Selling Yourself

“If you can’t sell yourself, what can you sell?”
What is the meaning of selling in our modern society? In the simplicity of layman’s terms, it is a process of using either commentary or written words to communicate a message from one party or entity to another with an objective of convincing that other party to either act or follow a suggested rationale or way of thinking.

Having reviewed the aforementioned paragraph, one would have to agree that to secure a six-figure compensation package, candidates must embark on executing a few selling strategies. Selling ones’ features and benefits in a value added approach will always be advantageous to any candidate and has secured a large majority of them job offers. I have heard multiple executives’ claim they try to stay away from coming across as having a salesperson persona during interviews and their quest for employment. Following that strategy is a big mistake in the authors’ opinion because of the lost opportunities to sell themselves.

Leadership in its truest organic form has its platform rooted in the ability to convince people to act or follow. Nothing has more enduring accuracy than the aforementioned statement relative to ones’ sales ability. It may be a leaders persona or direction or how he/she delivers that message that can be the vital image one cultivates to become a leader, while others will never master the skill set to have other people follow them.

Selling in its purest form is a beautiful thing to witness. Having a firm, educated knowledge base of a given subject matter and having the ability to articulate that message is one of the most underrated skill sets in our modern world. Everyday, the art of selling or negotiating occupies the majority of the commentary world wide in every culture and continent across our planet. That
key initiative has moved not only affected economies, but also moved beliefs and agenda’s forward. Religion is another arena where compelling and extremely convincing commentary rooted in a deep belief can also move masses of people in the same direction consistently over the centuries.

Ultimately, the same applies to all executive candidates and how their personas are perceived through the eyes of a potential buyer, or in this case, a hiring manager. Executive candidates must approach their job search, as a marketer will market their product. Collectively, selling themselves will be a huge component of any successful job search campaign. Understanding how imperative it is to incorporate a selling persona during an executive job search is pivotal.

Taking on a selling approach is not a process so much as it is an attitude of having the confidence that your background and work habits are far superior to other candidates. Additionally, being able to package and communicate that confidence via cover letters, resumes, interviews, follow up letters, etc., as well as expressing it verbally in a very professional and diplomatic delivery will garner tremendous rewards for any candidate who understands it benefits.

Selling for a living or occupation can result in a very rewarding career and can make those people extremely wealthy not only for themselves, but for their employers as well. Many CEO’s and VP’s will agree that the Sales Department in most all-successful organizations is the most instrumental and “relied on” department throughout their organization. This department also has the biggest impact on the success or failure of their companies. One Fortune 500 CEO recently spoke at one of our sales conferences and mentioned during his presentation that the sales people are the engine behind his company’s growth.

Identified below are the top three W-2 wage earners by occupation description identified by category according to the IRS annual reports.

Highest Paid Professionals
#1 Professional Sales Executives
#2 Lawyers
#3 Medical Doctors

Despite professional salespeople ranking first, we all have heard stereotypes that project a perceived image of salespeople as hustlers’, hucksters, bullshiters, conmen, tin men, as well as smooth operators. Unfortunately for salespeople, this is an unfair image that exists.

Fundamentally, many people feel insecure when communicating with a well-educated stranger or even a friend who can communicate extremely effectively. Most people come up short in their own communicational skill sets, thus, they feel they must try to bring down people who are gifted at one of the most important skill sets we need to get ahead in society. Which results in strong verbal communicational skills.

Simply put, excellent commination skill sets are closely tied to intelligence; therefore, people need to react in that fashion, vs. the aforementioned namecalling. It is similar to other avenues in life where your golf skills, your wealth or job status, or even the house you live in can draw the same insecure reaction and false perception from people who are not in the same position. Perception is truly reality with the masses when people draw their own conclusions. The ability to convince people to do something for you or your party and take your side on an issue, or topic is a skill set everyone should acquire. This skill set will serve you well throughout your life, specifically in a working environment.

During an executive job search, candidates must use their sales ability in a vast array of different approaches. For example, when drafting your cover letters, resume preparation, and networking, you must create the content that delivers a message that you as a person and potential future employee that has the confidence and ability to exceed their expectations. As an executive candidate, you must come across as a “winner” and not like other candidates who just want a job offer. Therefore, during all aspects of a job search, you must have the courage to sell other people on your job skill set, talent, and experience.

