How Can My Personal Brand Set Me Apart From My Competition 2020?    The year is almost over. As a salesperson, how can you set your personal brand apart from your competition in 2020?  Veronica Romney is solely focused on educating and facilitating individuals in their marketing and branding efforts. Veronica and her team are helping clients to stand out from their competition. They make it their goal to ensure you position yourself correctly so you can jump into the narrative and story that your prospective customer has as opposed to trying to force the customer into yours.  You Don’t have to Be the Best of the Best  Many businesses and sales reps are under the assumption that in order to distinguish their personal brand, they have to be the best of the best. The prevailing thought is that the only way to be seen as special is to look bigger and be better than everyone else in the same industry. This mindset can be exhausting for both business owners and sales professionals and can lead to burnout as they fight for consumer attention. Customers are bombarded with attention-seeking ads, streaming services, and other campaigns.  Companies and salespeople do a disservice to them by adding additional distractions that just focus on how great they are. Veronica teaches her clients to focus on something more critical:  You don’t have to be your customer’s hero. It’s more important to be their guide in helping them get to where they want to go.  Tony Robbins, for example, is a huge brand. He is a big name and a big individual with a big personality. Everything about Tony Robbins is larger-than-life and at the end of his documentary,Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru,  he was asked what he hoped people would better understand about him through the documentary. His answer is critical to his branding and should be a great takeaway for people who work with consumers. He said that it’s not really about people caring about the person, Tony Robbins. The Tony Robbins brand lets customers know that it's the means to an end and it’s a company that will get them to where they want to go. Tony is aware that he isn’t the show and he isn’t the product.  It’s more about how they are transformed through him and what he teaches. People respond to the things that cause change, keeps them hungry, make them feel fulfilled and feel alive.   His organization does that. The Positioning Technique This is a method being used by CarMax in selling cars. This industry is overly saturated and the competition is stiff. There’s no point in fighting against the current. Instead, CarMax guides their customers where they want to go.  Whether the customer is purchasing a car, trading in or selling a car, CarMax has made it a simple three-step process. They have removed the barriers of haggling and negotiation from the interaction with their salespeople and by doing so, have made it easier for the customer to do business. This positioning technique relieves salespeople from having to be the product or prove they’re the best. Instead, they can concentrate on being a guide, mentor or coach for their customers.  Because of this, burnout is greatly decreased. People need a guide when purchasing decisions need to be made. For example, someone buying a weight loss program or supplement isn’t just buying a product but the transformation that product offers. As a salesperson responsible for packaging products and services to the consumer, the goal isn’t to make the product the hero of the sales pitch. The goal is to offer transformation by helping customers understand how the product can get them to their destination. Position Yourself as a Guide, Not the Hero.  We live in a world that is driven by consumers who are focused on their self-interests. Consumers want their problems solved quickly and as salespeople, guiding them through their ambitions is key. Develop your voice It’s tempting to want to be a chameleon who can be everything to everyone but it’s also impossible. Yes,