that.

So let’s,

it’s it’s, not relying on like the discipline to like produce content daily or weekly. It’s like more relying on the systems. So if you can set a system up in place where you’re like creating content. In a batch format, and then you’re loading it into a scheduler. Then it’s kind of like set it and forget it, instead of constantly having to be like checking into your platforms and monitoring, because that requires a lot of productivity switching costs.

So I’m, I’m a big advocate to my clients, and especially if you’re a seller like you are, you’re a busy human. Think about how do you create systems around yourself so that you can do what you need to do in a more productive, efficient way.

Amazing and. Putting content out there is fundamental to building a personal brand, and obviously that’s what you do at the brand order. You help executives build their personal brand. I’ve done your masterclass. I thought it was amazing. So if anyone’s not sure of what their personal brand even is, reach out to Christina afterwards. Um, but just very quickly, personal branding. Why is this so important for sellers specifically?

Yeah, as sellers, like the buying process is about 80% done before you’re getting. To a sales rep, and that’s, that’s, um, data that we got from LinkedIn directly on the B2B buying process. So as a seller, you need to be kind of ready when your buyer is ready to talk and you need to be top of mind when. Your buyer comes to you, right?

And so if you’re putting out there meaningful content and meaningful kind of information for your buyer, they’re naturally gonna like trust you. Once they get to like that conversation part, they’re gonna feel like they know you. They’re gonna feel like they have a. Paris social relationship with you if they’re seeing you in your feed and seeing you engage with their content.

And I actually like do a masterclass specifically for sales teams to help them with that process because it’s important not to just like be posting content, but it’s also important to be like following your audience. Seeing what is pertinent and important in their lives. Engaging, commenting on their content, and like developing that online relationship so that when you get in person or when you get on a, a VC call with the prospect ready to pitch, like you already have that, um, initial foundation and that relationship built up.

Amazing. And I think sometimes it can feel overwhelming, which is why masterclass like yours can really help. And I think as well for anyone listening, it’s about. Giving yourself time to reflect, step back and go, what do I really want to be known for? What’s really important to me? What’s really important for my customers?

And then how can I shape that into the content that I’m putting out into? into? the ecosystem. And for me, it’s always been a very heavy LinkedIn presence. That’s where a lot of my buyers are, but also a platform I’m really comfortable with. Um, but I know Christina, you are a, you’re a big TikTok advocate as well.

Do you think that’s something sellers should be exploring beyond LinkedIn? Having a look at platforms like TikTok as well?

Yeah, I think that every social platform has its own purpose and its own ecosystem, so it’s figuring out like where your audience lives. And not trying to like push them to a new platform, but really just like going to your audience. So for me, I found a lot of success on TikTok, a lot of my audience of like Gen X and millennial, um, decision makers or on there, and they’re engaging and active with my content.

So it’s actually my number one lead generator. Um, which is shocking because like I worked at LinkedIn. I come from LinkedIn. I teach LinkedIn. Um, that’s actually number two for me. So I would say like, as a seller, just kind of investigate different social platforms, whether it be, um, meta, whether it be Instagram, whether it be Reddit.

Um. TikTok, LinkedIn, like there’s a lot of opportunity in every social platform. Um, but it’s knowing where your audience lives and breathes and, and then tapping into that, that natural community and that natural dialogue. I,

Amazing. Thank you for that. I think, yeah, test experiment, try things out. That’s what we’re trying to do. Right.

yeah.

Awesome. So last question and then I have a few quick fire just to finish up, but, um, we’ve talked about a lot of great things here, but I think for me it’s what’s the kind of core piece of advice that we can leave sales professionals with where they’re thinking about, you know, building those meaningful relationships.

You talked at the beginning, don’t be transactional, build those relationships. Be helpful. What is that kind of core thing that we should all be thinking about?

Yeah, I think as sales professionals, I.

We need to realize that our role has changed. Our role as salespeople is not what it was 10 years ago to what it is now, and I think we need to adapt and jump into that modern sales role. Like our role is no longer to like push a product, to push an idea to sell.

