Many employees neglect self-marketing in their current job. This is like a company with good products not advertising and leaving the field to the competition, which may offer inferior products, but is more present with customers through good communication.
My client looked at me in surprise. We were talking about strengths and storytelling as part of a personal and professional assessment and I had expressed the suspicion that he was not doing enough internal self-marketing. He was a successful consultant who, despite his proven successes, had not been promoted for the second time and he could not explain why.
Promotion has to do with visibility…
He emphasised how successfully he worked with his team and that his employees always gave him positive feedback. The customers are also very satisfied with his performance, which is reflected in follow-up orders. Obviously, his self-marketing worked for employees and customers. My question about which people in the company were relevant for his promotion and how often they saw him made him think. The relevant stakeholders sat two levels above him and he met them maybe twice a year in a meeting. So, he was obviously not visible.
Promotions, as internal applications, are similar to external job applications. The decision-makers need to be able to imagine the candidate in the new position; they need to see them, either physically or with their mind’s eye.
…with the relevant stakeholders
In the external job application, we know that our interviewers do not know us; therefore, we actively communicate and present our achievements by example. When applying internally, those who assume that their performance speaks for itself do not do so and may be overlooked – especially when competitors make themselves visible through good self-promotion.
Self-marketing is always necessary when the relevant stakeholders no longer (physically) see you in everyday life. My client’s employees have experienced his qualities in cooperation; the same was true for his clients. With the people responsible for the promotion, he would have had to remind himself again and again through systematic contact cultivation and storytelling. Storytelling is nothing other than making personal achievements and qualities visible to the mind’s eye of the listener.
In this context, by the way, home office is a challenge: You are even less visible at home than you often are in the company. So, make sure you remain present for the relevant people!