I found this article on the 99u.com website and it caught my attention. Here is a article written by Janet Choi. Click on the link for the entire article. I merely copy and pasted specific paragraphs for the wisdom Wednesdays.
http://99u.com/articles/20882/you-were-born-to-sell-dismantling-the-myths-of-self-promotion
You Were Born to Sell: Dismantling the Myths of Self-Promotion
You Were Born to Sell: Dismantling the Myths of Self-Promotion
by Janet Choi
Working hard at making something isn't a guarantee of success. In fact, when you ship your project or work, your job has only just begun.
Many people take the brave steps of making and creating, only to hit a wall because they’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that marketing their work isn’t for them.
As best-selling author Dan Pink points out in his book To Sell is Human, we’re all in sales now. “We’re persuading, convincing, and influencing others to give up something they’ve got in exchange for what we’ve got,” he writes. Selling is becoming increasingly necessary and a real competitive advantage in a world of growing entrepreneurship and striking out on your own, because chances are you won’t have a sales team to do your pitching and promotion for you.
It’s easy for us to think that quality alone will be enough to promote our work. Yet we need to open the door to the outside world for our ideas and creations, because if we make something and nobody’s there to see, why did we create in the first place?
If we make something and nobody’s there to see, why did we create in the first place?
Maybe you feel like the act of selling is too alien or even dishonest when your disposition is so far from the enduring tropes of the sleazy car dealer, the mercenary huckster. But selling doesn’t require you to be someone who you’re not. In fact, it demands the opposite, that you be true to yourself and your passions — and then reach out to connect from that core.
Do you still have a mental block against selling? Here are two ways to help you rethink your approach.
There’s an element of “fake it ‘til you make it” in turning on pseudo-qualities, but consider the saying in reverse. Let what you’re making provide fuel for faking it, as Little does when he performs his lectures.
Your character traits are more malleable than you think.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found thatcreative personalities are complex and versatile, “remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.”
You can’t expect your work to speak for itself when you haven’t made an effort to reach out to people who will listen. That can be just as tone-deaf an attitude as the pushy promoter’s. Turn selling into an act of being yourself. Your work will thank you.
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S.M. Bjarnson's Thoughts:
Exactly what I had in mind. I solemnly believe that there is a variable that states if you do not believe in your work who will? If you see no promise in the writing you have done that why promote it any longer. You are your biggest self promoter and you need to honestly believe that you have the best selling product, even if you are not the best seller.
My father was a salesman all my life and I looked at that lifestyle and I could never see myself as one to convince people to purchase an item that I didn't really feel they needed too. It was dishonest and I am the person to persuade the customer to another booth if I feel mine is not what they are looking for. We are the salesman and we are the motivator. We have to give the best performance to be entitled for the win.
