How to Effectively Promote Yourself
The poor maligned used car salesman. We can probably blame everyone’s reluctance on that stereotypical idea of a used car salesman. You know the type. The one who is in a poorly fitting suit, or worse a costume of some kind, with slicked back hair, yelling into the camera for the local commercial that is full of lies about the value and cost of the vehicles he’s promoting? Of course, no one wants to be that person!
I have good news for you. You’re not that person. And, truth be told, most car salespeople aren’t that person either. This is literally a stereotype that makes all salespeople look bad. Sadly, there are a few people who live up to that horrible image in every single niche that exists, which contributes to giving most people a yucky feeling when they think of sales. Good news again, you can let that image go and find awesome ways to promote your products and yourself without becoming that stereotype.
Provide the Service You Promised
If you’re going to provide a service that you’ve described fully (and you should always describe everything fully), then you must provide the service that you promised the person. Knowing the intent of the buyer and what they are expecting can help you succeed at this. When your buyer reads your sales page, they should get what they expected and more once they hit buy or download.
Develop Topnotch Products
The products you create or promote that someone else created need to also live up to the hype. The thing is if you know your products and services are what you say they are, then there is no problem bragging about them at all because you know it’s the truth. It won’t feel yucky when it’s the honest truth about the products. If it really is the biggest, and the best, and the most effective and you can back that up, it’s not wrong to state it.
Find Someone to Look Up To
To show yourself that all salespeople aren’t liars and jerks trying to just take money from you for nothing, find a mentor or a coach you look up to who services a similar audience as you do. It is best if they’re not direct competition, but they need to at least be in the realm for their business practices to work in your setting. Find someone like this, follow what they do, then emulate them.
Share Relevant & Accurate Content
Focus your selling on creating and sharing relevant and accurate content. It actually feels good to share an article you wrote about an issue that your audience needs to know about. When providing value becomes important, selling just falls by the wayside yet, it all happens rather naturally at the same time because sales will go up.
Build Your Sales & Marketing Funnels
One way to ensure that your selling process is not like a used car salesman is to build out your sales and marketing funnels with just the right content and information at the right time according to your buyer’s place and intent within their buying journey. In many ways, this journey is fully self-guided, and all you’re doing is putting the right information in front of them at the time they need it most.
Keep Moving Forward
Don’t stop to worry about selling. Design your marketing efforts with your funnels and products using ethical, well-written content while offering effective products and services that solve problems and just keep moving forward.
You don’t have to become a stereotypically used car salesperson or use any over the top sales strategies to be successful in business and with self-promotion. Self-promotion is more about getting the word out about what you do and have done than anything else. Share great content and do good work and you’ll do just fine!