Selling yourself: tell a story

Another concept in selling yourself: CARs.

When communicating about yourself or your company, structure your storytelling and case studies (and perhaps the bullets of your resume) in a short-form format. Something my friend Peter and I call a “CAR.” All it takes is three sentences, each of which is an answer to one of the following questions: What was the challenge? What action steps did you take? And what were the quantifiable results that came from it?

Use this 3-sentence format on your website (as short-form readable snippets), on your PDF case studies/one sheets (again, read-worthy and compelling) and one your resume (per bullet).

Here’s a company example:
“American Express was challenged to drive more cardmember engagement online through their retailers. We created an offer-based, flexible platform that quickly demonstrated the value of travel deals in a user-friendly way that could be re-purposed for future campaigns. The first campaign alone drove a 300% transaction increase and a 20:1 ROI.”

And here’s some resume examples:
” – fired low-performing legacy team members and designed a strategic sales plan targeting 3 industries, driving $4.5MM in revenues in the first year”
“- observed niche market in private dining opportunities, pitched solution and managed its implementation”

Practice these stories 10x over. You’ll find how easily and confidently you can recall these stories when asked a relevant question.

“Why should we hire you to do this?”
“Well, American Express asked the same question when they were challenged to…”

“Can you give me an example of your being resourceful?”
“Sure. While working at the Woodstock Inn I realized that while our numbers were down, we started to get more frequent requests for private dining experiences…”

When you can make quick references to these stories in relevance to your expertise, your confidence in yourself through these seemingly off-the-top-of-your-head responses will build trust in you and what you can do for your clients.