As published on Found & Flourish: Sallee Poinsette-Nash, human brand builder and the Founder of Brandable & Co teaches us why self-promotion is important and why we need to be doing more of it!
Why this aversion to selling?
Having run workshops with women all over the world on this topic, I can confirm that the results are always the same – the way people feel and the emotional reaction it evokes is undoubtedly where the problem resides. When I ask groups how the prospect of promoting themselves feels, I’ll be met with words like awkward, arrogant, embarrassing, unnatural and cringe to name but a few.
There are many reasons why it might feel uncomfortable to promote yourself which may include the fact that you’ve never consciously had to do it before, maybe you’ve not given much thought to how you want to come across nor have you spent time crafting a powerful message. If you don’t know how to clearly communicate ‘who you are’, if you don’t know which bit of your story to tell and you have never practised ways of telling it, of course, you’re not going to feel confident about it… I don’t know many people who would!
When it comes to interviews, salary increases, promotions, winning new clients, partnerships, collaborations and all that could appear on the career and business path ahead of you, you won’t be able to help people unless they actually work with you – which means, at some point, you’ll need to sell yourself!
By re-framing how you view ‘selling’ and understanding the value it has – to you, your career or business – will help you get more comfortable with the idea and this, in turn, will hopefully lead to you becoming more interested in learning how you can get better at it.
Rather than focus on how ‘selling’ makes you feel, shift your attention to what it would mean for you? For your family? For your wellbeing? For your career or business?