16. Learn to SELL yourself as the best candidate for the job (PART 1)

You're listening to the customer success career coach. Today, we're talking about the most highly requested topic, which is, "How do I sell myself as a job seeker?" This is one of my personal favorites, so stay tuned. Hi, I'm Carly Agar, and after 10 years of building my own career in the field, I'm now an award-winning career coach for current and aspiring customer success pros. And this is the first customer success podcast that gives you easy to apply strategies and tips to help you score your dream job, secure your next big promotion, or become the top performer on your team. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of career growth hacks to not only explore what's possible for you in your career, but help you decide where you want to go. And, of course, give you all the steps to get there. Welcome to the customer success career coach podcast. Welcome back to another episode of the customer success career coach. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much for being here. You picked a very good episode to tune in for, and if you're not new to the show, if you've been listening week after week, thank you for joining us again. So something that I hear all the time from people looking for jobs is some version of either I don't know how to sell myself or I don't know if I am selling myself. And what really inspired this podcast episode along with people just always asking this question, always talking about this concept of selling themselves was I was on a call with a prospect. And she was really in the thick of it. Just as I'm sure lots of you listening right now can really in the thick of a really brutal job search. Second layoff within the last two years has made it to several final run interviews just cannot get over that last hurdle of actually getting an offer. So she just she's really feeling it right now. And at one point in the conversation, she said, I at this point have to seriously ask is it me because I am the common denominator in all of these conversations. There has to be maybe I just am not meant to get this next job in customer success, even though I've been working in it for years. Maybe there is something about me or my experience that just makes me not a good fit in this kind of like new world of customer success, this new market. And by the way, such a freaking common mindset to have. And of course, your brain is going to send you there to like, oh my gosh, it must be me. It must not be possible for me. It's so normal that when you face so much rejection again and again and again that you start taking it really personally and making it mean something about you as a person, where you as a worker. What I can tell you've ever felt that way is it's not you. And what I told this prospect I was talking to is it's not you. It's not your experience. It's your skills. What a lot of people don't understand is today's job market is not where it was two years ago, three years ago, certainly not four years ago. It is an entirely different world if you are looking for a job in customer success. What does that mean? That means that the current market demands something different of you than it demanded of you two, three, four years ago. The last time you looked for a job specifically what it demands of you is a higher caliber of skills. It demands that your resume writing skills are stronger and better than they were two or three years ago. It demands that your interview skills are way better than they were two or three years ago. And if your skills have not improved, if they've not upleveled to the caliber that this market demands of you, you're not going to see the progress that you are used to seeing or the progress that you want to see in your job search. And what's fascinating about thinking about it this way, and I think what can be really helpful about thinking about it this way is skills are not you. You are not your skills, right? Your worth should not be tied to your skills. The other good thing about this is skills are entirely within your control. There is something we can do about your skills being lacking. And that is a good thing because that means it's something we can take action on and see better results. So we can improve our skills. We can see better results in our job search. A great analogy to equate the job market to your skillset is high school versus college sports. So you think back to high school, think about either yourself or your friends or just someone you knew that was really, really skilled at a sport in high school. Like maybe they were the star of the basketball team. I personally am not thinking about myself in this example because I absolutely sucked at sports, but think about someone who was really, really good at sport in high school. Okay, now pick that person up and move them into the best college for sports for basketball. The best basketball college there is. I should know what this is, but I honestly have no idea and I don't feel like googling it. So picture dropping that person from high school who is the star of the basketball team to a college team. Are there skills going to be as great? Are they going to look as good in college than they did in high school? Probably not. The skills that they had on their high school basketball team carried them through high school because that was the market, the environment they were in. But now that they're in college, that market, that environment is going to demand a higher caliber of skills if they again want to be the star of the team. So it's no different as a job seeker. The reason you keep running into the wall and feeling like nothing is changing is because most of you are still relying on the same caliber of skills that worked for you