Now that I’ve got your attention, I love metaphors and feeling naked is a common one for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

The naked pitch and how to appear fully garbed.
Since the early days of my professional career I’ve been naked and unequipped many times with industry knowledge, experience and even skill sets, but that did not stop me from scoring new business and ultimately contributing to  a client’s success.

In fact, the first piece of business I landed over 30 years ago that launched my career in marketing and branding was when I was totally naked of qualifications, credentials or formal education.

That’s right, I was hired over several other individuals who had a history of not only marketing and branding expertise, but they had specific business sector experience too. I did this by shifting the focus of the presentation to what I did have and not what I lacked.

Five specific tips for winning business when you are competing against bigger and more experienced firms or professionals.

1) Project professionalism on all touch points.
Looking professional frames your value as thorough, thoughtful and competent. All details matter, from how you dress to what your business card, web presence and even social media content and photo look like.

2) Demonstrate evidence of success.
This means leverage every opportunity where third parties confirm that you know your stuff and can be counted on. This can range from highlighting media coverage to posting testimonials from industry peers and customers on your marketing materials and social media profiles.

3) Attitude aces everything.
Communicating a can do mind-set with confidence and a peaceful composure are critical to any relationship building process. Most business decisions have a risk evaluation factor in the decision formula. If a prospect really likes you, trusts you and believes you won’t make them look bad, you’ll earn points that weigh in more than specific experience. Posture, choice of active words, (like I recommend, I believe and I am confident that) and a firm handshake can make a big difference in how the prospect perceives you.

4) Highlight strengths.
Being resourceful, organized and creative are a few of my top strengths. When I’m pitching anything, I cite examples where these attributes have brought other clients faster and better results.

5) Draw comparisons.
Tell prospects about other projects that had similar challenges to theirs and how you cracked the code and produced results. Common points of pain, customer profiles or even channels used can help reduce a prospect’s doubt concerning your abilities to get the job done.

Another side of naked.
Ian Percy, http://ianpercy.com a fellow business speaker recently shared “Why we like to get naked”.

Researchers at Harvard have gotten to the bottom of why so many of us are compelled to share our every thought, movement, like and want through media such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest.

In a series of experiments, the researchers found that the act of disclosing information about oneself activates the same sensation of pleasure in the brain that we get from eating food, getting money, or having sex. It’s all a matter of degrees, of course (talking about yourself isn’t quite as pleasurable as sex for most of us), but the science makes it clear that our brain considers self-disclosure to be a rewarding experience.

Of course what your self-disclosing nakedness does for the onlooker is a totally different issue!

Either way being a bit naked or exchanging news about your every move can be a rewarding experience.

Need more naked?  Just stumbled upon a good article to help earn SEO by being naked with Google too.