In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, James Buckley shares his thoughts on the importance of becoming known as a “thought leader” in your industry and how to become one fast.

We dig into the difference between thought leadership and influencer marketing as well as the difference between followers and an audience.

Resources:

James on LinkedIn

Training: Free Personal Branding Training Course

@saywhatsales

Previous episode with James : 490: Building A Personal Brand In A Sales Job (From Someone Who Has Done It!) With James Buckley

Book: Ready to Be a Thought Leader?: How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Success

Transcript

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast.

 

James Buckley:

So now that we have this great foundation, let’s look at a completely different definition of thought leadership, right? Russ Cline in April of 2020, right after the pandemic really started to get crazy here in the States. He is at ama.org and he poses this.

 

James Buckley:

One way to think about your career is to decide whether you want to build your value, which is that that you bring to an enterprise or society on what you know, or what you do.

 

Will Barron:

Hello Sales Nation, my name is Will Barron and I’m the host of The Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show.

 

Will Barron:

On today’s episode, we have the legend, he’s been on the show before, he’s an absolute legend. We have James Buckley. He’s the director of execution at J Barrows Sales Training. On today’s episode we’re trying to answer the question, is thought leadership the future of B2B sales? The answer is, probably yeah, it probably is. Everything we talk about is available in the show notes for this episode over at salesman.org. With that said, let’s jump right into it.

 

James’ Definition of Thought Leadership and Personal Branding · [01:22] 

 

Will Barron:

So today we’re going to try and answer the question, is thought leadership the future of B2B sales? It’s a slightly loaded question because I think we’re both on the same wavelength with all of this. We’re just going to be in agreement, and agreement, and agreement. Hopefully we can come to loggerheads at some point so there’s a discussion for the audience here. But to get us started, do you have a definition of what thought leadership or personal branding is? Essentially, I guess, how you build your training upon that? What was the starting point of all of this?

 

James Buckley:

All right. So I’m super prepared for this, and I think it’s such a huge conversation. I want to start by giving three common definitions. I’ll give you the sources of where they came from, but I want to be super upfront and transparent with where I want your listeners minds to be when I read these. Look at the different definitions and how they position a thought leader or an influencer, if you will, which I think they’re both the same buzzword.

 

James Buckley:

So Denise Rousseau in a book called, Are You Ready To Be A Thought Leader? Defines thought leadership as informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are trusted resources who move and inspire people with i...