You, Inc, by Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith
Selling for Dummies, by Tom Hopkins
Those are two of a myriad of books, authors, and speakers tauting, "Sell YOU!"
We are always selling ourselves whether we know it...or not.
Recently I joined the Basho Community, what a great site providing poignant information directed to the sales professional. A blog covering CEO M. Jeffrey Hoffman's recent interview with SellingPower Magazine provided advice to the new sales manager. Hoffman is a sales sage and I appreciate what he's doing for our industry. I must, however, disagree in principle with the approach he recommends for new sales managers.
Instead, espouse the "Sell YOU!" mentality. Many sales managers find themselves in their managerial role due to a promotion received as a highly successful salesperson.
Take ownership of your new role by focusing on your strengths, sell them to your new team, lift them up to your standards, and help them succeed. ALL of them.
Dedicated to the next evolution in Sales and Marketing. Call it the 2.0 generation! Old concepts renewed, dismissed, broken, and revised. New concepts ready for primetime. Visionary concepts for discussion.
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3 comments:
I was one of those people that kicked serious butt at selling and then was promoted and moved to my own store. Selling yourself doesn't always work. When you are promoted, and by the way I was 20 when I was put in charge, you have to deal with the people who are already there. Many of whom are anything but receptive to a new boss. Especially one as young as I was. My assistant was 40 and no matter how hard I tried to "sell myself" to her, nothing I did worked. She tried everything to get rid of me leaving me no choice but to terminate her. I can honestly say until all but one of the old staff was gone, the numbers barely improved. It didn't matter that I was on the sales floor with them, and taking care of all of my managerial responsibilities at the same time. It didn't matter that I worked with them side by side during the holidays and helped them through as much as I could. To them I was too young to be their boss, and therefore they refused to listen to anything I had to say. When I saw a problem and tried to help them with their techniques, they snobbed me off like, "Who does she think she is?"
Enough with the rant. What I am trying to say is that it doesn't matter how hard you try to sell yourself, it doesn't always work. Selling yourself in a job interview is one thing, selling yourself in a working environment is an entirely different monster. I learned that when you try to hard to sell yourself, you end up losing. The best thing you can do is show em' what you got and then they'll follow suit when they see how great you really are. Tooting your own horn, or wagging your own tail is going to get you know where. People will look at you as narcessistic at best. Just be you and show how good you've honed your skills. Don't rub it in their faces when you are the top dog in sales. Pretend like it doesn't even matter. People will wag your tail for you =)
I agree selling yourself doesn't always work. Sometimes people are intimidated by a younger boss. If you show them what you have a you can run management successfully then that is selling you. I understand tiffany what you mean. Selling yourself in a job interview will work.
This is a very interesting topic. I had a conversation with a Director at a major telecommunications company and he told me that he read a book on climbing the corporate ladder (I can't remember the title) and the book indicated that in order to climb the corporate ladder effectively, you have to leave some of your skills behind.
I completely agree. In order to be effective in your new position, you need to stop doing things that were requirements of your previous position. Otherwise, you will either overwhelm yourself with work or you will never been seen on the same level as your peers because of the tasks you have held onto, or both.
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