If You Can Sell Your Ideas, Why Can't You Sell Yourself?!

In my practice I often have clients, who come to me wondering why, despite their great work and contributions, they have not received the recognition they deserve. When I probe and ask them about how they were able to champion an idea to make a change in their workplace that made a significant impact, they have no trouble going into great details with me about their innovative idea, and how they were able to sell that idea to management.

Often, when they tell me this, they become animated, full of life, manifesting a very different energy presenting their idea and telling me how it changed things at work. Yet, when I ask them to tell me how they translated that success into something for their own benefit, they are at a loss to tell me what changed for them, as a result. They defend their inability to parlay that success into their own by reminding me, After all it was a team effort; without management’s active support this would be dead in the water. Although this may be true, in championing their cause, they have to go out of their ways to shepherd their initiative in the routine of their everyday work, and have to end up contributing above and beyond what is normally expected from anyone. So, why don’t they see their career advancing with commensurately greater responsibilities and pay?

They’re great at selling their ideas, but they suck at selling themselves!

This is a common difficulty many face at work. I have various theories why this can happen. One reason may be that the benefit of what they do is so obvious to them that they have some problem (a big one!) seeing that benefit translated into something meaningful to them and to their career. Yet another may be their belief that if they continue to differentiate themselves from their colleagues by making noteworthy and ongoing contributions to their company they will be eventually recognized by their management.

Wrong on both counts!

As I have said in my numerous blogs in the past (in fact, this blog is a complement to my last blog, Thriving in the Zone of Discomfort!) you must develop a very self-centric view of your contributions to your company that go above and beyond your job description and your pay grade. What must be recognized in any company is the ability of an individual to spot new opportunities, take some risk, and be rewarded for the additional value added through their efforts. For this to happen an individual must be very aware of what is in their job and what is “above and beyond.”

So, if you have no trouble selling new ideas in your company and watching them translate into something good for the company, then you must learn how to translate that into your own success. Here are some guidelines on how to do that:

1. Be aware of what the job description is and what is expected in your role. Make sure that you not only meet those expectations, but also exceed them. This gives you license to:

2. Identify what are some of the obvious and not so obvious pain points in your area of work. These may include improving an internal process to developing a better way to deal with the customer for an enhanced customer experience.

3. Analyze the problem and develop a solution that falls within your area of expertise. It does not even have to fall entirely within your expertise area; you can take some license in how you formulate a solution. Collaborating with others—even outside your area of work—can be a boon to your own development when you take this on.

4. Develop a robust solution, sell it to management and make sure that the benefit of your solution is clearly understood in these conversations.

5. Now that you have your management’s attention you must sell yourself—you have already sold your idea to them—and make known what you are expecting from this in return for yourself. This is a very important step. Do NOT assume that you will be automatically rewarded when this project succeeds.

6. Continue to do your day job well—always stay out of trouble—and shepherd your pet project to make visible its ongoing progress. Share that with others and your management. This will also prevent anyone else from taking credit for what you’re doing.

7. When the project is successful make sure that you notify everyone that initially knew about it, including your management chain, and meet with your manager to extract the fruits of the promise that was made to you before you started working on this project.

8. If you don’t get what was promised and only get excuses in return, make sure that you augment your résumé with this accomplishments (and similar such accomplishments from the past) and start marketing yourself.

Learning to keep separate your ability to sell your idea from selling yourself is an important skill in one’s career growth. Start using these concepts presented here to learn how to practice these concepts to advance your growth!

Good luck!