It’s really to build a relationship, educate, help people along in their journey. And I think by moving from that, like. Antiquated sales model to the modern sales model. We’re building stronger connections. We’re building stronger ecosystems. There’s salespeople at a lot of different tech companies that. I still keep in contact with, I still refer business to, um, even though I’m not, uh, no longer in the enterprise world, I still have a lot of enterprise clients that will need a CRM or will need a social management platform.

Or we’ll need some sort of software that they’re selling. So the salespeople that have really approached sales from like a modern perspective, um, I continue to refer business to because I trust and value their perspective and their approach. And so I think, yeah, it’s really just thinking about how. How your role has changed and how you can think about this modern world and adapting to it.

Amazing. From that I took away like the trust piece as well. Even, you know, when, you know, know people for a long time, you build that trust and that goes far beyond just the current role that you may be in, um, and be helping you further down the line in the future. So, I. Thank you for that. Alright, I’ve got three quick fire, but I feel like the first one we’ve answered with the top trait for success.

’cause I feel like that’s very fundamental to everything you’ve shared around relationships and trust. Um, I’m gonna dive into, um, inspiration. Um, you talk a lot about dealing with sellers who is a female sales leader or, or mentor that’s really inspired you most on your journey.

So I would say actually the majority of the enterprise sales reps that have sold into me have actually been men. Um, and I don’t know if that’s, um. Indicative of the enterprise kind of sales makeup. Um, but I would say like 90% of the salespeople that I’ve dealt with have, have been men.

that’s. Insane to me. Um, although not a surprise, because that’s why I started wise, wise, standing for women inspiring sales excellence because I did personally see less women entering our profession. Certainly from a leadership perspective, I don’t see as many women in, in very sort of high sales leadership positions. I guess one question, it’s putting you on the spot a bit, but

why do you think that is?

Yeah. I, I don’t see a lot of, um, women taking on sales roles because I think there’s a misconception of like what sales is and. Misconception of like that industry and that role, and I think that like podcasts like this and, and people that. They can encourage others to like, get into sales and like what sales is truly about will help us build a better pipeline.

Um, but especially in like that enterprise side. And that’s kind of where I’ve like lived and breathed. Um, I haven’t seen a lot of, um, senior leaders that are women.

Thank you for saying misconception because. What have we talked about today, Christina? Let’s round up. We’ve talked about empathy. We’ve talked about giving, we’ve talked about relationships, we’ve talked about trust. Those are all traits that women hold in abundance. Um, and that is fundamental to being successful in, in this industry.

So I really wanna push that message. Um, again, it’s something that I’m really trying to achieve with this podcast by talking more about it. Um, and making sure that women see this as an incredibly rewarding and rewarding industry and role to be in.

Yeah, I agree.

Last question then to round up. This has been wonderful. Um, a book, um, you know, a book or resource I suppose, that’s really influenced your approach to sales leadership. Maybe something that you’ve used to help you in your, in your current role.

Yeah, I would say both sales and marketing is all around psychology. So if you understand human psychology and invest in like. Um, actual courses or reading textbooks on psychology. I think that is the biggest, um. The biggest resource that you can like tap into. I think there’s a lot of sales books out there that teach like certain sales techniques or like have kind of like, um, frameworks around the sales process.

But at the root of every good sales book is human psychology. So I would say actually like ditch the sales books, ditch the sales, um, kind of resources and like go straight to like human psychology based resources to think about like how humans operate, what drives them. What kind of motivates them, how to tap into like pain points, how to build relationships.

I think those kind of resources are going to be the best to like fuel your career forward.

I love that and funnily enough, I did my degree in psychology. Make

sense? It makes sense because I am fascinated by the behavior. Of people. So amazing tip to land on there. Just think about diving into the strategies behind people behavior, especially in the modern sales world that you touched on, Christina.

So thank you so much. You’ve been an absolutely amazing guest. You’re a wonderful friend and I’m very proud of everything you are achieving with your business. So thank you for being part of the Wise podcast.

Oh, well thank you for having me. I super appreciate it.