A Brag Book is a portfolio, leave-behind, or interview presentation binder that job seekers use to showcase their accomplishments, document their educational credentials, training, and professional development, set themselves apart from other candidates, provide a prop for comfort during interviews, and allow for greater depth and detail about their qualifications than a resume alone.
Creating a brag book involves gathering materials, organizing content, designing pages, and personalizing it for specific job applications. A digital version can be created for ease of sharing and updating. Items to include in a brag book can be categorized into education/training, work-related documentation, awards and honors, feedback/testimonials/endorsements, community or organizational involvement, and other documentation.
A resume is a concise, formal document that summarizes your education, work experience, skills, and achievements, typically limited to one or two pages. It is often the first impression you make on potential employers and is used to screen candidates for interviews.
On the other hand, a brag book is a more comprehensive and visual collection of your accomplishments, providing tangible evidence of your skills and impact. It can include various types of documentation, such as work samples, awards, and endorsements, and can be presented in both physical and digital formats.
To maximize the impact of your brag book, focus on including content that highlights your most significant achievements and showcases your skills. Consider the following categories:
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Firmographics are descriptive attributes of organizations, used to segment companies by characteristics like industry, size, and location.
Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.
The awareness stage is the first step in the buyer's journey, where a potential customer realizes they have a problem or an opportunity to explore.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
A qualified lead is a prospect vetted as a good fit for your product. They match your ideal customer profile and show genuine interest.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a focused B2B strategy where marketing and sales collaborate to target and convert high-value accounts.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Triggers are predefined conditions that, when met, automatically launch a workflow or action, ensuring timely and relevant outreach.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) software helps teams coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land high-value customer accounts.
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Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your products to build a pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
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An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
Video selling uses personalized video messages to engage prospects, build rapport, and guide them through the sales funnel to close more deals.
Lead routing is the automated process of distributing incoming leads to the right sales reps based on predefined criteria.
GPCTBA/C&I is a sales qualification framework for understanding a prospect's goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, and authority.
Closed Lost is a sales term for a deal that didn't go through. The prospect decided not to buy, or the sales team disqualified them.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
An Operational CRM is a system that automates and improves customer-facing business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service.
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Trigger marketing uses customer actions or events to automatically send highly relevant, personalized messages at the perfect moment.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
Ramp-up time is the period a new hire takes to get fully up to speed and become a productive member of your go-to-market team.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
A channel partner is a company that works with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell their products, software, or services to customers.
A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Hadoop is an open-source framework designed for the distributed storage and processing of extremely large data sets across clusters of computers.
A performance plan is a formal document outlining an employee's goals, expectations, and metrics for success over a specific period.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
Sales development is the process of identifying and qualifying potential customers to create a pipeline of sales-ready leads for closers.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
A talk track is a script that guides sales reps during calls. It ensures they cover key points and maintain a consistent message with prospects.
Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.
Sales objections are reasons or concerns raised by a potential customer as to why they are hesitant or unwilling to make a purchase.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
Sales and marketing analytics involves measuring and analyzing performance data to maximize effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI).
Docker is a tool that packages applications and their dependencies into isolated environments called containers for easy deployment and scaling.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
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A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
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Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
Content Rights Management involves controlling the use and distribution of copyrighted digital media to protect intellectual property.
Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that look and feel like native mobile apps, offering features like offline access and push notifications.
Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
A marketing play is a repeatable tactic used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like generating leads or driving engagement.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
An email cadence is a scheduled sequence of emails sent to prospects over a specific period to nurture leads and drive engagement.
The lead qualification process is how you determine which prospects are most likely to become customers by evaluating them against specific criteria.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
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The Dark Funnel describes customer buying activities that are untrackable by companies, such as private chats and word-of-mouth referrals.
An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
Accounts Payable (AP) is the money a company owes its suppliers for goods or services bought on credit. It's listed as a current liability.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Customer retention refers to the strategies and activities a company uses to prevent customer churn and encourage them to continue buying.
Email personalization uses subscriber data—like their name, interests, or past behavior—to create highly relevant and targeted email campaigns.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
Buying intent is the collection of online cues and behaviors that signal a prospect is actively researching and moving toward a purchase decision.
Firmographic data is information used to classify firms. It includes attributes like industry, employee count, location, and annual revenue.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
Total Addressable Market (TAM) represents the maximum revenue a company can earn by selling its product or service in a specific market.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process, from the first contact to the final sale.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that manages your entire hiring and recruitment process from a single dashboard.
A Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API is a web service that uses XML to exchange structured information between different applications.