Self-marketing is a requirement in every job
“I am not a good salesperson in my own right!”. “I do a good job and my performance speaks for me!” These are frequent responses from my clients to my suggestion to do more self-marketing. What are we to make of these statements? First, the second statement: I think that today self-marketing is a requirement in practically every job. In the past, when employees worked for many years in the same job with the same supervisors, the above statement might have been true. Over the years, managers had observed their employees and knew who performed well. Today, frequent changes in jobs and supervisors mean that the performance of employees is not observable enough on a day-to-day basis. In addition, supervisors are often physically separated from their employees and/or know too little about their tasks. In such situations, employees are only visible if they use storytelling to market themselves.
You can’t do it without self-confidence
The assessment that one is not good at selling oneself is usually based on a misunderstanding about sales. In Switzerland, sales often has a bad reputation because it is associated with over-talking, sales pitches and pressure. Credible self-marketing, however, has nothing to do with boasting and self-promotion! Instead, it is about showing who you are, what you are good at and what your personal unique selling points are. The prerequisite for this is that you know yourself well. Good self-consciousness leads to good self-marketing. Not everyone has natural self-confidence, but it can be learned. A personal and professional assessment as well as learning storytelling will ensure that you know about yourself. I have been searching for American literature on the topic of personal and profes-sional assessment for a long time. I finally found it in the literature on personal branding. The authors all assume that personal branding begins with getting to know oneself better in the context of a personal and professional assessment.
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Self-marketing is a requirement in every job