Ever felt like you’re under-appreciated, under-valued. under-utilized, under-paid?
You’re not alone, but truth is, it’s often your fault that these things are happening to you.
If you want people to take you seriously you have to be able to prove your value, and convey your worth.
This is not always easy, but there are things you can do to give the right impression for who you are and what you can do.
Learn to Speak
It’s not hard to speak in general, but when you get up in front of a few people, or get that chance to pitch your value to the CEO, the pressure can make even the most resilient person crack. This is doubly true if you have little experience in these situations. Learning to speak coherently under pressure is a key life skill in business, whether it’s to a single person, or to an audience of thousands.
Fortunately, this is a skill you can easily practice, even better there is an extremely low cost group out there that is all over the world, yes, I’m talking about Toastmasters. it’s cheap, simple, and teaches you to speak.
Learn to speak clearly, concisely, and in an interesting and thoughtful way. It will help you out tremendously, and when you get the chance to show your value, you’ll be able to do it.
Practice Talking About What You Know at Every Opportunity
Not-at-all surprisingly some of the people who best know their fields are terrible at talking about it in real life situations. Writing a book, sure, building something amazing, no problem, Standing in front of a crowd and talking about it for 20 minutes, hell on earth. In situations where you have the opportunity to show your value, being able to vocalize what you know, and structure it coherently, can be the difference between “wow that guy knows his shit!” and “what the hell was he talking about?”.
Being able to talk about what you know often comes down to practice. Find opportunities (or just practice at home) explaining what it is you actually do, the processes you use. Draft up a list of questions you might get asked and practice the responses.
Show Your Results
Business is all about results. Learn how to use software that shows off the value of your results, and don’t be shy. Being modest is great, but if you find yourself passing on credit you are not showing your value. If you don’t let people know what you did, someone else may end up with the credit. Remember, clients/management are not mind readers, unless you show them your value, they simply don’t know it exists.
The important part of showing your results (which way too many people miss) is showing what matters to a client, your boss, or a business as a whole.
Retweets are nice, but what did they bring to the table, the answer is generally that nobody cares about retweets. What is important to a business (in social) is exposure. How many people did the message reach because of the retweets?
Ad clicks are nice, but what was the value, the revenue generated by those clicks?
A business re-organization might have been approved, but what were the cost and efficiency savings?
If you don’t know what is important to the person/people you are trying to show your value to, you can’t efficiently convey your value.
Find New Opportunities
By far the easiest way to show your value to people is to use your knowledge to show them things they never considered. Find new opportunities and then champion them, from inception to success. If you have a knowledgeable client, this might be harder, but generally speaking you get hired because you know what you are doing. Show that you know what you are doing by improving what exists, and finding new things that can be done to benefit a business. Someone who knows what they are doing will generally be more excited than someone who doesn’t, because they can instantly see the potential value of what you suggest.
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