A crash course in self-marketing: Whether you're satisfied your current position or not, identifying and showcasing your strengths should be a key part of your professional advancement strategy. (Your Career).

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there!"

Will Rogers

Every executive knows what savvy marketing means for a business: It increases visibility for products and services and gives customers a compelling reason to want them. What may be less clear, is how these same marketing principles apply to their careers. Whether you're satisfied in your current position or not, identifying and showcasing your strengths should be a key part of your professional advancement strategy.

Recognizing the need to "sell" yourself

As a financial executive who has reached a high level, you probably realize that continued satisfaction and personal reward require regular reassessment of your options -- both inside and outside your current company. In short, to remain fulfilled, you're always looking for the next challenge. The problem is, you never know when that challenge will come along. That's why it's critical to take a proactive approach to marketing yourself. If you wait for an opportunity to hit you in the face, it'll already be too late to take full advantage of it.

It's not enough to simply be good at what you do. In today's market, you must make your talents constantly visible. While those who work most closely with you may be familiar with your abilities, they may not necessarily be the people to help with your next career move. Your goal should be to display your expertise to a wide audience.

Self-marketing not only generates awareness of your capabilities, but also indicates your openness to new possibilities. In effect, you act as your own headhunter.

Indeed, self-marketing is not just a tool for job advancement: It can also help you maximize your effectiveness and get more from your current position. Wider recognition of your talents brings additional professional respect, which can help you build better teams and secure buy-in on your projects.

Sizing up what you have to offer

Any self-promotion strategy must begin with an honest assessment of what you bring to the table. If you don't know your own professional value, how will you convince others of it?

To make an objective evaluation, you'll need to benchmark your talent against those in your profession and industry, and determine which abilities are currently most in demand. As a tenured professional, you no doubt have an array of skills. The goal, however, is to focus on those competencies that add value, make a bottom-line impact and contribute to an organization's long-term growth.

It's a good idea to make a habit of regularly researching the market in your area to determine the level of hiring activity at the senior level and which skills are mentioned most often. Newspaper and online articles are helpful, and professional journals can be even more targeted since they are devoted exclusively to the finance field. But the best sources of information are business colleagues and associates in professional organizations.

Here are some of the most important questions to ask yourself as you perform your skills analysis:

Are Your Skills Transferable? Probably more than you think. Many financial executives tend to view their current industries -- and the competencies they require -- as unique. There's no question that specific experience is essential in some areas. In health care, familiarity with reimbursements and billing is a requisite. But a number of finance responsibilities and challenges -- such as cash management, collection of receivables and inventory control -- cross every sector. Accounting language, rules and business transactions are largely the same from industry to industry. Although learning a specialized set of acronyms and other jargon is often necessary to succeed in a new organization, most senior-level skills are easily transferable.

This isn't to say, however, that all professionals are equally qualified to make a transition. There are a number of major competency areas that can be an asset to your marketability and make you more competitive.

How Solid is Your IT Knowledge? In any industry, a strong technical and information systems (IS) background is becoming increasingly critical for senior-level finance professionals. Responsibility for technology investment decisions -- and measuring their success -- is a task that used to fall solely on the shoulders of chief information officers. But as technology is integrated into every corner of businesses, CFOs and other finance executives have gained significant influence over their companies' IT initiatives, making the ability to partner with CIOs a pivotal factor in a financial executive's success. Indeed, it's not uncommon for a firm's top IT official to report to the CFO.

Can You Provide Strategic Direction? A growing number of financial executives are delegating more of their day-to-day responsibilities and assuming greater roles in strategic planning, investor relations, operations and revenue enhancement initiatives. That makes the ability to interpret and forecast a company's big picture critical, especially if you're a CFO looking to make the leap to CEO. What is the extent of your experience in advising your CEO or senior members of interdepartmental committees?

When asked in which area their role will change most over the next five years, 39 percent of CFOs responding to a survey commissioned by RHI Management Resources said they expect to play an expanded role in IS initiatives. This requires an excellent working knowledge of new and existing business applications, as well as system integrity and security, data mining and knowledge management. In your professional skills assessment, high-level IS knowledge should bear significant weight.

