Are you selling yourself the right way?

How to Sell Yourself (and Why Your Business Depends On It)

To get ahead in life and practice, you need to be in the business of selling. If this statement makes you cringe, it is probably because the word “sales” evokes images of annoying telemarketers and pushy car dealers or someone you don't think you are.

Don't worry.

If you want to make money, you have to sell.

Even if you just sell yourself.

Relax, though, as this is about a product so wonderful and special you should have no qualms in selling it.

So what’s the product?


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YOU!


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Yeah YOU.

There are endless situations in life where
the key to success is the ability to sell yourself to others.

ALWAYS REMEMBER: They are buying YOU...

In your career, the ability to convince a new patient that you are the best doctor for their problem is critical. When it comes to relationships, your ability to show your best qualities can be the crucial factor in clinching the sale.

When you think about it, if you cannot sell yourself as a doctor to others, you are going to have a difficult time selling them your ideas, your wishes, your needs, your ambitions, your skills, and your experience.

Despite the necessity of being able to sell yourself to others, for many people like myself it does not come naturally.

Introversion, shyness, and lack of self-worth are just a few of the obstacles that can potentially get in the way.

To overcome such obstacles, I suggest focusing on the following:

Be Sold on Yourself
This is the first, and perhaps most important, aspect to successfully selling yourself to others.

Unless it comes naturally, this is probably also the hardest. Being sold on yourself comes down to this: you must be aware of your own self-worth.

This means you believe in yourself, have faith in yourself, and have confidence in yourself.

Being sold on yourself is not something that usually happens overnight. It is possible to change your life and gain a sense of self-worth when there was once none.

If you struggle with your sense of self-worth, here are just 3 ideas that may help:

Live in such a way that you would want to be friends with yourself
Find some time to reflect on what you like about yourself. If this seems hard, start with the smallest of attributes.
Don’t do anything that will give you cause to feel ashamed later.

Have a Saleable Package
This post is predominately about letting others know about the inner contents of your package.

That being said, there is no getting around the fact that people judge others based on their appearance. I know that sounds crazy but it's true.

When you finally realize this, your life will change. Some questions you may consider asking yourself are:

am I looking after my appearance to the best of my ability?

Are my clothes appropriate for the image I wish to project?

Are you the doctor, DOCTOR?

Are you the salesman that you want to be?

Are you the minister?

Are you the nurse you should be?

Be Positive and Enthusiastic
Can you remember the last time you received poor customer service? I do.

Did the person look bored, disinterested, and as if they wanted to be anywhere but that place? Don’t be that person. Positivity and enthusiasm can both be developed, but once again it takes work.

Here are a few tips to help you get there:

Look for the best in people
Associate with positive people
Care deeply about something
See life as an adventure
Smile

Be Real and Authentic
Rather than being about who you appear to be, selling yourself is about letting others know who you are as a person.

For this reason, lies and half-truths are a recipe for disaster later down the line. By telling the truth, you will earn both trust and respect which, in turn, will help you build a great reputation.

Not only that, it will make you feel good about yourself.

The last thing you want to do is sell yourself out by compromising your values and principles.

Now as a BONUS, let me tell you how to KEEP great help without adding more money to their paycheck.

I've already went over 12 of them, so I'm going to revert back to
the last 7.

I've given the others in a previous blogspot, so if you don't know where they're at you're going to have to go back to square one and start reading my entire blog. That should take you awhile, but you'll love the results.

13. Casual Dress Day. This will apply more to the Business-to-Business world based on the difference in normal dress codes from the Business-to-Consumer arena. For those required to "dress business" every day a casual day becomes a popular desire.

Use holidays to create theme color casual days such as red and green before Christmas or red, white and blue before July 4th, or black and orange prior to Halloween.

This will add to the impact you're trying to have by calling a casual day in the first place. Establish pre-vacation casual days for each individual employee to enjoy on the day before his or her vacation.

Major sports events are a perfect opportunity for casual days to support your local or favorite team with appropriate colors, buttons, and logo wear. Spontaneous casual days produce a lot or stimulation based on the element of surprise.

Announce a casual dress day for the following work day "just because." Use individual or team casual dress days as contest prizes or awards for specific accomplishment.

14. Time Off. Implement contests that earn time off. People will compete for 15 minutes or 1/2 hour off just as hard as they will for a cash award.

And in many cases, I have had people pick time off over cash when given the choice. Put goals in place (padded of course) and when these goals are reached by individuals, teams or the entire staff, reward them with time off. Allow early dismissals, late arrivals, and extended lunch periods or additional breaks.

15. Outside Seminars. Outside seminars are a stimulating break. Because outside seminars are not always cost efficient for most people, consider on-site seminars or workshops for your staff.

Use outside seminars as a contest prize for one or two people. Then set up a structured plan for those seminar attendees to briefly recreate the seminar to the rest of your people when they return. Now everyone gets educated for the price of one.

16. Additional Responsibility. There are definitely employees in your organization who are begging for and can handle additional responsibility. Our job as DOCTORS is to identify who they are and if possible match responsibilities to their strengths and desires.

17. Theme Contests. Over the years my contests have produced up to 170% increase in performance. But equally as important, they've helped maintain positive environments that have reduced employee turnover by 400%.

Overall the most successful contests seem to be those affiliated with different themes. Holidays, anniversaries, sports and culture are examples of ideas to base contests on.

Sports, without a doubt, provide the largest opportunity for a wide variety of contests. Even Culture can be used to create theme contest.

My favorite is using the '50s and '60s as a theme for a contest that I run at least once a year.

18. Stress Management. There are many articles and books available on the subject. Make this reference material available to your patients. Make sure they know it is available and encourage them to use it.

If possible, have an in-house seminar on stress management techniques for your patients and staff. So that production time is not lost, you might consider having a brown bag luncheon with a guest speaker on this subject.

Because stress is an ongoing concern, anytime is a good time for a seminar like this to take place.

Be as flexible as you can with breaks during the course of the day.

19. Pizza/Popcorn/Cookie Days. Every now and then pizza, popcorn, or cookie days will help break up that everyday routine and help people stay motivated. Because it is a natural tendency for people to get excited in anticipation of something, structure some of these days in advance.

Then buy some pizzas or different cookies or even whip out some different types of popcorn.

20. Gags and Gimmicks. Use different gimmicks as awards to help inspire performance increases from your staff. The key to awards is establishing the perception of priceless value that is associated with them. They should be recognized as status symbols in your environment.

Here are some of my ideas:

• Plastic/rubber whale for "whale" of a performance.
• Pillsbury dough boy for the person raisin' the most bread.
• Cardboard stars for star-studded performances.
• Plastic phonograph records for setting a new record.
• California raisins for those with the highest percentage of "raisin" their productivity.
• Special parking space for the person who drives the hardest.
• Toy cymbals for those "symbolizing" total effort.
• Special Mountain Dew can for that person who exemplifies the "can do" attitude.
• A figurine of E.T. for out-of-this-world performance.
• The Eveready Bunny for those that keep going, and going, and going.
• Large Tootsie Roll replica for those on a "roll."
• A drum for the person that "drums" up the most business.

Have fun, and THINK how you can make your business even better than it already is.

Stay focused.

IT pays off.

Dr. Carney