“The price you will offer yourself to the world, is how much they will buy you.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita
Everyone needs to learn the art of selling themselves.Our lives are full of scenarios where we are trying to persuade someone or "win them over," whether we are trying to gain a job, a date, or a gig for our new band.
"Selling" frequently carries a bad reputation. We stereotype salespeople as being avaricious, dishonest, and ready to say anything to close a deal, but in reality, we are all in some ways salespeople. We must be, too.
What is “selling yourself”?
The sole purpose of selling is to convey the worth of an item. Therefore, "selling yourself" involves expressing your value, which is a skill we could all use.
The truth is that if you don't know how to sell yourself to people, it doesn't really matter how good or skilled you are at something; there isn't much purpose in connecting with them and earning their trust.
Selling Yourself for Career Growth
Because we are always selling, it is difficult to excel at work if you lack sales skills. You must consistently promote yourself, your services, and your concepts. You won't succeed unless you can motivate those around you to take action. Your goal during an interview is to convince the hiring manager that you are the best candidate. You must convince them of your merit if you seek a promotion. You may have even had to convince your friend to go to a movie or your wife or husband to marry you in your personal life. Although selling comes naturally to all of us, there is always room for improvement.
Here are some tips and trick to help you sell yourself better:
1. Find Your Niche and Showcase Excellence In It
It's important to consider your value proposition if you want to sell yourself successfully. Consider asking yourself the following questions:
● What are you best at?
● Whom can you help the most?
● What are your best qualities and skills?
● What distinguishes you?
You can have a greater understanding of who you are, what you can do, and who you can serve after responding to all of those questions. Your value proposition needs to be very clear and succinct for consumers to remember it, making you stand out from your competitors. For instance, you may work as a salesperson specialising in healthcare products and catering to the Indian market. Or, you can be a salesperson who specialises in closing deals using social media.Your objective is to be as specific as you can be in order to conquer a particular field.
Beyond experience or credentials, emphasise your notable victories and achievements, the facets of your specialty you excel at, times when you have gone above and beyond to achieve a goal, and the outcomes you achieve. This can be used to demonstrate to potential clients what they can anticipate from working with you. Explicitly stating who you are as a person and what you stand for can also serve as a means of communicating your competitive advantage (your core values). By highlighting job experience and other actions that reflect your basic principles, you can demonstrate your values.
2. Build a Great First Impression with Impeccable Soft Skills
When potential employers first meet you for the first time, they learn more about who you are than about your skills. Start with who you are as a person, not what you know, and particularly not your academic qualifications and pedigree, to effectively communicate your value. Lead instead with your soft skills. Soft skills are character traits, attitudes, and qualities that determine a person's personality and general outlook. They are essentially "social skills" that determine whether one can connect with others successfully and amicably.
Employees with good soft skills may find that their services are more in demand in a market where employment opportunities are becoming increasingly scarce. Smart employees may provide value across a variety of industries and during their whole career by being adaptive, having the ability to work cooperatively in a team, communicating effectively, and being sympathetic and cool under pressure.
3. Showcase Your Hard Skills in the Hour of Need
Aim to show that you can genuinely complete the task at hand to showcase your value to prospective employers. Accentuate your specialised professional knowledge, talents, and experience, as well as your earlier experiences, to demonstrate your hard skills. The phrase "hard skills" refers to "technical information or training that you have obtained from any life experience, including your work or education."
Because they demonstrate your competence in fields where prior knowledge and abilities are crucial, your hard talents are important. They also show potential employers that you are capable of carrying out the duties and obligations of a certain position. Good employees and candidates with highly specialised talents are difficult to find in the employment market nowadays. As a result, the evidence you present must be well supported by your set of hard skills. In order to demonstrate your value, try to demonstrate how your abilities boost output or efficiency, how your knowledge may assist the company, and overall how employers will gain from working with you.
4. Quantify your Project Outcomes
It is critical to support your reputation with project outcomes. You will be far more successful in getting people to act if you can back up your claims rather than just talking about them. Build every endeavour into a case study that you can use to convince people to pay attention to you. The case study ought to outline the project's goals, your contributions, and the advantages for the business you collaborated with. Make sure you can quantify the outcomes because precise figures are important.
5. Enhance your Visibility
Not only is your great performance important in communicating your worth, but so is your visibility. Many professions are without a doubt "performers." They put their heads down and get to work. They consider themselves as effective employees who deliver results for their company and "silent leaders." They think their output speaks for them. Sadly, no, it doesn't. Being visible is essential for expressing your value since it creates your presence in your target market and makes you appear to be a reliable authority in your industry. Taking on leadership roles, amplifying your voice through speaking engagements, and exhibiting thought leadership by sharing your enthusiasm, knowledge, and experience through books or blogs are just a few methods to become more visible in your niche. Always remember, expertise is defined by what you share, not by what you know.
6. Build Relationships and Establish Credibility
You should put your attention on giving value and developing relationships as the top salesperson for your career before having anyone invest in you. You can build awareness, reputation, and inform your management or client about your worth by launching a blog, podcast, newsletter, or writing for someone else's. Furthermore, you are making life simpler for yourself later on by establishing solid ties with the people who can support your career. It's much simpler and you don't even need to pitch yourself if you already have a relationship with the customer. Because there will always be more noise and competition, sales abilities will become increasingly vital in your profession.
Conclusion
Now that we have established the importance of selling oneself in today’s competitive world, and talked at length about how one can build a sellable reputation, it is important that you develop a coherent narrative around you. Once you've accepted your value, it might be helpful to create a compelling story to share with potential employers and people in your network. Make succinct, precise claims about the value you provide to the company while promoting yourself to others. Employers can better understand how you can contribute to their organisation or mission by hearing specifics about your skills. The goal is to demonstrate your value by meeting the requirements of others and describing how they may profit from the special value you bring to the table, rather than just speaking about your own interests.