300 | The Brand Ambassador Series: Microsoft

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Christi Olsen is a leader for digital marketing teams. On this episode, she talks about her passion for empowering these teams to speak on stage effectively to convey their true marketing message. Christi is an expert on how to put the customer first. We talk about why this is the foundation for any business and how you can adopt and integrate this lens too.
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Target Audience: Christi speaks at conferences and events regarding marketing, artificial intelligence, digital marketing. She focuses on the topic: “high-level-how-should-you-be-thinking-about-this?” She also addresses trends and changes happening within the marketing industry.

Christi’s Focus

Christi works with her internal leadership team regarding how to think about Tech topics like artificial intelligence. She focuses on the narrative they tell when they are in their ambassador role. This allows them to be powerful and effective speakers.

You can find Christi’s published articles on Entrepreneur Magazine, Huffington Post, and others. Her mission as she shares it is to empower and train people to speak on stage. She trains them to bear the torch and be brand ambassadors.

How Christi Sees her Goals:

Christi looks at her goals on a quarterly basis. She asks herself: 1) Have I gotten out the type of message I want out into the market? 2) Are people responding to the message? 3) Is it working?

How She Became An Evangelist

Christi was able to step into this brand ambassador evangelism role because of some predecessors before her who were consistently going out and talking about what they were passionate about.

What is Part of your Work and Why?

Here are the questions Christi checks in with herself (and her team) regularly:

• What are the challenges facing the business?
• What is keeping the leader up at night?
• Do we have something that can alleviate them so they can feel more confident?

But the focus is always on: How do you put the customer first? and making sure the purpose is to always tie it back to the customer

How to Put the Customer First

The only way to make a product better is to talk to people, get feedback and integrate that into the product.

Track who you reach. What are people asking about?

What are the intangibles to being a brand ambassador?

In other words, what are those things that cannot be measured? Christi says it’s about awareness and being on people’s minds. You make connections that might work out later. It tends to grow from there. This growth can be huge.

Tips on Speaking

Research the event before you pitch! What are the types of topics they’ve had in the past? Craft the pitch: what is it that I want to say- that when the speaker selector is looking at it, they know that I know what I am talking about and that I am going to offer something very tangible to the audience. Don’t expect or assume people will get the value of the message- you must make it apparent!

Remember, being a brand ambassador is not about you. it is about you representing that company.

What’s the Long Term Vision for Artificial Intelligence?

Christi says, AI cannot create anything brand new. We still need that creative role component. So for the next 10 years, that human component will still be there. We still need that creative side for the human connection.

In this episode we’ll cover:

• How to empower your ambassadors
• How AI helps us
• Where AI falls short
• The importance of harnessing our creativity
• How to put the customer first

Resources and Links

• Christi on Entrepreneur
• Christi on Twitter @ChristiJOlson
• Results Roadmap Session with GENE
• Best of Leaders in the Trenches Podcast Episodes
• Grab your checklist of essential things to do before & after your Speaking Gigs!
• Grab your free training video and get more speaking gigs HERE 
• Start the Challenge: “Authority Gap” – Sign up to receive 5 daily videos that will guide you to bridging “the Authority Gap.” During the challenge, you will get a daily exercise showing a counter-intuitive way to go from “invisible” to a recognized authority.
• Be the AUTHORITY in your target market and SHOW UP DIFFERENTLY 
• Share the LOVE and TWEET about this episode.

How is your business going…would you like to talk about it?

I love my audience of listeners. I really do. I would love to help you in some way. I started doing calls with listeners and realized that it was a great way to understand you.

Okay, then I formalized the process to offer a Results Roadmap… it is a private one-on-one call with me about your business. I want to help you see your roadmap with more clarity and confidence. Find out more about the Results Roadmap (it takes you to my personal website). This is not a sales pitch. Let me serve you.

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