two, three, four years ago. We're in college now. We're on a different team. We're playing with different players. We have different competitors. We need to up level the skills to match the market or the environment that we're currently in. All right, I kind of forgot where I was going with this call with a prospect, but all of that to say, if you're feeling the feels right now, if you're really in the thick of your job search, it's good news. We just got to work on your skills. So let's talk about what is the most important skill when it comes to interviewing, but really just job seeking in general, but especially interviewing is this art of selling yourself. The reason you need to be able to sell yourself is if you can't, you're not going to convince anyone that you can do the job. You're not going to convince anyone that you can do the job well and learn it quickly. You're not going to convince anyone that you can contribute beyond just doing the duties of the job. And you're certainly not going to convince anyone that you can do all of this better than other candidates. So selling yourself is absolutely critical. And honestly, you're probably not very good at selling yourself because you've never had to be. And you may also really suck at selling yourself because you've never been taught how to do it. I have never heard of a class called, here's how to sell yourself. I do know some people, I won't name names that could teach it, but that class does not exist. So it takes in pressure off yourself right now, forgive yourself for not being an expert at selling yourself. You've never been taught how to do this. Now, before I get into the how, I know that some of you listening to this right now are going to feel some type of way about the word selling. You may even be cringing every time I say, sell yourself, sell yourself, sell yourself. Can we just for a moment dispel this myth that selling is bad? Selling is just a means of communication. It's literally just a conversation. That's all selling is. It's simply a conversation between two parties, where one has something that they need, some problem they want to solve, something that they want. and one party in the conversation has a potential solution. solution. That is it. Selling is not sleazy. It's not weird. Even for those of you right now who are like, "Yeah, but sleazy car salesmen, that is sleazy." It's actually not. You know why? Because you walked onto that lot because you're the one that needs a car. And that sleazy car salesman might actually have your solution. So it's not sleazy. Let's just dispel that myth. Of course, it's sleazy if you're lying about the thing you're selling, but generally speaking, selling is not a bad thing. And I'll say the same thing about selling yourself as a candidate. It's not bad. It's not lying. It's not manipulating. It's not sleazy. It is just a way of communicating where one party has a need, the potential employer, and you have a potential solution, which is your skills or your experience. And honestly, if that doesn't convince you that selling isn't bad and that selling yourself is worth learning and investing in, then what I will say to you is as someone who has sat on a lot of interview teams who has made lots of decisions about candidates who are moving forward, who are getting offers, what I will tell you is the only thing we as interviewers have to go off of is what it is. So if you're not selling yourself, nobody else is. And I guarantee there is some other candidate who's I'm either talking to right before you or right after you who is going to sell themselves. And so if you don't get on board with this, then you're just going to keep getting rejected. And I don't want that for you. Learning how to sell yourself is such a critical part of success in a job search that I would say one of, if not the largest aspects of my coaching programs. And it's sneaky for my clients who are listening right now. We don't just tell them, "Okay, now you're going to learn how to sell yourself." We don't have video modules that are selling yourself 101. It's not like that at all. It's actually very subtle. It's something that we're doing without our clients even realizing it. And that's largely because the skill of selling yourself is not a simple thing. It's not as easy as, "Oh, go do this." And voila, you're amazing at selling yourself. It's like any other complex skill. You have to improve multiple things over time in order to actually become really good at that skill. So think about singing, for example. I don't know why I picked singing because it's definitely not a skill that I have. But think about singing. If you were really serious about improving your singing skills, it's not like, "Okay, one, two, three, and you're a great singer." Any complex skill means a lot of little things that you have to improve over time. There's all these different angles that you're attacking the skill from. So I call that out because what I'm going to share today are aspects of learning how to improve your skill of selling yourself. It's not as easy as, "Just go do one, two, three things." And magically you have this amazing, incredible, unshakable skill. I'm also sharing this to say, "You can't do this all at once." So what I do not want you to do, what I do not encourage you to do, is write down all of the things and then try to do all of them in your next interview. Because it's going to be impossible, you're going to frustrate the hell out of yourself. And honestly, it's probably just going to make things worse. So when learning any other skill, just pick one of these things at a time, practice it, get really good at it, and then introduce a new one. So don't try to revamp everything you're doing and try incorporating everything you hear all at the same time. I hope