Building relationships is wonderfully rewarding but those relationships will prove all the more fruitful to your career if you can also sell your network contacts on how wonderful you are.

YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION:

• The first trick to selling yourself is to identify the one thing about you that makes you unique.
• Once you’ve identified your Unique Selling Proposition, you can make it the centrepiece of three types of one-on-one networking communications: the sound bite, the commercial and the infomercial.

THE SOUND BYTE:

• It is a short introduction of yourself used in situations where you are meeting a lot of people and probably not spending a great deal of time with any one of them.
• The trick is to make your sound byte so intriguing that people will want to spend more time talking with you.

THE COMMERCIAL

• The commercial is a longer version of the sound bite and can be used in networking situations in which you have more time to talk about yourself.
• lt can also piggy back on top of the sound bite.

THE INFOMERCIAL

• The infomercial is meant for extended networking situations where you are spending the significant chunk of time with a contact.
• It may not come into play very often, but when it does, you have the opportunity to really sell yourself.

You should also be prepared to respond to a few questions as part of your infomercial:

• How did you get into this field?
• What goals do you have for five years from now?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Do you plan to obtain further education or training in pursuit of your goals?

Also in the meantime, you can CHECK OUT our new blog on Networking for the Shy and Intimidated. Come back and tell us what you think. I bet you’ll have something to say!