A 5-step Hack on How to Sell Yourself Effectively
Once I talked about selling oneself to my younger brother, he asked, “Do you mean giving money to someone and allow him take you away?” It was quite funny. I knew he didn’t understand and I had to go the extra mile in explaining to him.
Whether we like it or not, everyday, we are putting our images out there, whether it’s in the positive or negative. Selling oneself is simply pushing your personality accompanied with your expertise out there for the world to see, to be known by your deeds.
Selling oneself isn’t about telling others about yourself only, it’s inherent in what your actions communicate, accompanied by people’s attestation after an encounter with you; all these sums up to selling yourself.
No matter what your profession is, you would need your business to be patronized, else, what’s the essence of being into the business? No matter how meager the business could be, it grows overtime depending on the effort put into it.
Questions as these comes;
How do we portray ourselves to be able to remain at the top of the game? How do we do it that we create positive influence with whatever we do?
The 5-step Hack below is here to give an headway.
Your Personality:
First, you have to CONSIDER yourself a product.
Remember who you are is the first message to the world, not necessarily what you do.
A plumber could choose to be a software developer tomorrow, if all he spent his time doing was developing his expertise, he will have people who patronized him because he was a plumber go away instantly and he has to start from scratch finding connections for his new field, but if what he did overtime was projecting a good image of himself out there not just what he does, he will still retain his plumber customers who would overtime be in need of his services as a software developer.
Every word you say and everything you do, is a message to the world. Just as a good organization protects its brand, protect your reputation by being intentional about the words you speak and the actions you perform; including your online presence.
The person who knows how best to market yourself is you.
Only you can take yourself much further than you may have dreamt.
Don’t forget, it does not matter what you do or how good you are, if you are not trusted and sincere with a reputable history, a person who is less knowledgeable will be preferred over you, because it takes more than great expertise in a field to maintain a company/job.
Share your what you know with others:
opportunities come everyday, you might have the privilege to be called upon to share your knowledge either with a person, an organization or during an event; do it graciously. Do not say no, especially when it concerns what you do and do not always seek for pay all the time.
Also, write prolifically about what you know, to get your name in front of people as an authority in your field. Contribute to articles and blog posts any time you have an opportunity to. Make sure it’s informative, well written, timely, and valuable to readers. Make sure you share your wisdom as widely as possible.
Remember… “To stay relevant you have to proof that you yourself are relevant.”
-Blessing Akpan
Capture attention:
People have short term attention especially employers and even customers, so you must be able to make good use of the little opportunity you have with them. Apart from writing prolifically, you have to be able to convert your writing into what we call Elevator Pitch.
An opportunity might not always require that you write, most times you only get to sell yourself by talking, which often times you do not have much time to do a long speech.
You must be able to communicate what you do effectively within the shortest possible time.
Build a community:
Create a network of like-minded people in your field and work on connecting deeply and really getting to know one another.
Share some of your expertise for free, and you can begin building a base of fans who trust you and look up to you for expert advice.
Help others:
Apart from working on your personality, another best and most efficient way to market yourself is being of service to others, helping people.
For a fact, this can go a long way to boost your visibility. Have you heard of someone who got recommended to a company because he had helped someone sometime ago? Don’t be an island, reach out to someone.
Besides, a project sees a successful completion if there is collaboration, organizations and companies are looking out for guys who can collaborate effectively.
Become a trusted adviser and do what you can to help as many people as you can. You can be of service to others by setting up an internship or mentoring opportunity to help someone starting out.
Don’t forget, in one way or the other, your good works come back to you.
While you are putting these few steps into good use, do not forget to be optimistic and consistent in whatever you do.