you're enjoying this episode. I wanted to interrupt really quickly because the reviews are piling in, and people are loving my free interview training. Whether you're currently interviewing for customer success jobs or plan to be in the near future, you're not going to want to miss this free video training, where I teach you the best, most effective way to prep for and nail your customer success job interviews. You will leave this training feeling more confident and head into your next interview feeling over-prepared. Head to CarlyAgar.com/Freebies to grab the free training. You can also find the link to the free training in today's show notes. Now let's get back to the episode. Okay, getting into the nitty-gritty good stuff. I'm going to share five, I don't know what to call them, rules for selling yourself. Five angles of how to get better at selling yourself. We're going to go over five things. So if you are a writer downer, I'm going to tell you the five things, and then we're going to break each one down bit by bit, explain what it is, explain how to do the thing, and I'll also give you lots of examples. Okay, ready? Number one is tell them what they want to hear. Number two is use i instead of we. Number three is don't imply it, say it. Number four is have conviction. And number five is use questions to fill in gaps. Okay, first one, tell them what they want to hear. What do I mean by this? Well, when you're stepping into an interview, if you're a normal person, chances are I'm willing to bet that you have at least read the job description. So you've got a pretty good idea of what these people or this person who's interviewing you is looking for. You have a pretty good idea of what they're going to expect of you if you accept the job. So you know heading into this conversation, what this person or these people want to hear. They want to hear examples of how you've already done things that you're going to be doing in this new role already. They're going to want to hear how you've gone above and beyond and exceeded your goals and how you act in your pressure and how you fix problems. They're going to want to hear words from the job description. So number one, tell them what they want to hear. Let's not over complicate it. What are these people want to hear? What are they going to be asking me about? What are the job description? It's going to tell you. Now your job is to just tell them the things they want to hear. And don't worry, I'm going to give you lots of examples. So let's pretend we're going to do a non-job search related example first. Let's pretend for a second that there is a new restaurant you're just dying to try. You've been following it on Instagram and you're like, oh my gosh, when is this restaurant going to open up? It finally opens up and you're supposed to have dinner with your vegan friend the week of the opening. The vegan detail is important. So you call up your vegan friend and you're like, can we please go to this new restaurant? They have vegan options. Can we please go? Can we please go? And your friend is probably going to be like, yeah, just like chill out. Sure. Okay, you said they have vegan options. Cool. I'm in. Versus you call up the same friend and you say, oh my god, oh my god. I'm dying to go to this new restaurant. It's not a vegan restaurant, but can we please go? Can we please go? Can we please go? What did you just do? You just created doubt because you didn't tell your friend what they wanted to hear. All your friend wants to hear is there going to be something that I can eat? Is there going to be a vegan option on the menu? That's all they need to hear in order to move forward with your plan. But you didn't give them that. Instead, you just created doubt for them. You just said, I'm dying to go to this restaurant. It's not vegan. So can you see how the in those two examples, one where you're saying, I'm dying to go here. They have vegan options versus number two. I'm dying to go here. It's not a vegan restaurant. How those mean two entirely different things and how the reaction from your friend is going to be so different. That's what I mean when you are stepping into an interview, tell them what they want to hear, what they need to hear to get on board with your plan of hiring you and giving you a job. Okay, so let's do some job search. related examples, I guess, because you're probably not listening to this podcast to get advice on how to invite your vegan friend out to dinner, although I will consider that a very valuable bonus. Okay, I'm going to talk about a client named L. So let's call her Lisa. Lisa came to work with me. She had two years of CSM experience in education. She was working with an ed tech, a product that's specialized in the education industry. So most of their clientele were higher ed institutions. And then her background before doing that was actually in education. So when she came to work with me, her number one goal was to land a job so that she wouldn't have to relocate because her her company was asking her to relocate. She didn't want to. And her second goal was to land a job where she was no longer in the education field. She had just had enough. She's like, you know, what I've been doing this forever, I'm good. I'm ready for something different. So she was getting ready to interview with a company that in the job description, it said, healthcare experience required. Now she got the interview. She didn't have healthcare experience. So we're preparing for her interview and she gives me her her quick like about me. And I noticed that immediately she started talking about the types of clients she's worked with. She said, you know, I have experience working with SMBs, Midmarket Enterprise, primarily in education. And I said, Lisa, what do these interviewers