“It goes against the grain to blow your own trumpet over and over again but no one else is going to do it for me!!“
An old school friend wrote this to me and it resonated with me. The definition of blowing your own trumpet is to talk about yourself or your achievements in a way that shows that you are proud.
As children, we are often told not to blow our own trumpet. Be humble and let our achievements speak for themselves. This isn’t good advice especially when it comes to promotion time or having your own business. If we don’t speak about our achievements, how are people going to know what we can help them with?
I understand that we don’t want to come across as big headed, full of ourselves or pompous. Yet having given it some thought, there’s no way around it. We need to let people know what we do.
One way to make it easier for ourselves is to get testimonials. I gave a session recently and the lady said “I didn’t understand how transformational your work is until I spoke to another friend who had tried it”. This made me realize that I need to ask for more testimonials. So that is what I am going to do. I’ll get someone else to blow my trumpet for me 😉
Do you have any tips on how to blow your own trumpet?
I avoid testimonials ….. too flowery and unbalanced.
I am won over by excellent, just-the-right content.
The beauty of the world is we are all different. Some like testimonials and some don’t. It’s good that you know what works for you.
It’s useful to distinguish fostering word-of-mouth vs referrals vs testimonials. Word-of-mouth (as in the example above of your client) is the most accurately targeted, least expensive (free!) business generation phenomenon. Enabling referrals is the next best but often costs. Testimonials, such as a quote on your website or case studies helps if it’s someone highly respected or something uniquely effective is said but for the most part everyone knows you’ve pre-selected the “selina is great” descriptions over anything else and isn’t usually a clincher that causes someone to act. Probably you already know all this, it’s interesting to ponder the difference in how to best encourage each.