Typically when I meet accountants they find it very difficult to differentiate themselves from their peers. After all, an audit is an audit. Therefore, when it comes to trainers differentiating themselves from their peers, I expect that it will be easier for them to differentiate themselves, and so do it better. Talk about having unmet expectations!

A couple of weeks back, when Jon and I were meeting with a great leadership and team development expert, we identified that she was struggling with her sound byte.

Interestingly, when we asked her what differentiated her, we got a very well thought out list of benefits of working with her. On the list were such assets as:

• I cut through the crap
• My clients value my ability to see the wood for the trees

However, there wasn’t the one sentence sound byte. The one sentence that helps you go ‘ahhh, that’s what you are about’. The one sentence that gives Jon and I the biggest clue about whether you are totally clear about your identity.

Let’s give you some sound bytes, which do just that:

I help professionals become the go-to-expert

I help senior managers becoming engaging presenters

I help firms grow from 5 to 50 employees

I help businesses get their teams all pulling in the same direction

I help firms win that pitch

Any decent trainer's sound byte will fulfill the following criteria:

Short and punchy – it will be under 20 words and ideally under 15 words. That's another problem with trainer's sound bytes, they can often we long and detailed...

• It will almost always prompt you to ask them ‘so, how do you do that?’ (which then gives you licence to tell a credibility story or two)
• It is a snapshot of your own personal ‘over-arching’ brand
• It almost always matches in some way your personal suffix

So, what are the benefits to you as a trainer of having a sound byte:

• It gives you clarity about your personal brand, as it is very much a core statement about your personal brand
• It allows you to use it as a decision making tool for when you get opportunities coming your way, i.e. does this match what I say I do in my sound byte
• It allows others to quickly and easily get what you do – and makes you far more memorable
• it differentiates you from all the other trainer's about
• It is the first line of your networkers elevator pitch (see, is this the perfect 60 second elevator pitch)

What’s your personal sound byte?