How to Market Yourself Online as a Car Salesperson

There are two things that differentiate you from any other person: Your face and your expertise. With so much noise, it’s easy to blend in, which is why you need a strategy to market yourself online as a car salesperson.

Building a recognizable professional brand opens up professional opportunities.

It’s more important than ever to be yourself, because that’s what matters to customers. Every time you interact online, be mindful of two things:

What others are experiencing about you.
What you want others to experience about you.

In each of your engagements, your customers, peers and even friends and family, are evaluating you. When you’re solid in your professional brand, there is no difference between #1 and #2.

Being new to this idea of a professional brand can be challenging. However, when you begin to see yourself living through the “lens of a brand,” your perspective will change and you’ll become more mindful about how you approach the professional brand you are trying to define and aiming to live.

A professional brand is about making a full-time commitment to the journey of defining yourself as a leader and how this will shape the manner in which you will serve others.

Your professional brand should represent the value you are able to consistently deliver to those whom you are serving.

First Action Step: Start With Why

When you try to attract everyone, you end up attracting no one.

Simon Sinek states in his TED Talk (which has 56 million views), that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” If you haven’t seen it, watch his 20-min TED Talk HERE.

Determining your “Why” is the foundation from which your professional brand will help you achieve your sales goals.

Before I show you one of my proven tactics on how to market yourself online, I want to make sure you have the footing and foundation you need so that you achieve the level of success you want.

Let’s discover how to determine your WHY so you can effectively market yourself online.

Crafting Your ‘WHY’ Statement

Successful digital and social selling is comprised of 3 factors:

WHAT you do
HOW you do it
WHY you do it.

We’re all acquainted with what we do — the products we sell, the services we offer, the jobs we do.

A few of us know how we do it — the things we think differentiate us or make us unique compared to the rest of the crowd, or our competition.

But only a handful of us can clearly articulate WHY we do what we do. Our WHY is the purpose, the cause, or the belief that drives every salesperson’s career. WHY did you choose car sales? WHY did you get out of bed this morning? And WHY should anyone care?

Your WHY is what sets you apart from everyone else. It’s your purpose. It’s what inspires you to take action. Your WHY is also what inspires others to take action, spread your ideas, or buy your products.

Simon Sinek talks about this in his TED Talk and in his book, Start With Why. He explains how some of the world’s greatest leaders inspire themselves as well as other people to take action, buy their products, or champion their cause.

They do it by clarifying, understanding, and communicating their purpose – their WHY – before communicating anything else. They start with, sell with, and lead with WHY.

While this book shows you why it’s important to start with WHY, Simon’s follow up book, Find Your Why, actually shows you how to find your WHY.

Learning how to construct a WHY Statement is a crucial part of marketing yourself online.

Want more sales? Find your WHY and communicate your purpose.

Your WHY Statement is the most effective possible way to articulate your WHY—your purpose. Not just to other people, but to yourself as well.

Your WHY Statement should be:

Simple and clear
Actionable
Focused on how you’ll contribute to others
Expressed in affirmative language that resonates with you

Your WHY statement should encapsulate all of the qualities I just mentioned—and it should be able to do so in a single sentence.

It should also be “evergreen,” meaning that it should be applicable to everything you do, both personally and professionally, without separation.

Your WHY Statement “is a statement of your value at work as much as it is the reason your friends love you. We don’t have a professional WHY and personal WHY. We are who we are, wherever we are. Your contribution is not a product or a service. It’s the thing around which everything you do— the decisions you make, the tasks you perform, the products you sell— aligns to bring about the impact you envision.”

The WHY Statement format

Here is a simple format to use as you draft your WHY Statement:

To ___________ so that ___________.

The first blank represents your contribution — the contribution you make to the lives of others through your WHY. And the second blank represents the impact of your contribution.

Your job is to plug-in the blanks to create your own unique WHY Statement.

Before you start creating yours, it might be helpful to have some examples for reference…

Examples of WHY Statements

Here’s how Simon Sinek expresses his WHY:

“To inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that, together, we can change our world.”

The impact Simon wants is for each of us to change the world, in however way we can, for the better. But this alone is too broad. It’s incomplete until his intended impact is combined with his contribution—the work he actually does on Monday morning to make change happen. The contribution portion—to inspire people—is what ties it all together, bringing focus and direction to the impact he wants to make on the world. Simon’s contribution is essentially WHAT he does to make his WHY a reality.

To give you another example, here’s how I express my WHY:

“To educate and empower retail automotive professionals so that they can improve their lives and achieve their goals.”

The impact I want is for car salespeople (and all retail automotive professionals) to improve their lives and achieve their goals. And my contribution — WHAT I do to make the impact I desire — writing articles, offering online courses, corporate training, delivering speeches, and coaching awesome folks like you.

Now it’s your turn…

Second Action Step: Draft your WHY Statement

The “To ________ so that _________.” format was designed to be simple and straightforward so that anyone can draft a meaningful WHY by using it. You can use it to create an individual WHY, or you can use it to create an organizational WHY. It’s a powerful tool that can pull your thoughts and actions towards doing what matters most to you.

Grab a pen and pad and use the “To _______ so that ________.” template to start drafting your own WHY Statement.
Jot down anything that comes to mind. Judge nothing.
Take as long as you need.
You can modify your WHY as you evolve as an individual—none of this is set in stone unless you want it to be.
Draft as many WHY Statements as you need to until you find the one that resonates with you on an emotional level.
Once you’ve chosen a meaningful WHY Statement, take a second to congratulate yourself — you now have your very own WHY!

Pro Tip: If you want a deeper dive into developing your WHY and how to put your WHY into action, check out Simon Sinek’s leadership courses here.

Now let’s put your WHY out into the social media ecosystem, shall we?

4-Step Process to Market Yourself Online

For this tactic, we are using Facebook. There are many tactics to use with digital/social platforms, which I will be covering in my upcoming online courses. (If you want to get on the first round list for courses, email me kathi@krusecontrolinc.com)

Step One: Add up to 5,000 personal Facebook friends that consist of :

Clients
Past clients
Past clients friends
Referral partners
Business owners in the specific micro-local environment (close geographical radius)

Step Two: Make ten influencers “Favorites” that you want to “level up” with and then engage on those influencer’s posts.

You may be wondering how to manage your News Feed to show “Favorites.” Facebook doesn’t make it easy, but here are the two ways to do it:

Desktop: Click on the very last icon on the right top (a down arrow) and choose Settings and Privacy. Then select News Feed Preferences, and then Manage Favorites. You can add up to 30 pages and profiles.
Mobile: Click on the little 3-line Menu at the bottom right of your screen. Scroll down and choose Settings and Privacy, then click Settings. Under “Preferences”, select News Feed, then “Favorites.” You can add up to 30 pages and profiles.

Step Three: Content always wins. Post consistent image and video content that follows the syntax of:

Empathetic (personal or case studies)
Educational (clear valuable information for consumers so they can solve issues)
Entertaining (no script, be human)

Step Four: Do this so much that people who dislike you will Unfriend you and KEEP posting until people who love you want to marry you.

You CAN market yourself online but you can’t be all things to all people. It’s important to keep focusing on your ideal customer, build rapport and become the person they think of when it’s time to buy.

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