Every sales professional and entrepreneur needs a profitable brand, and the key is to build a brand online and leverage it for rapid sales growth.   Corey Blake is the CEO at MWI, an international digital marketing agency. His background is in sales and business development and he has managed great sales teams over the years. Validate your brand When it comes to building a brand and then leveraging it for growth, you must begin by validating your brand. You basically want to turn off any sirens that the potential customer has about you as a seller.   We all know that a stigma exists around sellers, and you likely even experience it when someone gets on the phone with you to sell you something, despite the fact that you're in sales yourself.   The biggest challenge often originates from the fact that we build great brands and we know we have value to offer, but we don't know how to convince people to pay for it. How you validate your brand is critical in that process.   It's simply legitimizing your brand, service, or product. You must find a third party or another way to validate it. You could share that your brand has been featured on certain sites or that you've been invited to certain events.   When you're starting out, go to your customer. Offer to give a customer your product or service in exchange for their use of it. Explain that you think it will make his life better and that you'd like to ask for his testimonial.   Now you've got validation and social proof to use in your next sales conversation. Personal confidence Seeing someone use your product provides you, as the seller, a certain amount of confidence as well.   If you prefer, you can create great case studies or build a social media presence that includes amazing content. For MWI, for example, they can validate themselves as great content creators by creating great content.   As a bonus, TSE has used those product giveaways as an opportunity to gain feedback during our initial launches so we can figure out where we need to tweak our training or our products. It also helps us build a case study. Through all of this, you'll build your own excitement and you'll develop even more confidence, which is the key to success. Begin your entrepreneur journey by selling yourself on the value you're providing to the world.   [Tweet "If you can't sell yourself, you'll never sell to anyone else. Become the greatest ambassador for the value you're going to provide. #ValueAmbassador"] Linking value Once you've established confidence in your value, use your marketing to communicate it to your potential customers. It's not enough to be sold on your own value, but you must find someone else who is sold on your value as well.   Find a publication that will tell its audience how legit you are.   Once you've built this validation, you'll have an amazing ability to sell your product or service with exclusivity. You'll find yourself in the driver's seat and gives you leverage in your communication and makes your sale more exclusive.   If you establish exclusivity, you almost won't have to sell your customers as much. You'll simply have to educate them and move them along the sales process. Exclusivity is priceless. Finding balance No one wants to be perceived as the typical used car salesman. Don't come across as gimmicky, selfish, or ignorant. Instead, strive for confident, competent, professional, and controlled. There's a balance to it.   Assume your customer has never heard of your validation and mention it to him. Within the first 20 seconds, provide that validation to establish confidence and control. Find a way to organically share it without being perceived as cocky.   The alarms about whether you're legit will shut down. Then you can offer the idea that you only work with a certain kind of brand, and that allows you to operate with a lot more control. Close early, close often Make sure you're asking for the business. Develop specific strategies to close deals. Beautiful brandin