Product Who? Product YOU!!!! (or how a professional portfolio can work for you)

By Monika Simans, Arkimedes Pty Ltd ™ , Brisbane, Australia

Practicing Wisdom — the art of making mistakes and then learning to connect what you have collected.

This is the third and last article on marketing. The previous articles introduced you to the principles of marketing (what it is and where to start), (Summer 2001) followed by the P’s of marketing which need to be defined so you can create the right message and package yourself. (Fall 2001) This last article will be focused towards managing the marketing of your skills and/or services which are in essence Product ‘YOU’, to source work.

What is Product YOU?

Product ‘YOU’ is the package of skills and services you have to offer a customer. It is all that you have available or wish to offer to others. It is a combination of your knowledge, skills, abilities and experience in addition to your values and preferences.

Today the marketing of Product ‘YOU’ is crucial, as marketing is now the bricks and mortar of every work related strategy. Marketing is the distinguishing element. It determines and features the uniqueness of your services from the point of view of the final results — the customer’s point of view.

The Customer’s Point of View

The customer’s point of view is individual and non-generic. Each customer has a different need and it is that individual need that is your source of work.

To ascertain the customer’s point of view, you will need to get inside their head and then battle for control of their mind. You will need to understand and appeal to your customers, not as a mass entity, but rather as individuals. Each proposal, submission, application, resume, tender or expression of interest about Product ‘YOU’ will need to be done by looking outwards toward the customer at the moment. Each piece will need to be individually shaped and targeted as these can no longer be prepared based on the assumption that there is a mass market at the other end.

As our world becomes more competitive with less and less intermediaries, establishing and maintaining a relationship with a customer is becoming more complex. Therefore presenting the package of Product ‘YOU’ so it reflects the customer’s point of view requires that you:

• clearly set yourself apart and demonstrate uniqueness
• demonstrate how you are the best in your class
• be current, flexible and able to respond quickly to changing needs
• have a sufficiently broad description about Product ‘YOU’ to allow for innovation
• be both enticing and ethical.

Assembling a Package to Promote Product ‘YOU’

To assemble a package that promotes Product ‘YOU’ from the customer’s perspective, you will need to do the hard yards of research mentioned in the previous two articles. That research will have enabled you to gather sufficient information which you can now consolidate and utilize to give you, your skills and services some substance resulting in the creation of a very tangible Product ‘YOU’.

The four mechanisms that best give Product ‘YOU’ substance and tangibility are a business profile, business brochure, business card and a business development activities list. Each mechanism contains different information and in starting with the largest document, lays the foundation for streamlining the presentation of Product ‘YOU’.

What should these mechanisms include?
This document provides summary detail about you and your services. It should only be about 5 pages long explaining:

1. Business Profile

• THE BUSINESS and provide some background including why it was established and how it operates
• THE SERVICES as a synopsis that explains what you do and how you provide your services
• TRACK RECORD & EXPERIENCE to outline what your business and you have achieved
• PROFILE OF THE SERVICE PROVIDER(S) compiles your qualifications, credentials, and career profile
• VALUES AND PHILOSOPHIES which sets out your professional standards for service delivery and operation.

2. Brochure this one page brief can be derived from the Business Profile and in an even more refined and summarized format should explain to your customer’s point of view:

• what you do
• how you do it
• the benefits to the customer
• your code of practice and guarantee
• who you are
• where you are.

3. Business Card refining even further information about Product ‘YOU’ this small yet most common form of communication needs to again promote to the customer’s point of view:

• WHAT you do
• WHY you do it
• WHO you are
• HOW you can be contacted.
  Note: Be sure to utilize both sides of this precious communication piece. It is the first point of making you a tangible entity.

4. Business Development Activities List in essence a “TO DO” list that thoughtfully communicates your services to a host of different potential customers through various mediums utilizing different tools. This ‘to do’ list of activities should include:

• articles to be submitted to local newspapers, business newsletters, professional magazines and journals and special interest groups
• advertisements/advertorials to correspond with the articles and/or separately in the more traditional print mediums
• electronic advertising to access those that are users of this medium to research and gather information
• talks, presentations, debates, workshops and seminars that you can trial/present to professional groups, special interest groups, local and community groups
• networking strategies to gather business intelligence, identify potential customers, develop relationships and promote your services
• follow-up plan that enables you to touch base with those you have come in contact with informally and as a service provider
• signage including different sizes and types for different uses and locations, including those that are stationary (say on the front gate) and those that are portable (magnetic attachment to your car)
• professional memberships that are the most strategic and relevant to your areas of practice and that will also enhance your professionalism and perception among your customers.

Successfully Promoting Product ‘YOU’

The key to the successful marketing of Product ‘YOU’ is to lose the assumptions and biases towards bulk generalizations or generic outputs and package yourself and your services for the reception of each individual customer. To do this you will need to:

• develop the right understanding of the customer and recognize their state of readiness including their awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, convictions and if they are ready to make the financial investment (not to mention that they have the funds available)
• give up judgments about the customer and do not assume
• accept responsibility for what you put forward to the customer
• sell — don’t ignore it, DO IT — put in the time — however, do it succinctly
• constantly publicize, gather testimonials and develop a portfolio
• have the courage to endure
• practice Respectful Responsive Flexibility — a simple question to keep asking yourself is — are you treating your customers the same????

Marketing is a serious and at times labour intensive business, however, it can and should also be fun, especially being the bricks and mortar of every business. Therefore, I would like to conclude this series of marketing articles with a very accurate quote from Kotler & Armstrong’s ‘Principles of Marketing’.

“From a societal viewpoint, marketing links a society’s material requirements and its economic patterns of response. Yet many people see marketing narrowly as the art of finding clever ways to dispose of a company’s products. They see marketing only as advertising or selling. But real marketing does not involve the art of selling what you make so much as knowing what you make!”

Simplistically

If you have any comments or questions resulting from the three articles on marketing, you can contact the writer by fax on (61 7) 3298 6058 (Brisbane Australia) or email her at arkimedes@bigpond.com.

Monika Simans is in private practice as a Careers & Work Life Coach as well as a ‘People Strategist’. She has over 15 years experience in marketing, communication and human resources management within large specialist organizations. In addition to post graduate qualifications in business administration, communication and human resources management, Monika is a certified member of the Australian Association of Career Counsellors and an accredited practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Read the previous article: The ‘P’ rinciples of Marketing.

Read the first article: Marketing – An Art and Science.