want to hear from you with regards to the clients you've worked with? And she said, well, they want to know that I've worked with healthcare clients, but most of my experiences with education clients. And I said, but I know because I helped her rewrite her resume. So I have this information in my back pocket. I said, Lisa, I know that you've had healthcare clients and really big ones at that because we talked about it when we were writing your resume. So I'm wondering why in your elevator pitch, you didn't say, you know, I've worked with SMB customers, Midmarket and Enterprise. I've worked with clients across a variety of industries, including healthcare clients such as name, name. And she said, well, I guess I, I didn't really think about it because I don't, I don't think of myself as a healthcare expert because I've only had those two healthcare clients. And I said, but yeah, they're not asking you to be a healthcare expert. Are they? They just want to know that you've worked with healthcare clients. So why don't we tell them what they want to hear as long as it's truthful. And it is, let's tell them what they want to hear because if you go in there and you start saying, oh, my clients are an education, they're going to go, oh, dang, I guess you don't have any healthcare clients. So we can't give you a point for that. Tell them what they want to hear. I remember preparing with a really experienced CSM for a final round interview. And this particular CSM was interviewing for a role where renewals were going to be a big part of it. And so one of the questions I asked him was in this mock interview, it was just talking about how you've been involved with renewals before. And he starts his answer and he goes, yeah, so, so I don't really do renewals at my current company. I mean, I do because but sales owns them. So I'm kind of I'm a partner to sales with renewals at my current company. And then I just immediately was like, wait, wait a second. I had also helped this client rewrite their resume. So I knew some information. And I said, wait a second. Didn't you in your last CSM role, you owned all the commercials, you did all the renewals yourself, all the expansions yourself. And I remember you having a astronomical NRR. I think his net retention was 118% or something crazy, crazy high. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, so how come when I asked you about renewals, which you know is a huge part of this role that you're interviewing for? You immediately started telling me how you don't own renewals at your current company. And he was like, no, I did that. So tell them what they want to hear when someone says, have you owned renewals before? You say, yes, I owned renewals when I was at Slack. And I had a net retention of 118% and in my current role, I co-own the renewal with sales and then talk about how you do that. So often what we do is just as humans in life is we tend to think about our shortcomings. We tend to think about negatives first. And that is so clearly what these two clients were doing. They were just thinking about the shortcomings. They weren't thinking, oh wait, yeah, I have done this thing. I do have experienced this thing. I should highlight that. So that might be something that you're also doing. Go think back to your prior interviews. Are you highlighting the shortcomings? Or are you telling the interviewers what they want and what they need to hear? We're only going to have time for one more. And then the last three will be covered in part two. So this next one is, use I instead of we. I cannot tell you how many stories I hear in mock interviews when I'm practicing with clients. How many times I hear we we we and I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that we were all interviewing for jobs in France. Why are you talking about we? I want to hear about you. I want to hear what you did. I want you to take credit for the awesome amazing things you've done in your job. Honestly, it happens so frequently that I'm like, sometimes I feel like I'm in that scene from stepbrothers. I'm the interviewer where I'm just like, oh, I didn't realize I was interviewing you and your stepbrother because you keep saying, we, is this a package deal? I'm interviewing you. Some telling me about how great your team is unless your team is a package deal. And I get to pay all of you one salary. I don't care about your team. I want to know about you. All right. Now I'm going to say something really wild. So if you're not sitting down if you're in a place where you can sit down, I would might be really hard to hear. It's okay to take credit for team things in interviews. Did she say that? It's okay. Take the credit. You didn't do that whole thing yourself. It's okay. Take the credit. Credits yours. In interviews, it is okay. It's not hurting anyone. It's not hurting anyone actually except you when you don't take the credit for things. And I get it. It's totally normal to feel weird about taking credit away from other people. I get it. That just means that you have morals. You can still feel weird about it and do it anyway. Now of course there's a degree to which you can't do this. There is a degree to which is appropriate and not appropriate. If you're talking about some huge, ginormous thing like, oh, I transferred 700 of our customers from monthly contracts to annual. It's like, that's like technically physically not possible. Like there's no way you did that yourself. But if you led the initiative or a big part of the initiative, then you can say, I led. I created. I did. Instead of we, we, we, we, you can still take some credit for the aspects that you owned. And I think what a lot of people don't understand is there's times and places for taking credit for things versus where you really need to share the