Selling Yourself - From Someone in Sales

If you’ve been reading my blog articles for a while, you know one of my favorite things to write about is stuff that I have personally struggled with but grown at- and stuff that I think we all need a little bit of to make it through each day. On the top of that list is using freezers correctly. Oh, and just below that is confidence.

Deep down, I think every single person out there can relate to feelings of imposter syndrome and career doubt (which I happen to already have written amazing blogs about!), but all of this stems from one thing that schools don’t ever teach us and that is just hard to pick up on in general. In addition to never learning how to file your taxes (W-2, more like WTF) and never being taught what the difference is between the settings on laundry machines (seriously, why is the ‘extra dry’ feature the only way to not end up with damp clothing?), there is no class on how to articulate yourself, advocate for yourself, and even do an elevator pitch- we’re just expected to know how to do it somewhere between middle school book fairs and our first job interview.

If you’re sitting there thinking that this doesn’t apply to you because you either already have a job or think you’ve got the public speaking skills thing down, then I’m here to call you out. Because confidence isn’t just about nailing an interview, writing a fancy cover letter, or talking to someone you’ve never met. Confidence IS all those things, but it is also, point blank, how YOU sell YOURSELF. The idea of an elevator pitch sounds outdated (being 100% transparent, I am two years into corporate America and have never ever had someone ask for my elevator pitch, or even been locked in an elevator with anyone in general) but it is on point. If you cannot look at yourself in the mirror and answer the question “what do you have to offer that no one else can”, you are completely, undeniably screwing yourself up.

Now, I know that sounds a bit harsh, but I have the experience and the statistics to back up my point. Before I launch into it though, I need to know that I have your attention. I have to know that you know why it is so important you read on. Because honestly, as the resident communication major around here (a claim to fame only on a blogging website), I know I am on to something. If you are reading this article and your life feels even an ounce like that feeling when you get your socks wet but are too lazy to take them off so you just suffer that super grating feeling, then you need to know that the key to easing your discomfort is spending the next ten minutes applying these ideas to your own life.

I began thinking about confidence more seriously after I conducted a funny little experiment on one of my best friends back in middle school. Now, this best friend and I had practically grown up together, so we were the kind of friends who could find the way to one another’s homes blindfolded (or at least, she could…I have never been the type to do too well with directions). One day, as we were walking back to my house after a trip to the local park, I decided do a little test on her- because what else do eighth graders do when the alternative is trying to not fail Algebra and/or give up on the mile halfway through? I changed directions on her and went a completely incorrect way. When she called me on it and asked me HOW I had forgotten the directions to my own house, I looked at her with my eyebrows raised ever so slightly and without missing a single beat said, “this is a shortcut. It cuts the time to get home by two”. My friend questioned it again, saying we had never taken this route (she was right, I was practically heading the opposite way we had come from). But I was headfast in my mission, stood up just a little taller, and kept walking the completely wrong way. All I said was “we’ve always gone home this way, so it’s how I’m going. You can go whichever way you imagined is right.” She gave it one more second of thought before pivoting around completely and following behind. And five minutes later, I yelled “Got you!” and told her about my messed up prank, dragging her on the correct path while her eyes rolled into her head and her shoulders gave out in a confused slump.

Aside from me being a fairly strange little prick, this story demonstrates- nearly ten years later- the power of confidence. Many people might read that and say that my mission was successful because she trusted me. But I argue it worked because I didn’t just sell my personality, I sold my ideas and was the expert of what I was saying. And even though it seems like a simple-minded perspective on confidence, the truth that I have seen firsthand is that if a person trusts you and they trust what you’re selling, they will believe you (or be emotionally gaslit into believing you, in my case). Which is where a lot of people go wrong. Because it is not enough to just “fake it till you make it”. It is not enough to radiate external confidence and hope that it rubs off on you eventually. These shortcuts can provide a temporary solution, but the permanent problem at the heart of all of it is this scary looking, bolded AND italicized message I have learned as a literal salesperson:

If you do not believe you have something worth selling, no one else will want to buy it off you.

What does that mean? It means the person interviewing you for your dream job will ask you “why should I hire you” and your answer will be unconvincing, making them hire someone else. It means that the person you’ve set your sights on will run in the opposite direction because they think you don’t have enough self-esteem to be alone, let alone dating them. It means you probably won’t get into your dream college because your admissions essay will be identical to the other 4,000. It means you will probably find yourself stuck in a mid-life crisis by the age of 45 and a quarter life crisis even sooner than that- because you’ll realize that you’re not really sure who exactly you are. The reason selling yourself is hard is because we are all so scared to get the elevator pitch wrong. To be very clear though, we’re messing up the focus. It shouldn’t be on memorizing the perfect elevator pitch or the perfect interview answer or the perfect thing to say when your boss or graduate school professor puts you on the spot. It should be about reflecting. What is the story you want to tell? Who are you and what do you offer?

