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Personal branding · C-suite and senior leaders

The people you want to buy or partner with decide before the first call.

Personal branding for a chief strategy officer is the visibility of a person whose work is under embargo: what the promoter of an acquisition target reads before returning your call, and what the board sees when a plan is questioned.

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Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.

A professional shares her expertise in a recorded interview

In one paragraph

Personal branding for a chief strategy officer is the visibility of a person whose work is under embargo: what the promoter of an acquisition target reads before returning your call, and what the board sees when a plan is questioned. GullySales draws that out of you in conversation and publishes only what is safe.

Also written for

Chief strategy officer, Head of strategy, Chief of staff.

For chief strategy officers

Where it usually goes wrong, and what we would do.

  • “The deck is under embargo and the deck is your work”

    Your best year was a reorganisation nobody announced and a market exit six people know about. What you are free to prove is the least interesting part of what you did.

  • “The company you want to buy is deciding whether to reply”

    A second-generation promoter in Coimbatore gets three approaches a year and ignores most of them. He looks you up, finds a designation and no thinking, and files the email under fishing expedition.

  • “Inside the building you are the person who makes slides”

    When the plan works it belongs to the chief executive, and when it is resisted it belongs to you. Nobody outside the top floor knows which decisions you actually own.

  • “Strategy and annual planning get read as the same job”

    Half your readers think you run the budget exercise. The other half think you are a consultant who stayed on. Neither group brings you the conversation you want.

What we do

What we deliver for chief strategy officers.

Every deliverable, what it covers for you, and the result it is there to produce. Nothing here is an extra.

  1. A profile that states the decisions you own

    Capital allocation, the portfolio, new markets, which of the acquisitions you led. Written so a promoter or a board member can tell in fifteen seconds whether you are the right person to be talking to.

    Result: An approach email that gets opened, because the sender is somebody.

  2. The interview, run as a debrief

    An hour on a decision already taken and now discussable at one remove. We keep the reasoning, drop the identifying detail, and check the draft back against you. Miss it twice and there is nothing honest left to publish, so the money belongs on the corporate site instead.

    Result: Publishable thinking out of unpublishable work.

  3. A point of view on your industry's next five years

    The structural shift you actually believe in, argued rather than announced, with the part you might be wrong about left in.

    Result: One document a stranger reads to decide you are worth a meeting.

  4. A confidentiality line drawn before anything is written

    What belongs to the company, what belongs to your board, what is yours. Agreed on paper with your company secretary or legal team rather than assumed.

    Result: You stop checking with two people before every paragraph.

  5. Internal work turned outward

    The town hall explanation, the memo everybody forwarded, the framework your business heads now use, rewritten for readers who do not work there.

    Result: Credibility with the people who execute a plan, not only with the people who approve one.

  6. The company named in every piece

    Colleagues credited and the firm's work described, so the visibility does not walk out of the building with you.

    Result: Your chief executive can see what the company gets from it.

How the result is measured

  • Enquiries that name you or came through your profile
  • Searches for your name, from Search Console
  • Profile views and connection requests from your industry
  • Speaking invitations, press enquiries and podcast requests
  • Posts published against posts planned, and what held up the rest

Recorded as a baseline before work starts, so every later report has an honest comparison.

Read the full personal branding page

How it works

How the work runs for chief strategy officers

The work itself, in order. How an engagement starts, from your brief to a written scope, is set out on our method page.

  1. 1

    Work out whether this is even your bottleneck

    The first conversation covers how enquiries reach you today. If the company's own site is the weaker link, that comes first, and we say so.

  2. 2

    Search your own name with you

    We look at what a buyer sees today: every profile, old listing and photograph. Some of it you will want taken down, and some of it only you can take down.

  3. 3

    Agree what you will and will not say

    The subjects you know cold, the ones that belong to your clients, and the lines your regulator or association draws. Written down before anything is published.

  4. 4

    Rebuild the profiles

    The bio page, LinkedIn and the directories that matter in your field, done once and done properly.

  5. 5

    The routine

    Interview, drafts, your approval, publication. The interview is the only part that needs you, and it is the part that cannot be skipped.

  6. 6

    Hand it over

    The subject list, the drafting notes and the calendar are yours. If you would rather keep it running yourself, that is a fair outcome.

Before you hire anyone

The first thing to do yourself.

It costs nothing, and it shows what a buyer sees before they ever call you.

  1. Search your own name and your practice or business name in a private browser window, and list the first ten results.
  2. Open your profile on each major platform and check that the name, photo, description and contact details agree.
  3. Ask two people who recently chose you what they looked up first, and write down their answers.

Judge any provider

What to ask any agency or ghost-writer.

Useful whoever you choose, including us.

  • Who writes my words, and do I approve everything before it goes out?
  • Which of my own details and claims will you need to check with me before publishing?
  • What will you not write because of the rules my profession follows?
  • Whose account do the profiles and the content sit in, and what happens to them if we stop?
  • What do you count as a result, and what will you not promise?

Where this fits

Three pieces of sales work, in this order.

GullySales builds every engagement from three pieces of sales work. This page is not one of them, but the same three steps apply to the business behind it.

  1. Step 1

    Sales audit

    Find where deals are being lost and what to fix first.

    Start here if you cannot say where orders are lost.

  2. Step 2

    Sales process design

    One written way to sell, from first enquiry to repeat order.

    Start here if every salesperson sells differently.

  3. Step 3

    Sales management

    A target, a review routine and someone who owns the number.

    Start here if the team has targets and no routine.

Tell us what you need Your brief is read before we call. Scope, fee and term in writing.

FAQ

Questions owners ask before they call.

Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.

Tell us what you need
Everything I touch is confidential. What is actually left?
Your method, which no agreement covers. How you size a market, how you decide what to stop doing, what you look at in the first thirty days of a diligence. Strategists are judged on reasoning, because outcomes cannot be verified by a reader anyway.
Should the chief executive be the visible one instead of me?
In most companies, yes, and if there is money for one public voice it should go there. This is worth buying when your own approaches, board seats or recruitment depend on strangers knowing who you are. Have that argument out loud before anyone signs anything.
I am a chief of staff rather than a strategy head. Same thing?
The reader is different, so the writing is different. A chief of staff is read by people inside the company and by the next employer, which pulls the subjects towards the craft of the role and away from the market. We say which of the two you are buying in the first conversation.
How much does it cost?
There is no price list, because the work differs by business. The fee is scoped after we have read your brief and spoken to you, and put in writing before anything starts, split into our time, your media spend and production.
How long is the contract?
The term is agreed in writing after we have spoken, along with the fee and the reporting. It is never a default twelve months, and renewal is decided on the numbers against the baseline recorded at the start.
How soon will we see results?
It depends on what is being changed and how many of the people who matter see it. After we have read your brief and spoken to you, we say what we would expect to move first and how it will be measured against the baseline. Nothing here is guaranteed.
Who will actually do the work?
The person you speak to before anything starts. We work from one office in Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru, with no account managers in between.
What do you need from us?
Your brief, and a conversation. After that, access to whatever the work touches, such as your profiles, your website or your accounts, and time with the people who can answer our questions.
What if we are not happy with the work?
Tell us and the plan changes. Everything is reported against the baseline, so a number that is not moving is visible to both sides. The term is in your written scope, and the refund and cancellation policy sets out the rest.

C-suite and senior leaders

Personal branding for the rest of the c-suite and senior leaders.

Or start from personal branding.

Your next practical step

Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.

Eight short steps, mostly taps. Skip anything you would rather answer on the call.

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