credit. If you are being praised by your boss for something, and you're like, oh my gosh. Carly, you did such a good job. And I'm like, yeah, I know I did. I did it all myself. Meanwhile, my coworker is sitting next to me and is like, hell, I did that thing. Not you. You just did one little tiny thing. I did 99% of it. That's wrong. That's inappropriate. That is a place where you should not be taking the credit for something. But in an interview, it is okay for you to take a little bit more credit than you feel is appropriate. I'm going to give another analogy here just because I don't want anyone to misconstrue my saying, like, steal all the credit, steal all the credit. Of course, you want to be appropriate about it. And I hope I don't need to spell that out where to what degree it's appropriate. But I want you to start opening your mind if you don't already think this way that it's okay in some situation. to just take the credit. So my analogy is, let's say that I'm selling my house and a potential buyer is walking in. I don't know why I'm home in this example 'cause in real life, like that wouldn't happen, but let's just go with it. So I'm selling my house, a potential buyer walks in and they say, oh my gosh, your house is so beautiful. I love what you did with the walls, I love the color, I love what you did on the ceiling, I love that accent. And oh my gosh, your lawn looks amazing. In that scenario would be totally okay for me to just say, thank you so much. Thank you, yeah. I put a lot of thought into things, put a lot of work in, so I'm so glad you can see that and appreciate that. What I don't have to do in that situation is say, thank you, but it wasn't all me. I mean, technically I picked out the paint, but I did hire someone to paint the walls and I did pick out the ceiling fixture, but my dad actually installed it and the grass, the lawn that you think looks so amazing, yeah. I did research the grass seed that would grow best in art soil, but my fiance's the one who planted it. So I can't take all the credit, it's not all me. Just that buyer would be like, what the hell? I don't care, just take the credit, okay? That's how we feel in interviews. I don't need to know all the details about everyone who's involved in this thing that you did. If you did enough to take the credit for it in an interview, that's enough for me. So I'm gonna give you a couple of now job seeking examples again, selling your house would just be some bonus advice that you get for being a loyal listener. So when I talk about, I like to anonymize names. So I'm gonna talk about Sam. Sam and I were doing a mock interview. And I asked her a question about, if I go with the exact question, was it was something along the lines of, tell me about a time when you had an upset client and like the steps you took to remediate the situation. Where I think it was, tell me about a client that you have, that you've had that was at risk, that you turned around and the steps you took. So Sam started telling me this story, she sets the scene so beautifully, she's like, okay, I'm working with this huge enterprise client. They have the biggest ARR, they're really important. And all of a sudden, our technology breaks. This isn't actually how she told it, but this was my interpretation. Our technology breaks, which is a huge deal. And we didn't have a way to fix it. It was unfixable. But this client had a big event coming up where they relied on our software. And so it was either we come up with some solution or they go buy some competitive product because they could not go on with this event without this thing. So she's telling the story and she's like, so what we did was we had recently acquired a couple of companies, so we did a full analysis of if any of those companies that we had acquired had the technology to give the client what they needed for this event that was coming up. And we also looked at what was most realistic and what was most feasible and what was gonna be the right strategic lever for the relationship. So she's telling this awesome story about how she miraculously saved this huge client weeks before a huge event by getting really creative in her thinking. But the whole time she told the stories, she said, we, and I was like, oh my gosh, Sam, I would love the names and numbers of your team because I want to hire all of you. I don't really want to hire you, but I want to hire your team for sure. So use high instead of we. That is probably the easiest of all the things I'm gonna share with you. The easiest thing you can implement right away to be better at selling yourself. All right, that is it for part one. In part two, better tune back in because we're gonna start with don't imply it, say it, which is my personal favorite. This is one that I don't hear anyone talking about. So you're not gonna want to miss that one. The other one is have conviction, which is just something that we can honestly all learn from in how to become better communicators, but especially in your interviews, that's a fun little trick. And then lastly, use questions to fill in gaps. That one's just gonna blow your mind. So make sure you tune in for part two. I hope part one was helpful. Again, please don't try to do all of these things at once. Just pick one, get comfortable with it. Practice it, get better at it. And then you can incorporate the next one and the next one. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you love today's episode or if you wanna continue the conversation, come hang out with me on LinkedIn. Connect with me, follow me, or message me over there. I'm at LinkedIn.com/in/carly-agar. And if you haven't already, don't forget to follow the show wherever you listen to your podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. I'll catch you next time.