As I combed through and caught up on my reading yesterday a story for freelancers caught my attention: Oops! Your Attitude is Showing.
It’s a great post about how freelancers need to be mindful of even the most subtle nuances that would cause prospects or clients to question if you have the right attitude for the job.
But wait.
Doesn’t the same hold true for sales professionals? We are freelancers of sorts, right?
Yes, we carry the business card and benefits package of an employer but so much of what we do is unscripted and unsupervised.
Dangerous ingredients for unchecked attitudes and ill conceived comments.
The parallels from the Opps! post are clear (for the sake of my less than dexterous typing fingers the post will simply be called Oops!):
Salesperson to prospect:
“You ever have those days where it feels like you’re dragging one foot in front of the other? That’s what I feel like. It’s so hard to get started. It takes me a long time and I really have to work at it. But after a couple of hours, I’m okay.”
Admit it. We all have slipped with a statement like this or something similar.
The problem is the prospect, or even the best client, that hears this now has reason to second guess the relationship.
In this economy why give any client a reason to second guess anything about your business capabilities?
About online communities the Oops! author writes:
The problem is that once we become accustomed to being online, we begin to have the sense that we’re amongst friends or that we’re in a “safe” place. We become comfortable. We relax. We interact in our favorite hangouts like Twitter, forums and blog comment sections. We communicate so constantly with friends, peers and colleagues that we often forget we’re still in the public eye marketing ourselves.
While the world to most readers of this blog may be a bit less continuously connected, the lesson is still the same – mind what you say in the ‘comfort’ of your chosen online community.
As a prime example there is a gentleman I know that was recently laid off from his job. As part of his networking, and to kill now idle time, he stepped up his Facebook activity.
Recently one of the Facebook applications getting a great deal of attention is What Are You? As in ‘what color are you?’ or ‘what pokemon are you?’.
The person decided that the quiz to take and the results to publish (you do have a choice to not publish) was ‘What Curse Word Are You?’
He then proudly announced that he was F*%k – and commented on it.
If a less liberal possible employer was listening in, that is exactly what he would be. Just add the -ed for past tense!
Be mindful of the comments you make about:
- how much you drank
- how late you stayed out
- what you did while you were out late
- your frustration with a company’s interview process (yes, I have read this)
The combination of transparent online persona’s, increased competition for jobs (be they ‘regular’ employment or freelance) and the buyer’s market for talent means that we need to be mindful of what we say and do.
Paranoid yet?
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