Q&A: How does personal branding quantify and qualifiy my achievements?

In February and March 2013, 
I led a 2-Part Personal Branding Webinar 
for the IvyExec.com community.

"A select network of 226,470 ambitious, high-achieving professionals who stand out from
the crowd and represent the most successful group of business leaders."

In this post I’ll share a question asked by a Webinar participant, along with my answer, plus three examples that demonstrate both:

• Qualified Achievements, which means you
  have put them into a comparative perspective,
  like “before vs. after,” and...

• Quantified Achievements, which means you have translated the results you’ve produced and co-produced, into cold, hard, recruiter-enticing numbers, dollars and percentages.

This question highlights a point that
makes all the difference between
standing out in the crowd,
and blending in.

Q: Hi, my question is about quantifying achievements. Certain assignments are extremely confidential in nature, and therefore, explicitly quantifying achievements may not be appropriate.
Also, the achievement may be a team effort and it may be difficult to single
out individual achievement. How should one go about tackling such a scenario?

A: I understand this bind, but you can still quantify, and qualify, your personal performance on any assignment by speaking about your behavior, actions
and outcomes.

Example 1:
I was one of a team that increased our company’s market share by 5% in just 6 months.
My responsibility was to write the radio and TV commercials for our female, 35 - 50 year
old target market. The ads I wrote increased offer responses by 11% over the earlier 2013
campaigns, and by 24% over all campaigns conducted in the first quarter of 2012.

Example 2:
I was one of a team that increased our company’s market share by 5% in just 6 months.
My personal responsibility was to add 25 new distribution outlets with combined sales
expectation of $900,000.00, which represented a 10% national growth over last year’s
combined sales projections.

Example 3: 

I was one of a team that increased our company’s market share by 5% in just 6 months.
My responsibility was to write the email sequence to inform and educate our new dealer
network. It involved a 10 week email sequence that dropped on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays. There were 30 pieces, covering product education and uniqueness, plus the
sales presentation sequence. It performed so well, it is now being re-purposed for other
product divisions, a practice that has never before been undertaken in our company.

So you see, even as a team player, you still have individual actions and responsibilities
that are describable and measurable.

Performance and achievement CAN be explained WITHOUT divulging corporate secrets.

To quantify your achievements, consider using this multi-step formula:

1. WHAT - the team did "x"
2. WHEN - in "x" time frame
3. HOW - my responsibility was "x," "y" and "z"
4. MACRO RESULT - the team's efforts produced "x," "y" and "z" results
5. MICRO RESULT - my actions produced "x," "y" and "z" results

Managers and leaders know that team efforts achieve goals.


Your position is not to take credit for the full outcome, it’s to demonstrate:

• Your clear thinking
• Your effective communication
• Your application of skills that contributed to a successful outcome

When you quantify and qualify your achievements in this way, and incorporate them into the foundation of your personal brand, managers and corporate leaders will make a point of choosing you!