As a marketer, it’s always important to reinvent yourself, keeping these key question in mind:

  • What can you do better today than yesterday?
  • How are you thinking differently?
  • What have you created?
  • How have you improved on past systems or ideas?

Being able to regularly run a self-assessment by asking these four questions pushes us toward keeping us sharp and savvy. Marketing is such a fickle industry – especially these days – since it’s driven by constantly evolving technology and trends, that it’s critical to stay up to speed (and ahead of the curve) in order to survive and thrive in a cut-throat environment. Here’s how you do exactly that.

#1: Cultivate Mad People Skills

People skills are key. You’re going to be dealing with a lot of people, whether it’s through clients, media, or your internal team. The better you get at dealing with people, the more successful you’re going to be. There’s a couple of ways to achieve this.

The first is through tact. Tact is the ability to say something critical without being unpleasant or offensive. It means using diplomacy to achieve your communication objective. It calls for the ability to evaluate ideas and saying no to an idea when needed without bruising egos. Above all, it calls for the ability to read people, assess the situation and climate in the room, and use varying levels of engagement to arrive at a favorable outcome.

The real win here is to get the other people to have their recommendation denied or modified, and still think the outcome is favorable. But before you can influence anyone else, you have to get comfortable with yourself. That’s step 1. Step 2 is being able to navigate through the emotions and personalities you’re faced with when dealing with other people.

#2 Get Lightening Fast at Ideation

Marketing requires a lot of ideas, often – and good ones at that. This means doing three things: brainstorming, curating, and letting ideas marinate. Brainstorming is a natural state of being for marketers. Whether you’re in a room or quickly shooting off an idea, a marketer is always ready and excited about an impromptu brainstorming session.

The next is ruminating – or “marinating.” It’s about letting ideas saturate, wander, evolve as they need to. This is the space where epiphanies happen. Here’s why ruminating is important: in order to quickly, boldly and bravely deliver ideas in a brainstorming meeting with your boss or colleagues, you need to have a mind that’s trained to think freely and explore fully.

A short-cut, or rather a supplement to thinking freely, is to surround yourself with Millennials who are notorious free thinkers that more than willing to share their opinions. For other ideas, continue to the next blog post that identifies solutions to reinventing yourself.

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by Shireen Qudosi

Shireen Qudosi is Benchmark Email's Online Marketing Specialist and Small Business Advocate. An Orange County based writer, Shireen specializes in online marketing and public relations. She has written for over 75 publications and has launched nine successful new media campaigns to date. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Denver Post, the Oklahoman and Green Air Radio, among others.