A lot easier said than done. A lot of us have spent too long letting grades and external validation define us, so it can be confusing when we suddenly ask ourselves who we want to be. These are big questions, and there are so many points for comparison- and suddenly thoughts flood your mind like “I want to do X, but Bob is doing Y, which is two years ahead of X, so I must be wrong”. Turning off those thoughts is difficult, so try not to look at it that way. Instead of thinking of what you are supposed to be or offer, pull out a notepad and write a story. A story… about you (or for those of us who are lazy, a list). What traits, ambitions, and passions are so tied to your identity that they are inherently a part of the life you want to live? In other words, if someone else were writing your story, presenting your eulogy, or introducing you at an awards ceremony, what would you expect them to say…. and more importantly, what would you want them to say?

Here is the truth: We as a society have spent far too long scared to speak our minds because we are worried about how others will receive our thoughts. I used to be one of those people, along with a huge majority of the population, a shy girl who kept to herself and HATED public speaking. Now I don’t shut up. What changed? The summer before I went to high school, I went to a public speaking summer program on the campus of Northwestern University- a program I was sure was some kind of punishment for reading under my blankets at night or whatever other things I did that I thought were rebellious at the time. That program changed my life, because it made me realize that the one thing we each can control is our voice. When someone delivers a story to an audience, it is not the audience who determines if that story is successful. It is the speaker. It is YOU who has a story to share, and it is not about whether you do a good or bad job. Confidence- selling yourself- is about reflecting on the story you want to tell and giving it the support it needs to be successful.

The statistics solidify my case. According to Psychology Today, 85% of adults and adolescents worldwide struggle with low self-esteem (Guttman, 2019). You with me? Not done yet. The National Institutes of Health not only lists Public Speaking Anxiety (PSA) as a social anxiety disorder within the DSM-5, but they report that it is prevalent in at least 30% of the general population. And for the final statistic bombshell, an article published by Kumar, Kalakbandi, Neelu, & Parashar (2017) collected data from a pool of over 200 executives pursuing a 2-year management education program, where they spotted both a great deal of PSA symptoms as well as a direct correlation between PSA and difficulty navigating both school and work. And the biggest, most surprising (unless you’ve been following along with this blog) finding of them all? The most consistent predictor of when PSA would cause more difficult career outcomes, the mediating variable lurking just below the surface every time, was self-esteem. With both the people I have worked with on public speaking (oh yes, I do public speaking classes and 1:1 tutoring so hit me up) and in my own life, I have seen how a lack of self-esteem brings out a struggle in public speaking, because it becomes more and more difficult to remember how to put the pieces of your story together, and thus more and more difficult for anyone to believe the story you are telling.

Over the course of my life, from my Northwestern summer program to a writing program at Ragdale to my very thought-provoking interviewing professor in college, I have realized that the key to storytelling truly lies in what we learned back in elementary school: ethos, pathos, logos. What speaking up during a team meeting, drawing up a resume, going through sorority recruitment, online dating, and doing an elevator pitch during an interview all have in common is that you need to be credible, be genuine, and be logical. As much as I hate to admit it, those three things from school are really all you need.

So there is no top ten list of how to be confident, because unfortunately, no ten things will make anybody else believe you until that one thing clicks and you believe yourself. I (very confidently) believe that there are three steps that will make anyone successful in life:

1.) Determine what your story will be [ethos]

2.) Pick the things that back up that story [logos]

3.) Make people believe your story is worth listening to [pathos]

Instead of searching for some sort of imaginary ‘upper hand’ to have over others, realize that you are the EXPERT of your story- like literally, no one can possibly know what you stand for better than you. Which also means if you do not stand for anything, you need to face that, because there is a good chance people can see right through you, which could be a pretty bad thing- on a date with a partner, on a plane with a stranger, or when/if you actually do end up locked in an elevator.

When asked during an interview “why should we pick you?”, I too used to think that there was no option besides bragging, lying, or seeming like a boring choice. Now I know that being genuine and being confident in what you bring to the table is the most important thing you will ever do for yourself. So go make the list and be honest with yourself about what is going good and bad in your life, what things define your story. Then go look up the statistics, do the networking, put in the work to back it up. And FINALLY go bully your middle school best friend into taking the wrong route to your house, or just go find someone who is willing to listen. That is how you set your story free- and who wouldn’t buy that?