CHAPTER 13

Stand and Deliver

It’s time! It’s time to stand up and proudly proclaim to the client who you are, what you have to offer, and how much it will cost to recruit you. The trick is getting the decision maker to extend an offer and pay the price that you have in mind. Making this happen is all about perception—in other words, delivering your marketing pitch in such a way that the decision maker feels like he or she absolutely must have the product or service that you are selling.

Perception Is Everything

Sometimes, igniting that gotta-have-it feeling in a prospective employer requires “tinkering with perception,” according to Rory Sutherland, advertising guru. During a recent TED Talk, Sutherland told a story that illustrated just how powerful perception can be to the success of your product or service. Here’s the story in a nutshell:

Frederick the Great of Prussia wanted to introduce the potato to the Germans in order to both stabilize the price of bread and lower the risk of famine in the land by bringing this second source of carbohydrate to market. However, the German people found the potato disgusting, and a few farmers even refused to plant it. But Frederick was determined to make the potato a staple in his country and knew that he would have to tinker with the people’s perception of the potato if they were going to embrace this ugly, tasteless vegetable.

In an effort to do so, he declared the potato a royal vegetable that only the royals were allowed to consume. Then, he publicly ordered the royal potato crop guarded day and night. Secretly, however, he directed the guards to do a poor job of keeping watch. Quickly the German people’s perceptions about the potato changed; they believed that if the potato crop was worth guarding, it must be worth stealing. Before long a massive underground potato-growing operation was underway.¹

What a great illustration of how tinkering with perception can cause people to rush toward a product instead of run away from it. Let’s talk about some key elements of making an effective proposition and how you can effectively tinker with perception in the selling of your own royal potato.

Key Elements of a Good Pitch

The proposition is what we will refer to as the pitch—fish-and-pitch is the name of the game. This is the stage where you become a salesperson and sell the product—yourself! This stage is where you hook the potential client and dazzle him or her with your skills and personality.

Good pitches have a few key elements, as any salesman can tell you. However, when you are a Patchworker, there are some unique dynamics at play that you can use to your advantage and make your pitch distinctive, as discussed in the following sections.

Do the Research

Before you make your pitch, be sure you know as much as possible about the person interviewing you, the decision maker (if that person is not the person interviewing you), the organization itself, and the work you will be discussing. This advice is right out of the standard pre-interview playbook that 9-to-5ers use. As a Patchworker, however, you are coming at the pitch from a slightly different angle. You are, of course, interested in learning about this opportunity but perhaps silently collecting information about the organizational culture, systems, or personnel in order to evaluate whether this one small job is a good match with your Lifestyle Design and also could perhaps lead to other opportunities for work, training, or both.

Presumably, you have already done some preliminary research, which lead you to this juncture. This phase of the process is meant for collecting information that you might not otherwise find in print, online, or elsewhere. Even if you do not land the job, the time you spend inside the organization can still be fruitful in other ways, such as introducing you to key decision makers, the organizational culture, and interpersonal dynamics that would otherwise prove elusive. Collect all of the information you can, and if you like the people and the place, you may want to jot down a few notes to use for future reference.

Know Who You Are and Sell It!

When you walk up to the shelf at a supermarket and browse the ten varieties of pasta sauce available, you soon notice that each one has its own brand image and product message. The images and words, the packaging, and the product placement all are bits of the overall message designed to entice you to select the product and place it in your shopping cart.

Selling your own product or service works in much the same way. You have to make a clear case for who you are and what you represent before a potential employer can determine if you are a good fit for the job. The goal is to be very clear about who you are and what you can offer to the marketplace and then deliver that message successfully.

Branding is not about trying to be all things to all people. On the contrary. It’s about being yourself—your best self in word, print, and deed. Branding allows you to stand out from the crowd, to be the first person that the potential employer thinks of when a project comes along that would be a perfect fit for someone like you. In other words, you clearly position yourself in the minds of others. This clarity lends credibility to your message and, in turn, causes people to let down their guards and make impulse hiring decisions based on what “feels right.” That is the ideal scenario, where the employer makes an impulse purchase; your services seem like an easy choice, and together you quickly strike a deal.

