Why Should You “sell yourself”?
Joe Girard has a book called "How To Sell Yourself". I haven’t read it but I found the title intriguing. What does it mean to sell yourself? That’s a question many, myself included struggle with.
I've been trying to get into freelance work for a few months now. Anyone in this space will tell you it's a challenge. Between getting clients and building a steady pipeline of work, freelancing will keep you on your toes. That's what got me thinking about the idea of "selling yourself".
Most balk when they hear the phrase. It brings up images of shop windows in Amsterdam. No not coffee shop windows, the other ones. Or it calls to mind the slew of spam mail from shady internet companies they get every other day. Or they think of the time their cousin tried to rope them into some multi level marketing scheme.
For most people that's what selling yourself equates to. A racket. False advertising. Shilling. The idea gets a bad rep, a lot of it earned. There is a lot of hucksterism out there. But good and evil have always coexisted. So too has a sincere effort to match products to problems versus dodgy selling practices. Selling yourself can as much be the latter as the former but for most that distinction never arises like it would for any other product.
Oddly enough we sell ourselves almost every day. A lot of them are micro sales. Little things we do to smooth our way through life. Like smiling and joking with the repair man so he can give you a better rate. Then you get the bigger sells, much fewer and further between. Like a job interview. If you've been to a job interview, chances are you went in there with the intention of presenting yourself in the best light possible. What is that if not a sales pitch?
We're making sales pitches all the time. For that promotion. For that client. And yes for that girl or guy. Life's a sales pitch. And the one with the best sales pitch comes out trumps.
Generally a great sales pitch stems from a great product. I say generally because this isn't always the case. Some things are all pitch and no product. Sometimes pitches with absolutely nothing to back them up win. It happens all too often. Do you want to know why? Because the people with great products are reticent to talk about them. To sell them. So all you have left is crappy products with a lot of hype around them that people mistake for the real thing.
Some of you are doing great work but are not doing a great job selling the work. Maybe you feel the work should sell itself. Maybe you feel selling it will somehow "taint" the work or maybe you want us to stumble upon you. All nice and "organic". Well you know what? While you're waiting in line for that serendipitous discovery the loud mouth with half of what you got is cutting in.
Your work should be your minimum viable product. Take that and add how you sell your work and you've got a product that's hard to ignore.
Some of you will roll your eyes at that. Thinking to yourself "why should I have to do all that? I'm good at what I do". If that's working for you that's fine. But if it isn't you might want to consider giving what I said a shot.
The game has changed. In a good way I think. Yes it's a lot more demanding and with demands comes pressure. Pressure to raise the bar a little higher. That way we make it harder for the shysters to get in.
