5. Place your key points boldly in your marketing materials. Know benefits you deliver, wants you satisfy. Know them inside out, upside down, backward and forward. be able to articulate them any time anywhere.

6. Here's how to find and claim a market for a niche in which you are to make yourself a world-class expert: Go to a library or bookstore. Get your hands on American Renaissance by Marvin Cetron and Owen Davis, and Megatrends 2000 by Naisbitt and Aburdene. Look for newer books focusing on future and on emerging industries and markets in same sections of your bookstore. Read these books. Ideas will leap off pages at you, page after page.

Dozens of untapped markets and niches await your inquisitive and perceptive focus. List all niches that attract you. Review your list for a few days. Meditate on your favorites for a few evenings. At night, as you drop off to sleep, direct your subconscious mind to review your list, to give you insights regarding most ideal niches for you. Be guided by your feelings. One niche will rise, like cream to top of milk. You'll be drawn to it. It's yours.

Now, steep yourself in your niche orgiastically. Immerse yourself in its lore. Allow yourself to reach a perceptive point, an outlook, a height from which you attain an intuitive vision of what will be hot months and years from now. (Alvin Toffler has done this for over 20 years. Today, he's one of most in-demand speakers anywhere.)

Listen to your intuition. Be fearless, even outrageous, when you have a hunch. Follow your hunch regardless of objective evidence. (Tom Peters, then working for McKinsey & Co., followed his hunch in defiance of his company. He was then researching book, In Search of Excellence, written with Bob Waterman. The outcome was he had to resign. He quickly became a fearlessly audacious business guru.) Choose your niche dauntlessly. Then, lavish energy into developing it to its fullest potential. In words of Peter Drucker, be a monomaniac with a vision.

Burt Dubin, a 20 year veteran of the business of speaking, coaches and mentors speakers and wanna-be's world-wide. For samples of his wisdom, simply go to his web-site, . Down-load some of the 20 FREE articles and 26 FREE newsletters. 1 Speaking Success Road, Kingman, Arizona 86402-6543, USA. Phone 1-800-321-1225. Fax 928-753-7554. E-mail Burt at:

An important element of marketing your work as an HR practitioner is to realise you must effectively communicate benefits of your work in terms other managers can relate to. This really means selling HR to organisation. A regular positive message will help position your services in 'must have' category for senior managers.

And remember...selling is not a dirty word, it is a communication process.

How do you sell HR? Here are some easy steps: 1. First understand needs of your customers - in this instance management team in your organisation. Gain an understanding of their business objectives and pressures they face. 2. Prioritise their needs and determine how your services help them. Why and when do they need your services? 3. Determine how you can communicate with them. Different circumstances will require different methods. For example, use monthly management meeting to explain correlation between good HR practices and achievement of corporate objectives. Be specific. 4. Be prepared to answer objections to your 'good news stories'. Some managers may need additional information to accept impacts you present. Cite results, case studies and statistics that relate to achieving specific objectives. 5. Follow up with members of management team to ask for their comments on how they are benefiting from HR services. Get their perspective. Be proactive in helping them achieve their goals.

"Ultimately your organisation wants you to add value. By involving your executives in process of change and gaining their commitment to implement your HR initiatives, you will better serve your executives, your organisation and entire HR function."2

Sources: 1. Becker & Gerhart 1996:794. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources. Vol.38 2000. 2. Marshall Goldsmith - Executive coach. Workforce Magazine May 2001.