Selling yourself shouldn't be icky
And some insights from my recent Olympic vacation
If you’re new here:
Hi, I’m Meg and this is my little corner of the internet where I share tales and observations across the tech and parenting “industries.”
I advise and consult with startups as a fractional product marketing leader, primarily for B2B SaaS companies. Want to discuss a startup idea, get go-to-market help, or vault into your own fractional consultancy? Book an strategy session with me..
My Olympic vacation (not Paris)
Happy summer! My sub header about taking an “Olympic vacation” was misleading, but I make no apologies as every brand right now is tying themselves to the Olympics, brat summer, or Kamala/Walz camo hats, and I am no exception (the hats are sold out, so I got a tee from this collection).1
I wasn’t able to watch a ton of Olympics as I was spending over two weeks in the Pacific Northwest across Seattle, the San Juan Islands, the Olympic peninsula, and Mt. Rainier National Park.
Since Olympic National Park was a big highlight for me, I’m counting that as akin to an Olympic vacation. You can dash to the end to get a short travelogue.
I’m sprinting to get this newsletter out before the Olympics end, so I’ll be breaking Step 2 of my approaching work as a fractional GTM exercise series into at least 2 shorter posts. Step 2 is a beast because it spans all the Ps - positioning, productizing, pricing, packaging, and (ideal customer) profiling.
Many folks are interested in fractional work, but they face a big internal hurdle: selling themselves. Doing the hard work of the Ps is easier once you’ve nailed this landing.
Getting the ick about selling yourself
These are the top 3 questions that folks ask me about my fractional consulting business:
How do you get your clients?
How much time do you spend on business development?
Do I have enough experience to become a consultant?
At their core, what these questions are really asking is how do you sell yourself?
As mentioned in my in-betweens post, I’ve become more comfortable with the unknown aspects of consulting. I view each project as a building block and clear reminder that I have won business for myself - and can do it again.
But what about winning that first project? Do you get the twisties when thinking of asking a company to create a position or project just for you, the unknown entity? For many, it’s perceived as the hardest (and yuckiest) part of being fractional. There’s an assumption that you have to be overly confident or aggressive when selling yourself.
Disagree!
Consider this: you already sell something when doing full-time work. You may not have the official title of “sales person” but whether you’re in marketing, customer success, or the legal team, you are indirectly working to sell more product. How many times has the executive team asked you to freestyle a LinkedIn post about the company’s latest launch?
If you don’t hesitate to promote the business you’re working for, then stop hesitating about promoting the most important product in the market - you! Once I started thinking of myself as a product to market, I didn’t flinch at cold outreach to a random startup founder to ask if they needed fractional GTM help.
The nuance is in how you sell yourself, and to whom.
Selling yourself will never be icky if you’re offering valued services to people who are likely to buy them.
Worth repeating (please share!):
If you know how to position yourself correctly and are clear on your ideal customer profile (ICP), you are giving yourself the best possible chance to win that gold medal.
When you don’t know your audience or your offering
Below is a cold outreach I received on LinkedIn a few months ago:
This guy did some things well, such as teasing the benefits of exercise. However… there are some missteps in terms of:
Product - is he selling information, personal training, Steelers trivia, all of the above?
Ideal customer - this lovely gentleman is not clear on who his core demographic is. Is it 40-somethings concerned about aging who will be curious to see what a 64-year-old sixpack could look like? Is it his 60-something peers who need to get in shape?
Lack of personalization - “if you’re old now…” What a javelin throw to the heart! If you’re going to sell me something, at least learn the basics about my (presumed) age, as well as my previous takes on fitness and aging. For example, I actually (jokingly) posted on LinkedIn about wanting to do pilates in jeans several months ago. A google search of my unique name will unearth that I was once a sports cover model with an actual Olympian and recent inductee to the Collegiate Athlete Class Hall of Fame. Reference any of that!
Platform - perhaps I’m a LinkedIn purist (lol?) but I don’t want to learn about health and fitness on there. I know we’ve normalized personal over-shares on LinkedIn and his DM isn’t as inappropriate for the platform as it would have been 5 years ago, but it still feels like a fault.
I am not here to tear down people’s hustle. I love old people (I married one!). I am sure there is an audience for this, but I’m not it. It was such a misplaced outreach that I can easily remember it months later. If you’re even 15% more clear than this guy on who to sell to and what you’re selling where, it’s not icky.
A preview of the Ps
The image below is from post 1 on how to approach fractional work as a go-to-market exercise.
Step 1 is doing the soul searching you may not want to do; Step 2 is doing the self-editing and self-promotion you may not want to do.
In Step 2, you aim to:
+ Discover the unique problem you can create and solve for clients
+ Identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)
+ Create a positioning and messaging framework
+ Draft prelim packaging + pricing for your trusted networks to react to
All of these activities will be your doubles partner in confidence-boosting, as putting in the above work means your outreach to potential clients is likely to hit the target.
The next post will dive into detail on how to generate these outputs more elegantly than “if you’re old…” :) I’ll go into how to be ruthless about what you offer and who is likely to buy it.
After chatting with lots of people interested in fractional work, I need to add a Step 4. This is less of a phase and more of continual operationalization of your practice. I’ll dedicate another post about how to iterate and get feedback on the decathlon of running a consulting business such as contracts, referral partnerships, balance-beaming biz dev with active work, and always serving social proof.
The Pacific Northwest
Going to relay a rapid fire list of some highlights, geared towards family time:
Seattle
Ballard Fish Ladder + Hiram M. Chittenden Locks
Makeshift playground behind Edgeworks Climbing Seattle (see pic)
Mr. Gyro’s on 20th Ave
San Juan Island
Eagle Cove Beach near Friday Harbor
Madrona Bar and Grill at Roche Harbor
Ice cream at Yo Friday Harbor!
Orca sightings at Lime Kiln
Third Lagoon area of San Juan Island National Historic Park
Olympic Peninsula
Wednesday night concerts at the pier in Port Angeles
Bovee’s Meadow at Lake Crescent
Trails along the Elwha River (see pic)
Salt Creek Recreation Area
East Beach at Lake Crescent
Ice cream and aggressive ice cream cone-eating chickens at Granny’s Cafe
Mt. Rainier
Wild blackberry-picking everywhere
Nisqually Vista Trail (see pic)
Shriner Falls hike
When you’ve qualified…
Want to discuss how to launch or expand your consultancy? Need help getting unstuck and back on the right track2? Pick my brain? Book a strategy session with me.. Share an agenda, and we problem-solve for the most helpful and actionable next steps per minute.
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Or check out my friend Liz Scully’s Etsy store <3
How many Olympics references did you catch in my post? I’ll post my list in the comments :)
This is awesome, thanks Meg for sharing your practical approach to positioning and go-to-marketing!
Forgot to mention, loved your SI Kids cover!