1. You can’t expect to be the preferred resource when applying for a job at a particular company if you don’t know what product to offer. You must listen/do research to learn VOC (voice of customer) and then address the relevance and value of your product and services. Client will be looking to solve a specific problem like fix products now flat or in decline. Grow profit. Even if your resume has a track record of success, it has little value if it has questionable relevance.
2. Providing facts and features about you does not move the relationship forward by itself. Trust and relationship are crucial to the selling process. The client will prefer someone with lesser credentials on a superficial level if that person comes highly recommended by someone the client trusts. Resumes offer too little depth or proof of connection of you to the results claimed to offset that. Single interviews don’t often solve the problem because clients are not usually trained interviewers.
3. Network with several people at a company first, send resume later. Listen 2/3, talk 1/3.
4. “Consulting” with a client you would like to work for permanently without a designated selling process may distract and pre-empt closing a deal. Similarly, offering too much information during consulting, networking, and interviewing without closing the deal encourages the client to ask for more free advice/details without committing. A gift of gab does not equal selling.
5. A direct mail piece gets a .5-2% return at best. A superficial resume sent to a portal generates similar results.
6. You are highly unlikely to get what you want from a sales meeting or interview if you don’t ask for it and specify exactly what you want and provide specific rationale for deserving it. “I want $200K salary base and $200K is justified for these reasons…” “I want the open Business Development Manager role, and I am the best candidate over other Biz Dev Mgrs with the same amount of industry experience and sales success because of these reasons…” The sales trainer John Baker says 3 reasons establishes a pattern and builds just enough intrigue to consumate the deal.

If you want more in depth training on closing deals in person whether or not you are a professional sales person, read The Asking Formula, by John Baker. He is a fun trainer for any audience.

An exceptional Sales Manager can identify and nurture the competencies that are needed for every team member’s success. The Manager can articulate the processes and benchmarks required to win most sales opportunities regardless of customer issues. Like an effective Product Manager, a top Sales Manager will probe more deeply into root causes and unarticulated problems with team members and customers than other Managers. Delivering a better ROI (return on investment) for the entire team is not an accident, it is part of that Manager’s toolkit. He can predict and deliver the team’s revenue within a very small percentage.

An exceptional Product Manager stretches the boundaries of inquiry into areas and questions not addressed by his/her predecessors. This may include reaching out to external resources such as ad agencies or research houses for increased intimacy with the Voice of the Customer. Inspiration may come from lots of secondary research into articles and the trade press or by many deep discussions with executives from other companies and disciplines such as experts in supply chain, finance, or packaging. It may be new packaging rather than the product within that is the key to increasing sales. A Product Manager less knowledgeable about packaging would not have explored the issue.

If you are a Product Manager with strengths your peers don’t possess, have you showcased your assets as strongly as you could? Is it clear what you did that led to the successes? Can we be fairly certain from your pitch that you are exceptional? Or does it require a leap of faith?

If you cannot yet call yourself exceptional, have you laid out the roadmap of how to be considered exceptional in the future? Making it to VP or CEO is not an accident. It is the result of a carefully considered string of actions.

Many of you are not sufficiently articulate about your performance versus norms to adequately manage your expectations and future promotion potential.

It is not usually technical skills or knowledge of IP (intellectual property) that sets apart top performers from others in the band. It is soft skills, attitude, and the ability to lead or influence the ideas and priorities of others. To identify and sell the concepts, strategies, or changes that increase share of market, profitability, or revenue beyond the expectations of your predecessors and management. To be a “rainmaker.”

Success is more about attitude than aptitude – that you may not have learned as much about the company, product, service, process, or customer as you could know tomorrow. That the best thing to do may be what is right for the customer and company, not you personally.

In future blogs I will discuss the characteristics of some specific executive titles. Look for discussion about the Product Manager next.

Having been a recruiter/coach for 20 years, I am shocked at the degree to which it is true in this recession. Fear is an emotional stumbling block common to most executives who are “stuck.” After sending resumes to job portal after job portal and getting no response, the strategic part of their brain freezes. They fail to try new strategies and accept their fate as beyond their control.

Wrong!

The correct response is to ignore the bad luck happening to others. Be more strategic. Campaign smarter if you expect to beat anyone to the finish line.

Don’t use the phrases and tactics from the popular $20 resume book or follow what was suggested in the networking meeting with 700 other attendees. Avoid tactics every one else quotes as tried and true. They are guaranteed to work poorly in a crowded marketplace (or any other time.) There is a reason if you are being treated as a commodity!

Do more homework on the target company, customers, and the competition. Invest your efforts a campaign that truly sets you apart. Give me a truly compelling reason to pick you out of 25 (or 400) resumes for people with the same title.

Not getting anywhere on your own? Call me.