You craft your brand by making careful choices about the following factors that reflect who you are and what your business is really selling:

• Your business name: Is your business name conservative or irreverent? Either may be appropriate depending on your product or service and your market.
• Your business title: Do you anticipate being a consultant or projecting an image of being the head of a thriving corporation? Your title tells the potential employer before you do. Choose the title that seems best for your business.
• Your business location: Does your office have a fancy address in an upscale business district, or do you use a P.O. Box in suburbia? Does your address matter to potential employers? Is your office sleek and modern or cozy and eclectic? Which is a better fit with your would-be clientele?
• Your marketing materials: This includes your logo, business card, Web site, and brochures or leaflets. For example, a linen business card on heavy stock delivers a different message from one printed on a home computer. Linen might be too intimidating to some potential customers, whereas homemade cards might be too unprofessional for others. Likewise, a Web site chock full of too many bells and whistles may scare away some but draw others in. Knowing your audience is critical.
• Your niche: What do you do better than anybody else? Where do you focus your attention? Are you passionate about something? Are you an expert in one specialized area of the industry? Your niche should be at the heart of your brand—literally and figuratively.
• Your style: The way you dress, groom, speak, and carry yourself all play an important role in the branding process. We each have our own style. What’s yours? How can you leverage your style to your professional advantage? Because every product or service has a brand, and because the most successful ones are those where the brand and the product become interchangeable (think Kleenex, Band-Aid, or Q-tips), consider which of your own personal characteristics you want to put “out in front” for an employer to associate you with. Adjectives may include reliable, ethical, upbeat, consistent, low-maintenance, exceptional, well-dressed, accessible, fun, energetic, professional, driven, and so on.

The overall goal of branding yourself is to clearly define yourself and your product or service and to reinforce the credibility of both.

Lead with a Good Story

My pitches almost always include a good story, carefully rehearsed well in advance. The stories are always true accounts of one of my unique experiences, another reason that collecting unique experiences is a worthwhile endeavor. A good story that is presented well can be one of the most useful tools in your toolkit. A good story makes you engaging and memorable, and it allows you to exhibit confidence because you are talking about something you know really well. Your story can separate you from the pack, if others are in the running for the same vacancy. Your story also offers a potential employer the opportunity to learn more about your personality and to see glimmers of you talking in a relaxed, “just being yourself” manner. I always feel like this is where I make it or break it during a pitch; I can see it in the decision maker’s eyes.

The story you choose to tell must be presented at the right time in the conversation. There is often a moment when the employer will say something like, “Tell me a little bit about yourself,” which you should consider your cue to lead in to your well-rehearsed story. The purpose of the story is not just being distinctive; more importantly, your story is an opportunity to reveal the key qualities or abilities that you most want the employer to know about you.

The goal is to make the story somehow relatable to the work at hand, but not in an overtly obvious way. Take my travel stories, for example. I am one of those high-adventure travel types. What I mean by that is that, given a choice, I’d skip the opportunity to sip fruity drinks poolside if I could instead walk through the rainforest knee-deep in mud. And it is these “deep-in-the-mud, somewhere-in-the-rainforest” stories that you can turn into one of those relatable stories that depict leaping into the unknown, taking on new challenges, a lifelong quest for learning new things, or adapting to ever-changing situations. Do you see where I am going with this? Give me the opportunity to tell you one story about how I trekked through the jungle, up the side of a cliff, or to the bottom of the ocean floor, and I can talk your ear off in a way that relates any proposed project to one of those unique experiences.

Now, think about your own life experiences and pluck out a few that are especially interesting. As you review each one for story potential, reflect on how you felt, what you learned, and how the overall experience represented one or more personal qualities that you can translate into strengths on the job. Then, rehearse different approaches to introducing these stories to potential employers.

Do you need to have an adventure travel story under your belt to wow the decision makers? No! That is just my hook. Everyone has a story to tell, so dig deep and find your own. If you need a good reason to set off on a trek around the world with only a backpack and a Nalgene bottle in your possession, however, then by all means please use this section of the book as total justification for spending the time and money on your adventure. (And invite me along, will you?)

Love the Work

Have you ever watched an episode of the popular television show The West Wing or a similar depiction of life as a White House staffer? The pace is brutal. The decisions are impossible. It’s a pressure cooker 24/7. And yet those people love it! They live and breathe it—gladly. They are obviously passionate about the work and connect with their flow. Have you heard about flow? Mihály Csíkszentmihályi introduced the concept of flow, which can be summed up like this:

Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand....The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.²

Can you relate this description to some area of your life? Do you lose track of time when you’re reading, running, painting, sewing, whittling, or working on your car or in the garden? That is a sure sign of connecting with your flow. There are generally three motivations for working: money, ego, and joy. Flow is doing work that connects with your joy.

