Need Money Try Networking

The first step in starting your career in executive protection is to truly make up your mind if this is the profession for you.  Make sure your job is going to be your passion, something you wake up wanting to do.  The bodyguard industry  is filled with people thinking they can make a fast buck.  “Do it well, do it right, do it with passion or don’t do it at all.”

One of your biggest choices in this field is to decide if you want to branch out on your own or if it would be a better fit to work for an established entity.  Don’t let what you may consider limited experience weigh this decision.  Finding the right job is all about how you market yourself and how you present what you have to offer.  Use whatever skills you may have and make sure people know what it is you have to provide.  This goes for a future employer or a future client.

Remember this, networking and marketing are a large part of the private sector.  If you chose to branch out on your own, you and you alone will be the one telling people what it is you do, what service you provide, what you have that others can’t give them.  You are self-employed, you sell yourself!  The next best thing to selling yourself is to have friends and colleges selling you as well.  Network, a term that you will hear over and over again in any business, so pay attention!  Get plugged in with a network, go to the local bodyguard schools and find groups that branch off from them.  The more people that know about your abilities and skills the more people there are out selling for you as well.  Many people have acquired great jobs through “connections”.  Ultimately you want to get business through referrals; business should come to you, not you going to find the business.

Before you can get to the point of referral business you will have the large task of selling.  Realize that sales are a big numbers game.  You WILL be rejected, ignored, hung-up on, cursed at and flat out told to go away, but know that it all becomes worth it when you here that YES!  For every 100 no’s you can expect to hear just one yes.  Diligence and persistence through this stage in your career will help you succeed as well as bring great professional development.

Don’t think that marketing is just something that you do to get your job(s).  Marketing and networking is something that you should always be aware of.  Through every day that you work, every action you do, every report that you give, you are showing your employer or client more about you, your abilities or your employer’s services.  There is no job security in the private sector, you have to earn each and every day.

Here are some suggestions that will help your marketing.  With today’s society filled with some many computer generated forms, letters and even envelopes, a good eye catcher would be a personal letter.  One suggestion might be to use stationary and your best penmanship to let your letter stand out from junk mail.  Keep your letter short and to the point, you want to make your purpose known.  Ask for a face-to-face meeting, and follow your letter up with a phone call whenever possible.  You won’t sell yourself in a letter but it may open the door.  You can also use direct mailers as more of a generalized way of getting your information out to the public.

Another marketing tool is cold calling.  Cold calling can be very time consuming, a little disheartening, and to top it all off you probably won’t see results right away.  Hang in there because every once in a while you will get that YES on the other end that will open up doors you never would have imagined.  Learn to not rejection personally when cold calling, you simply have to move on to the next potential job with confidence and think to yourself “their loss” for those that don’t want to do business with you.

Remember that marketing and networking does not always yield immediate results but is a very important step to get your name out and bringing you work in the future.