5 Reasons to Market Your Worth to Management
Actively market your worth to management and you will get ahead quicker than those that don’t market their worth. When you actively advertise your worth at work, you will be appreciated more, be respected more by colleagues and managers and be less likely to lose your job.
I found the idea of marketing my worth at work more than a little daunting to start with. It didn’t take me long to get comfortable after a bit of practice. There are lots of ways of marketing the value you create professionally, without coming across as self-serving. As you climb the career ladder the importance of marketing yourself internally increases and who you need to market yourself to changes.
Towards the end of this article, I cover how marketing your worth to leaders changes as you progress from the professional ranks through to senior management so do stay for this.
5 reasons to market your worth to management
- Improve your confidence and make you better at your job
- Makes it easy for others to understand the value you create
- You gain better experience and be invited onto career building projects
- Getting paid more
- Finally, you get promoted quicker
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The first reason to market your worth to management is to improve your confidence and make you better at your job
The process of thinking through how you create value in your role for your company helps you focus on what really matters when doing your job. Use this thinking process to focus your efforts on doing more of what matters and less of what doesn’t matter as much. This increases the value you create in your job and thus you become better at your job in the eyes of management.
When you are improving the value you create at work it is hard not to gain confidence.
Then take steps to communicate your worth to leaders and managers. Your confidence again will improve when they praise and compliment you as a result.
There are so many ways you can communicate your worth at work professionally including:
- In one-on-one meetings with your manager and other managers
- By adding on value creation metrics to your or your team’s achievements
- By circulating team KPIs to managers and stakeholders regularly
- By including value creation metrics into emails and reports
Start small and step by step expand how you communicate your worth at work and who you market your worth to.
Concentrate on communicating your worth to your line manager first. Make sure they know, understand and value the results you deliver. Then you can expand to market your worth at work to your wider stakeholders.
The second reason to market your skills at work is to make it easy for others to understand the value you create
Most of us are very caught up in delivering on our own work and hitting our own targets. We don’t spend much time looking at what others are doing and achieving. For many of those in management who are even more time poor, this can be doubly true.
If you don’t make the time to remind managers what you have delivered and advertise your worth at work, they just won’t know what you have done, or they won’t understand the value your work represents, or they will forget about it quickly.
Make it as easy as possible for them to understand the value you create. Frame the work you do and the results you deliver in one or more of these outcomes that all management teams want:
- Increased Revenue
- Saved Costs
- Saved Time
- Improved Processes
- Increased Efficiency, thus saving time or cost or both
- Reduced risk
- Achieved business targets
- Pleased customers
Make it as easy as possible for management and leaders to understand and remember what you have done by communicating your worth regularly.
The third reason to communicate your worth at work is to Gain better experience and be invited onto career building projects
We all like to work with who we know, who we like and who we think will help us best. This is human nature.
Networking internally within your business is another way to market your worth to management.
Those who network well within a business are known by more people. Provided you market your skills at work sensibly and are regularly communicating your worth at work via networking, you will be liked and valued more. Colleagues will know you and understand how you can help them. You will build more professional relationships within the business.
Building a reputation within a business of being easy to work with and good at what you do is a great way to get invited onto the more prestigious projects with the largest exposure within the business.
All managers want to get the best people they can working on the activities and projects that will make the biggest difference to achieving their goals. Perception and your professional reputation within the business matters.
The better you are at building a positive professional brand, the more likely you will be given career defining opportunities.
The fourth reason to market your worth to management is to Get paid more
Businesses generally increase the pay of those that create more value for the business. They also try to avoid paying more for those that don’t increase the value they deliver. This is sensible practice for any business that wants to do well.
If you are perceived as an employee that creates more value than your peers, you are much more likely to be paid more. Market your value at work regularly to be in this group.
Of course, your manager will be a big influence on your pay and bonus. A question for you – do you think it sensible to rely wholly on your manager to fight your case for a bigger salary or bonus?
I learnt this lesson the hard way. I was good at communicating the value I was creating to my manager and poor at communicating it to the wider management team. I found an opportunity to step change a company’s performance and managed the project to deliver it. I thought I would get a great pay rise and bonus as a result. No. It was blocked by other managers that didn’t know me well and didn’t link the great results to my work. A very painful lesson for me.
The more you market your worth to those that decide your pay rise and bonus levels, the more likely you will be rewarded fairly providing you undertake this marketing professionally and sensibly.
If management doesn’t understand or appreciate the value you create, getting paid what you deserve and are worth is a lot harder. Make the time to market your work to get paid more.
The fifth reason to market your worth to leaders is to Get promoted quicker
Working hard is not enough to get promoted despite what we are told most of our lives. There are lots of people that work very hard and don’t get promoted as quickly or as often as others.
The value you create and how good you are at your job is a critical starting point. The reputation and image that you have built within the business is even more important in getting promoted. So market your worth to managers! Finally, how well you are known and how well you fit in with the group you are wanting to get promoted into is even more important.
Sayings such as “dress for the position you want rather than you have” hold a lot of truth. Market your work to management plus network within the business. More managers who make promotion decisions will know you and appreciate what you deliver. Work on building a positive professional brand within the business.
Getting promoted requires a combination of delivering great work and decision makers appreciating what you deliver, and they need to like you on a personal level. Work on all three areas.
How your internal marketing efforts change during your career
Finally, as promised, how your marketing focus should change as you progress through the ranks.
When you are in the professional ranks, focus on marketing your worth to your manager and their peer group. If your manager is good, they will advertise your worth and provided a fair and realistic appraisal of your skills and when you should be promoted.
If your manager is poor at advertising your worth, you will need to increase your marketing efforts to the group which you want to be promoted into.
As you enter the junior management ranks, your manager and their peer group remains the most important focus. You should also consider the other stakeholders that will provide their opinions of you to more senior management. Communicate your worth to this group too.
In middle management, keep a strong focus on your manager and their peer group. You should continue to widen who you are marketing you worth to. For example the leadership team and all the senior managers will start to have an impact on your career progression.
In senior management, market your worth to the leadership team and any layers of managers in between them and you. Work hard at building a positive professional brand with your peers and the management layers below you too. Your brand or reputation with the people you lead is often an important factor.
The more senior you rise, the wider your marketing efforts should reach and the more important they become.
In summary
Marketing your worth to management is, in my view, a critical activity to do. You will be doing some marketing already to your own manager. Making a clear plan of the marketing activities you are going to do – such as build relationships with x managers and telling them about what you have achieved.
Having a plan and sticking to your plan will amplify the marketing you are already undertaking, and you will start seeing the difference actively marketing yourself in a planned way makes.
As a reminder we have been through:
- Improve your confidence and make you better at your job
- Makes it easy for others to understand the value you create
- You gain better experience and be invited onto career building projects
- Getting paid more
- Finally, you get promoted quicker
Plus we have touched on how your internal marketing efforts will change during your career.
I learnt the importance of marketing my worth to the wider management group later in my career. As soon as I was more active in communicating the value I created, I realised a lot of benefits, such as quicker promotions, prizes, better opportunities and a lot more appreciation.
Do download our booklet explaining how best to market your worth professionally at work.