An age-old adage that if you don’t vote for yourself, don’t expect other people to vote for you.

Realize it or not, everyday we are all selling concepts, points of views, or other recommendations or suggestions when we ask people to act on or to follow our recommendations. Our children are very good salespeople and negotiators. The next time your daughter is pushing back on the time she needs to be home, she is not only lobbying for extending her time out, but she is also sharpening her development of her ability to convince. Additionally, spouses can be convincingly strong sales agents and negotiators because they know their mates so well, thus giving them an advantage when the selling environment favors the person with the most knowledge to leverage in their desired results.

Confidence and the Facts
When a person has a firm knowledge base of the subject matter and has the confidence and courage to deliver and express that knowledge; the ability to persuade is strong. A strong negotiator always has those two intangibles firmly in place before any negotiation takes place. You can be totally correct on an issue, yet if you can’t articulate your thoughts and ideas, you will come up short more times than not. Additionally, you do not have to necessarily believe in what you are selling to be ultimately successful. You will always have a higher degree of success in any selling environment when you have the facts and confidence on your side. When the desired results are achieved during the execution of a selling pitch, the personal rewards can be simply overwhelming and gratifying.

My first sales manager once said, you would be surprised what you can secure or negotiate simply by asking.

If you review the skill sets required by successful coaches and educators, the need to have the ability to implement persuasion is critical. Relative to teachers, effectively motivating a group of students to learn requires solid selling skills to achieve results and sustained progress over the school year. Additionally, believing in your own valued commentary and time tested agendas, as well as having a firm grounded platform of knowledge will translate into incredible Success with young people in a classroom surrounding.

Additionally, “selling ability” can impact the classroom environment in measurable ways towards showing incremental growth in the student’s learning curves. Remember your favorite teacher in school and reflecting back on that
person and recalling his/her persona. Do you think he/she could have made a living as a salesperson? The majority of the readers will reply yes!

Becoming a Lobbyist during your Search
Ulysses S Grant coined the phase “lobbyist”. When he was president, he would take a break from the White House and go across the street to the Waldorf Hotel and in the lobby he would enjoy a brandy and cigar. While relaxing in the lobby, people would approach him for jobs, favors, or consideration on new legislation, simply put; they were trying to sell him concepts and ideas to act on. Thus he coined them Lobbyist. Implementing a successful job search in today’s environment also requires some degree of lobbying to achieve a degree of success to secure a position in any organization.

Implementing this approach in the authors opinion will positioning the candidate as an exceptional potential new hire who has highlighted remarkable trade experience, a successful background, and a candidate who have also included and demonstrated a consistent pattern of career achievements. Parlayed that approach into a marketable package, than collectively you too will be in a better position to lobby and achieve your desired results when you lobby hard for employment with a specific company or position you are seeking

Selling Yourself
Let’s review the concept of selling yourself. If you cannot sell yourself, what can you sell? That is a great question and every candidate should ask himself or herself that when they undertake an all out executive job search. Many executives are better prepared to sell their companies’ products or services vs. their own qualitative and analytical skill sets or experience if challenged during an interview.

The reason many candidates consistently come up short during their job search process is they simply refuse to sell their career features and benefits as a qualified candidate to employers. This one fact has cost many of them the jobs they were seeking as candidates only get one chance during a job search with most employers. This is a huge mistake, as they intentionally did not want to come across to the hiring manager as conceited or plastic, yet they missed out on the limited opportunity they had to sell the hiring manager(s) on any redeeming qualities they potentially have acquired over their career. An excellent comparison is when professional football player’s agents are negotiating new contracts for their clients with the NFL front offices. This approach by these agents are the cornerstone and starting point of any negotiation process as the players past achievements, successes, and other “measurable” results are used to leverage in the best deal for the player. Unfortunately, if the Candidates results are not present or not achieved, you as a candidate have less to negotiate with and will have to settle for less than say a over achiever who knows how to sell.

Fact Base Selling
You need to position your background and past achievements in a fact base approach. What I mean by fact base selling is focusing your past experience and achievements along with fact base information or data to sell-in a compelling story for a candidate. Fact base selling is rooted on a “correct information platform” from which all successes are derived. Fact base selling is only creditable if the information is viable and relevant and can be substantiated by third parities. Fact base selling can also educate, inform, and inspire a person or group to act when reservations exist. Therefore, without the correct information and fact base data being presented, a candidate will come up short more times than not.