Ideally, that type of work is the primary type of work you will do as a Patchworker. Your work is your decision, so choose projects that make you joyful and let the employer know that the available job is a good fit for you, that you would love it. If appropriate, mention how your career framework is based on selecting work that you believe is an especially good fit for you. Explain that you only consider taking on work that you love and that the job being discussed is one that you really believe is a great match for both you and the organization. Most people just need a job, period. But you—the Patchworker—you are selective; you work on purpose. “Name it and claim it,” I say; name the work you love to do and then go out there and use your pitch to claim it.

Be Bright and Salty

Salt was the oil of ancient times. It was a commodity bought and sold, used as currency, and traded across great distances. In Rome, for example, people depended on salt to preserve meat to sustain themselves on long journeys, and they were paid in salt (hence the phrase “not worth his salt”). Both then and now, salt was and is a critical part of life. Salt adds flavor to anything it encounters. It releases the flavor of other things around it. It cleanses. It sustains us. It enriches us.

Your own personal “salt” is that extra bit of unique spice that you bring to the interview; it is best coupled with your enthusiasm, your bright inner light. This compelling combination of being bright and salty prompts the employer to think of you beyond the interview phase, to consider how plugging you and your talent into the organization may add something positive to it or release the talent of those around you. Be salty! It can be the secret to getting hired, the missing ingredient that no one else brings to the table.

Being salty is about showing off your excitement about a project, about the prospect of working on the project, or for the organization. It is allowing your inner light to shine. And who isn’t drawn to light? It draws every eye toward it with interest and sometimes with fascination. Does the light go up when you walk in the room during the pitch? It should. That is part of what you are selling—your enthusiasm! Sell, Baby—sell!

Look the Part

Maybe this goes without saying, but looking the part matters. If you are pitching to someone in person, then dress and groom to match the style of your audience. If you are pitching online via a service such as Skype, be sure that both you and the on-screen area of the room look the part. Remember that in these online interview situations, it is critical that you minimize both noise and clutter as much as possible in order to make a good impression. If the interview process is strictly an exchange of e-mail messages, which can be the case in some job board environments, be sure that your online presence (your Web site or Twitter page) properly reflects your professionalism.

Exude Confidence and Competence

Remember that the pitch is all about selling your personality, skills, and abilities. Take the advice of Dr. Seuss and be yourself, which he of course expresses in rhyming fashion: “Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”³

Be prepared to talk about your career lifestyle, which is what will interest people! Drive home the fact that you chose this career design; you’re not simply unemployed and making ends meet until you get a “real” job. The decision makers need to know that you’re dependable and will be there consistently throughout the project’s term (or into the future if this arrangement promises to be a regular part-time assignment).

Enthusiasm counts in this situation as well. Be excited about your career lifestyle. If you are, you may just find the decision maker wanting to know how you got started, what motivated you, and more. Use this opportunity to lead into your elevator speech (also known as your personal positioning statement), which is a compelling overview of what you can offer to a potential employer that you present succinctly enough to take place during a short elevator ride. You need to know your elevator speech backward and forward long before you go in! The keys are to make it short, on point, and memorable.

Now that you know how to fish and pitch, let’s talk about how to lock in a deal and make it official. Let’s move on to the fun part: negotiation! This is where it all comes down to brass tacks, as they say. Negotiation is a challenge that can give you an adrenaline rush and can raise your level of income, training, and exposure to new experiences if you play your cards right. If you are hesitant to embrace this next step because of previous experiences with negotiating salary or benefits, rest assured that the intensity level of these meetings are going to be much cooler. Less is at stake, from the employer’s point of view, when the position is temporary, part-time, or both. Hurrah! What’s not to love about being a Patchworker?

Endnotes

¹ Rory Sutherland, “Life Lessons from an Ad Man,” TED Conferences, July 2009, www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html (accessed August 20, 2010).

² Wikipedia, s.v. “Flow (Psychology),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)#cite_ref-1 (accessed August 20, 2010).

³ Dr. Suess, Happy Birthday to You! (New York: Random House Children’s Books, 1987), 44.