The Art of Selling Your Skills

We all are skilled at so many things and aim very high in our profession. The skills can range from leadership skills to analytical skills, business skills to communication skills, interpersonal skills to marketing skills, and presentation and organizational skills among others. But whatever our skills are, the most important thing required to maximize job conversions and corporate success is learning the art of selling our skills, our talent; the art to market ourselves to get best employment opportunities.

Every person has some or the other objective in life and in aspiration of achieving these objectives, we all run behind those who provide to complete them (the organization or employer).

Students run behind the teacher for knowledge. Poor run behind the rich for money. Men run behind beautiful women for dating or marriage. Now the teacher, rich, and beautiful woman are doing their own sales pitch (knowingly/unknowingly) in real life. And they have their own nuisance value.

In terms of management science, nuisance value in its most modern definition means a value earned by projecting a probable future usability of a person or a thing to the receiver.

For a teacher, his nuisance value is knowledge.

For a rich, his nuisance value is money.

For a woman, her nuisance value is beauty.

The more they have these attributes, the more is their nuisance value.

Students think that if they pay the teacher with whatever he/she wants, the teacher may in turn share his/her knowledge with the student.

Poor thinks that if he works for the rich, the rich will pay him money.

Man thinks that if he flatters, buys gifts, entertains the woman, she might get married to him.

So you see, for this nuisance value which is earned by some specific attributes in you, people get ready to do almost anything that you want them to do. The attributes which decide your nuisance value can be directly picked from the respondent’s weaknesses, aspirations, or ambitions in life.

So if you wish to sell anything, before making your pitch, make sure that you know what your respondent wants in life and assure him that you already have what he wants and the choice is yours whether you should give it to him or not. Once the respondent (employer) starts seeing his chicken in you, you can sell him anything, regardless of your product, price, or specifications or utility.

We all have to sell ourselves, our language, personality, and expressions most of the times in our day to day life. We are all more or less good in marketing skills. So the most important factor of selling our skills in the corporate world and also in real life is the nuisance value. Nuisance value includes many or a few attributes available in each and every person. A photographer has analytical and artistic bent of mind. A writer has the ability to gather facts and use them in the most effective way in his writings. A salesman is good at negotiation to get the best deal for profit.

So least but not last, it is highly advisable that before we start selling our skills to the employers, we build up nuisance value. Every pitch succeeds if we are able to build up good nuisance value.