41: How To Sell (Yourself) Without Feeling Awkward

How To Sell (Yourself) Without Feeling Awkward

How To Sell (Yourself) Without Feeling Awkward

I have no idea how to sell myself. I’m bad at it. Something tells me I shouldn’t sell myself. It’s cheap. I’m not cheap. However, reading around the internet I found these tips to be useful, reasonable and common sense when you want to learn selling yourself.

Why selling is important

You always sell. On a date with a stranger, in a presentation in school, reciting a poem, communicating a new idea to your team or asking your boss for a raise at your day job. Many areas need selling, also your own product or service. Here’s a recipe for selling (yourself) without a weird feeling.

The 10 ingredients of selling well

1. Conviction

You doubt-free have to believe in yourself first and in product/service after.

2. Investment

Your buyer sees your product/service as an investment, not an expense.

3. Customer

If you focus on your customer and how you enrich their life you move the focus away from your weaknesses towards your strengths. Enriching their life doesn’t work when you’re weak yourself or show your weakness. It doesn’t make sense.

4. Elevate your pitch

The better you know your elevator pitch the more confident you appear to others. I have a template for your elevator pitch. Write to alexander@naii.nu if you want it.

5. Care

If you don’t genuinely care about providing a solution to your customers you will have a hard time providing value that comes from the heart, head and hands.

6. Mindset and perception

How you think about your product/service is how you will sell it. How you sell it is how people perceive it.

7. Research

Know the players in your market and differentiate yourself from them to dominate the game in your niche. Don’t obsess with watching your competition. Have them on your radar and act out of stand-by.

8. Authority

It’s not a surprise that when you author something (creating original content from scratch) you’re on the way to become an authority (pun intended). As with every great piece research (observation) is single most essential tool you want to use – see point 7.

9. Return-On-Investment (ROI)

Your product/service is an investment for your customer whose problem will be solved to receive a return of any kind (more money, subscriptions, connections or exposure).

10. Write

I can’t stress enough how important writing is for your business. Writing sells — I made a workshop about it on the Nomad Cruise. Writing also builds trust, so that a person who doesn’t know you, will eventually buy from you. Writing is so important that I’m making an online write camp that is available for free and everyone who has the goal to become an excellent writer: Free Write Camp.

The take-away from today: Selling has a bad reputation. It’s mainly because of how people have sold in the past, when they did it in a sleazy, slimy way. You could literally see the Dollar signs in their eyes because they were not convinced of what they sold.

Today’s world is different. More transparent. People value authentic selling when they see this is a respectable person who wants to improve my life. He stands behind the product or service and will make everything happen that the customer’s experience is excellent — by default.

You sell confident when you are confident and your product gives you additional confidence. With so much confidence there’s no more room for doubt and inertia. Go sell because if you didn’t people would miss your excellent product/service.

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This was episode 41 of the #weekdaykickoff 🌊. Every weekday (Mon-Fri). Also find me on Anchor so we can talk — literally talk from person to person!


Also published on Medium.

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