The Science of Shameless Self-Promotion -
How & Why It Works To Build Success
By Jeffrie Story and Debbie Allen, All Rights Reserved

“If you don’t’ toot your own horn, you can’t enjoy the music.” – Debbie Allen

Shamelessly Effective Self-Promotion by Debbie Allen
 

When a friend of mine, Larry James, first stated, “I’m a shameless self-promoter,” I laughed. Then I thought for a moment, and I realized that I’m a shameless self-promoter, too. I had never thought of my marketing approach as being shameless before. I would have described myself more like the Energizer Bunny. I just keep on marketing and marketing and doing whatever it takes to make it happen. I had never thought of this as shameful, unless it’s shameful to believe in something so much that you want to tell everyone you meet. I call it good marketing!

Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, I learned early that you must self-promote on a daily basis if you want your business to succeed. Since my family had many different businesses, we were always promoting something new. Most of our businesses started out with little or no investment; therefore self-promotion was essential to getting those businesses from idea to success.    

My father taught me that the first step in marketing success is to have a strong belief in yourself and your ideas. No matter how crazy other people may think your ideas are, you must believe strongly enough to never give up.

How can you be successful if you don’t believe in yourself and what you have to offer to your customers? You can’t. Therefore the first step in shameless self-promotion is to have a strong belief system.

After writing my award winning book, Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters, I began to survey my audiences to see how many believe in promoting themselves. It amazed me to discover that 87% or more do not feel comfortable nor believe in the concept of self-promotion.  Now this goes against the grain of all sales and marketing success! 

Here is why effective self-promotion works and why you believe in it:

The Science of Self Promotion by Jeffrie Story

Excerpt from "Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters"

Studies have found that self-promotion is directly related to success. All successful people are self-promoters, from Madonna, to Dennis Rodman, to Howard Stern, to Jimmy Carter, to Bill Clinton. Some do it with more political acumen or integrity than others, but we all must self-promote to succeed. In fact, we were self-promoting in grade school, when we raised our hands in fervor to show the teacher we knew the answer

Undeniably, there is unethical self-promotion. We’ve all witnessed it, and maybe even lost business to it. But that’s not what we’re discussing. You can do shameless self-promoting with class, ethics and truth. As Will Rogers said, “If you done it, it ain’t braggin’."

Natural self-promoters are those people who don’t hesitate to show the world what they can do and have done, and for which they receive recognition in the form of money, fame or service to others—their rewards for many sales. We can emulate what works for them, regardless of our goals.

The first is Position. They position themselves frequently with people who can make a difference in their goals. They automatically wake up each morning asking themselves, “Who can I meet today who will make a difference in my success?” Then they get themselves in front of those people.

Ask yourself the same questions: Who can help me meet my goals? Is it a prospective customer? Is it a colleague who has contacts? Is it an association with key members who may be prospects?

Too frequently we settle for working with the people who are the easiest to reach, not the most effective. Work on meeting the one person who can have impact on your life, versus the 25 who cannot.

The second behavior of natural self-promoters is Style. In marketing, we call this “differentiation.” Ask yourself what is it about you that’s different, and what makes you memorable to your customers or potential clients?

How do people remember you? Are you distinctive in some way, and do you point it out?  If you meet a lot of people and they seem to forget meeting you, you have a problem, but also an opportunity—an opportunity to present yourself in a more memorable way. 

It might be your message, your picture, your business card, your words, your hairstyle.  Maybe it’s the uniqueness of what you offer, or how you relate your experience to their particular issue, or how you know what their issues are in the first place, or even your personality on the phone. Best of all, it might be your obvious caring about them and how you demonstrate that caring.

The third attribute of natural self-promoters is Repetition. Natural self-promoters don’t say it once; they say it many times. If you had seen a wonderful commercial once, would you remember it? Probably not. Advertisers know this principle, which is why they design multiple ‘impressions’ for their target market, and why we get to see those commercials over and over and over. We, too, have to make multiple impressions in order to achieve “brand awareness.”  Repetition also applies to positioning. Once you’ve found people who can make a difference in your success—find hundreds more.

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Bios:

Jeffrie Story, CSE, has 25 years of successful leadership experience as a director in sales and marketing at a Fortune 500 company. She currently works with corporate sales groups, increasing sales through better use of self-promotion, prospecting, account management, and market penetration. View her website at www.Jeffrie.com

Debbie Allen is one of the world’s leading authorities on sales and marketing.  She is the author of five books including Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters and Skyrocketing Sales.  Debbie has helped thousands of people around the world attract customers like crazy with her innovative, no-cost marketing strategies and secrets to sales success.  Her expertise has been featured in Entrepreneur, Selling Power and Sales & Marketing Excellence.  Sign up for her FREE 6-week e-Course Business Success Secrets Revealed ($97 value) and take the online business card quiz to rate your marketing online now at www.DebbieAllen.com.