Professional sales executives always rely on fact base selling when they are approaching their clients and accounts when trying to leverage in sales objectives. When Hughes Aircraft or Boeing approaches the government to secure and sell billion dollar contracts, all their sales pitches are built around fact base selling information that they can solidify their most advantageous position
for their company to be successful.

Another example is when Proctor & Gamble approaches the buyers at Wal-Mart to increase their shelf space on Head n Shoulders Shampoo in all 5200 stores, they use fact base information along with national syndicated data, as to why it is profitable for Wal-Mart to give incremental shelf allocation for this brand. Trying to leverage in sales objectives with “rapport selling” will not work unless you are selling insurance or financial securities, as those two sales environments are more conducive to “rapport selling”. Fact base selling is involved in some of these presentations, yet it is the confidence that the buyer has in the agent or financial planner that facilitates the sale. Additionally, the “subjectivity” factor relative to the real ROI (Return on Investment) always enters into play when insurance and securities are being pitched and sold. Therefore, to develop into a great negotiator or salesperson, one must master this skill set using a “knowledge platform” in order to demonstrate why their ideas and rationale is far superior to other people who are also aggressively trying to secure the support of the same ideas and rationale.

Ultimately, companies enjoy being exposed to candidates as well as they take pride in hiring solid people who can sell themselves in an interviewing environment. Wouldn’t you if you were a hiring manager? Organizations like to hire confident people because confident people parlay their confidence into their work.

“Great Sales People are not born, they are made”. - Lee Iacocca - CEO Chrysler - “Saved Chrysler from Bankruptcy and 80,000 jobs in 1975”

Former CEO of GE – Jack Welch is A Master Salesperson - R.C Patrick - “Built an empire on risk taking and sound salesmanship”

Right Here, Right Now!
Remember when Michael Jordan came back for the 2001-2002 NBA Basketball season with Washington? He was less than the Jordan we knew who played at the Chicago Stadium and later at the United Center. I was disappointed, not because he returned to the NBA, but for my prior memories of the Jordan that I had known vs. the current, older, slower, thicker Jordan. I wanted to remember the Jordan of the nineties. Not a thirty-eight year old Jordan who had lost that unstoppable game once feared by every opponent, which had never been seen before in the NBA.

My point here is very fundamental. Jordan was considered the best basketball player on the planet during the nineties playing in Chicago, but when he came back and was not his old self relative to the prior Jordan we all remembered, people were not satisfied.

Right here, Right Now is what people want and expect from performers, not what you did yesterday or last year, or last decade. If you can’t deliver NOW, you are suspect! Sorry, that is the stark reality, so you need to deal with it. Candidates focus needs to be centered on selling recent career successes and achievements, not what you accomplished ten years ago or something you did in college twenty years ago.

To help sharpen a candidate’s ability to improve his/her negotiating skills and to solidify success is simply a process of implementing a strong selling ability. Identified below are a few suggestions to build a better selling platform:

Recommendations
• Never, ever, try to lose creditability via a falsehood or communicating misinformation.
• Always know what you are going to say before objections surface.
• Always know what you are going to say before you say it. “Think Before You Speak”
• Know what your career features and benefits consist of before you begin to sell anything during an interview.
• Demonstrate total autonomy and authority of pronouncing your words completely and correctly. We truly are judged by the way we speak.
• Never assume you are beaten until the fat lady sings, or in this case, you are told no.
• Always “try” to approach a given situation that is a win, win, for both parties. It improves your position and success rate.
• Always incorporate in your commentary, parts of past achievements and experience that will be used as an example of your credibility. (I.e., Cover Letters, Resumes, Leave Behind Success Booklets, Written Reference Narratives, Etc.)
• Always focus on correct information with everything you put on paper that is not derived to be assumed information. Creditability is paramount when it comes to great negotiators.
• Always present the best possible Image. (I.e., Clothes, Grooming, Commentary, Clean Breath, Kindness to Others, etc.)
• Incorporate your extra curricular activities at least once during the interviewing process. (I.e., Church membership, Little League Coach, United Way Volunteer -- Historically, people like other people who appear to be kind and caring, yet strong when it comes to negotiating.) Just remember that whenever you can improve your negotiating skill sets and selling ability, it will always be advantageous to you not only as a candidate, but also to you as a person throughout your life.

GOOD $ELLING