Sally Hogshead

Fascination is the single most powerful means of persuading and influencing behavior. You can make any brand or message impossible to resist…once you unlock the formula. Sally’s extensive market research reveals just how much fascination drives emotions and behavior.

For example, when fascinated by a product, 80% of consumers experience a faster heart rate and other physical responses; 46% talk about it to others; and more than 1/3 do in-depth research on the product. Once you fascinate customers, they’ll become intensely focused on you ⎯ your products, your services, and your marketing. They’re more likely to believe, care about, and retell your message – as well as buy your products. Today, it’s not enough to just interest customers. You need to fascinate them, so that they’re intensely focused on your message. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Identify your brand’s number one advantage.
• Capture immediate attention and attract raving fans.
• Stand out in a crowded competitive market in less time and under budget.
• Understand your customers’ 7 triggers to perceived value to stop competing on price.

What if you had a tangible way to show every single member of your team how they can perform at a higher level? It comes down to helping your employees tap into their natural communication style. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “50% of the difference between low-performing and high-performing teams is the quality of communication.”

In Sally’s decade of research, she found the best way to build a culture of involved and energized employees is to help them understand how they are seen at their best. Think of your team members. What is each person’s most valuable quality? How could they communicate most effectively? How can you and your co-workers bring out the best of everyone’s natural abilities?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Identify the top two unique personality advantages and archetype for all team members.
• Measure the communication advantages within teams to raise performance.
• Build a team of differences that make the company stronger as a whole.
• Amplify what your team is already doing right and capitalize on your natural strengths.
• Correctly identify the right person or team for important projects.

You have a choice: either have the biggest budget, or be the most fascinating. If you have a bigger budget than any of your competitors, must be nice…but few of us do. What if you’re a small business with a frugal budget or competing in an intensely crowded space? Then you must fascinate. Until now, branding required years of study or a team of experts, but in her decade of working inside world renowned brands, Sally Hogshead discovered the algorithm behind it all.

By combining science with branding principles, she unlocked the formula for fascination and, once you can identify the patterns, you can make any message more memorable. In this keynote, based on her 2016 New York Times bestseller Fascinate: How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist, Sally reveals the formula for fascinating anyone.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand why others perceive you and your brand a certain way.
• Develop a clear understanding of why people want to work with you.
• Identify the perfect words to introduce and promote yourself authentically.
• Cultivate confidence in your natural competitive advantages.
• Increase your value to a prospect by communicating your greatest professional assets.
• Prove how you are different than others competing for the job.

Most personal branding techniques give generic tips about how to make a good first impression. Yet, the whole point is to stand out and rise above the competition with your authentic traits. Avoid following onesize-fits-all techniques or else you just blend in with everyone else.

David Ogilvy, one of the smartest branding minds in history, said this: "Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.” When you know the truth of who you are at your best, you can be both authentic and fascinating. Your customers and coworkers don’t want the plastic version of you. Nobody wants to talk with a fake cardboard cut-out. Your personal brand is NOT the same thing as your marketing or resume. It’s not your business card, or your blog, or the color of your website.

Are you focusing so much on the other person (your customer, your client, your manager) that you’re losing your you-ness? Don’t focus so much on what you think someone else wants, that you lose who you actually are. Identify who you are at your best and the advantages that highlight your greatest value. Build your brand around those core qualities and you’ll never feel like a manufactured persona. Everything falls into place when you have a clear focal point for your communication. You can stop struggling and start doing more of what you’re already doing right.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Identify your top two unique personality advantages and archetype.
• Distinguish how you’re most likely to add value.
• Develop a clear focal point for all of your communication.
• Introduce yourself authentically with confidence.
• Craft the perfect words to prepare for crucial interactions.
• Influence people to listen and take action.

The greatest way to empower a woman is to help her see her own highest value. With engaging research, touching anecdotes, and a defined plan of attack, Sally’s program ensures every participant leaves energized and focused, knowing how to stand out and make a difference in the world by empowering the women in their community.

SALLY’S RESEARCH FINDINGS:

• Men often prefer to work solo and “think things through,” women tend to feel alienated or discounted if they are not engaging with and understood by their peers.
• Women want to have a voice that matters within an organization.
• Women lead by building relationships, whereas men typically lead by leveraging their authority.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Identify how the women and girls in your life are most likely to add value.
• Recognize how to use your competitive advantages to become an empowered leader.
• Develop your unique message and implement a plan to share it with the world.