You'll also need to advise your team accordingly. As accounting and finance professionals at all levels assume increasingly larger roles, they'll need your assistance in understanding the organizations' strategic goals. Your marketability is significantly boosted if you can demonstrate a track record of helping staff members integrate corporate priorities into their individual objectives.

How Effective Are Your People Skills? Beyond financial and technical competencies, people skills, more than any other attribute, will determine your success in a new position. Strong interpersonal abilities are essential at all levels, but they're particularly critical for senior executives; companies are looking for first-rate communicators who can lead and motivate others.

In another survey conducted by RHI Management Resources, interpersonal skills ranked number one among CFOs as the most important consideration when hiring management-level employees.

Experience in resolving conflicts and a persuasive, diplomatic style can position you well to direct teams and gain support for strategies. Such qualities can significantly smooth your transition to a new work environment. Also, having strong presentation skills is valuable for getting your name out within your community. After addressing a group, asking them to fill out evaluation forms gives you candid and unedited feedback on your speaking abilities.

Putting it all together: Networking

Recognizing your own strengths is at least half the self-marketing battle. Once you've identified which skills are most marketable, you're ready to put them to work. You'll now need to demonstrate how your special talents can contribute to a company's financial stability.

Networking is to self-marketing what television is to advertising. Continually building and nourishing professional relationships is key to getting the word out about what you have to offer. At the same time, your contacts are a primary source of information about potential job openings or other prospects. Eighty percent of 1,400 executives polled in an RHI Management Resources survey said networking with other professionals has been important to furthering their careers.

Contacts both inside and outside your organization are critical links. In conversations before, during and after meetings, seminars and social gatherings, look for opportunities to mention current projects and strategies you're using for handling them. If time permits, engage associates in further discussion, being careful to express equal interest in their work. Some of them are probably involved in initiatives similar to your own, and comparing notes and approaches can be mutually beneficial.

Such discussions allow you to not only demonstrate your knowledge, but also to expand it. Talking with entrepreneurs or investment bankers, for example, can yield valuable insights if you eventually decide to go into business for yourself or become a consultant. In this fashion, you can also learn about new industries or what it's like to work in an organization smaller or larger than your own, or with a different corporate culture.

Most importantly, your professional network can introduce you to additional contacts, and this "ripple" effect is the real power of networking.

In addition to establishing one-on-one relationships, it's also important to your self-marketing efforts to showcase your expertise on a wider scale. Professional associations can be extremely helpful in this way. Offering to make presentations at chapter meetings and conferences or becoming actively involved in committees opens additional routes for demonstrating your industry knowledge and management skills.

It's not always easy to identify, analyze and capitalize on your own talents. In addition to online resources, sometimes using an outside source, such as a career consultant, can help you place things in proper perspective. If you find you lack some important skills, seek out new business initiatives or high-profile projects that could broaden your experience. Or consider tapping your network contacts for help in choosing appropriate professional development courses.

In a business environment that expects more and more from financial executives, you may believe that there's little extra time to think beyond day-to-day responsibilities about professional growth and realizing your full potential. Yet, it's essential to simultaneously keep one eye fixed on the job market and continually position yourself to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

RELATED ARTICLE: Tips for Successful Self-Marketing

* Know your worth.

If you don't how can you continue others?

* Always look for the next challenge.

Continually assess your potions, and you'll continue to grow professionally. The opposite is a surefire way to diminish you market value.

* Be proactive

* Communicate your talents.

if you wait to react to an opportunity, it may pass you by

Hard work and being good at what you do is not enough Talents must be visible.

* Indicate your interest.

Opportunities will pass you by if you don't show people you're open to them.

* Know the benefits.

Wider recognition of your talents can facilitate working relationships, fortify self-esteem and increase personal motivation.

Paul McDonald is executive director of RHI Management Resources[R] (www.rhimr.com), North America's largest consulting services firm providing senior-level accounting and finance professionals on a project basis.