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.

Joe then told the corporate HR person in a phone screen a few days later he was making $72K salary and wouldn’t move for less than $80K.

The engineering firm knew his present salary was $62K because they had hired a number of other people from the same firm.

Joe then tells the HR person that, while he is willing to work in re-commissioning for while, what he really wants is GHG (greenhouse gas) and sustainability. The job title he applied for is Re-commissioning Specialist.

Comments:

1. If you are going to exaggerate your credentials, at least keep your story straight!
2. Recruiters usually tell a hiring manager the salary history and expectations of a candidate. Otherwise the recruiter would be chastened for wasting the hiring manager’s time.
3. National studies have shown 70% of resumes include an exaggeration. Hiring Managers assume they will hear exaggerations at every step of the screening process and listen for them.
4. This job seeker wasted everyone’s time. If you are serious about a company or job, do enough homework before applying to find out the company’s expectations and norms. If interested in the company but not this job, be honest.
5. Applying to a company for more than 3 different job titles is not viewed positively by most companies. The applicant is considered not focused or too hungry or too much of a commodity player.

Neither the recruiter not the engineering firm will ever work with Joe again, he has been “red-flagged.”

Have a favorite interview story? Share it with us!

I am in my 50s. Yes, age bias exists and, yes, it is illegal. You won’t always be able to avoid it. But age bias is sometimes not really about your actual age, it is about certain soft skills and attitudes that employers desire but older employees are less likely to value. And if you learn to address those issues, you can make concerns about age go away.

Attitude

First of all, if you think the world is against you, I will bet it shows in your interviews. You need to peel back the layers on your emotions. Do you think society has fouled up again? That young managers don’t know what they are doing? Or is it that you don’t know how/where to sell yourself at this stage of your career and are afraid?

Your focus should be to find the companies for which you are a highly desirable applicant just as you are and to present yourself to those companies in a manner that makes you one of the first applicants to be selected for an interview. While this may require a stronger sell than was necessary a few years ago, it is not at all impossible. It just requires some additional strategic layers and may indicate a different kind of company than the one you left. For instance, a smaller company or start-up may prefer a more experienced candidate to obtain a greater depth of industry knowledge with a smaller staff count. Or target your skills in business development (well-documented with case histories) to a company who has been struggling with the issue for some time.

If you are significantly overqualified for a job description as written, don’t spend a lot of time applying for it. The company will be concerned that you will leave as soon as you find a job for which you are better suited. You could offer to sign a contract promising that you will stay at least 2 years, but they will still be concerned that you will become crabby in the role because you are being under-utilized and that you will be disruptive to the balance of the team structure.

Trends in age of employees

• 2000-2003
  • The number of workers under the age of 45 was constant.
  • The number of workers over 45 increased 86%.
• 2005
  • 45% of workers are over the age of 45.
• 2010 projected
  • Labor shortage due as baby boomers retire
  • Most boomers plan to work full-time or part-time after retiring.

How older workers are perceived

• More expensive than younger employees doing the same work (usually true).
• Difficult to supervise, they think they know more than team mates. Poor or selective follow-up.
• Inflexible, grumpy, frumpy, more likely to argue. Poor communication skills. Less political.
• Hard to train, don’t know new technology.
• Disconnected from company vision and younger team-mates. Prefer to be sole contributors.
• Get sick more often (false).
• Low and declining energy. Resist overtime.

Market demand for new hires

• As the pace of corporate innovation increases, the duration of the average permanent job decreases because company priorities change more rapidly, and your seniority or longevity may be irrelevant. The career track you were on for the last ___ years doesn’t matter. The employer wants to know if you can hit the ground running for today’s needs.
• 2 out of 100 resumes result in a job offer.
• A resume needs to be better written to be effective because employers have access to more resumes through websites and job databases. Is your resume well-written enough that you will be one of the interviewees chosen from 20 resumes? 100?

Strategies to try

So what am I saying? Learn and emphasize what a company values in today’s market. Make sure you know how to sell yourself. Focus on the benefits of your depth of knowledge, but make sure you also counter the expected negative attitudes associated with older workers. Note the ways attitude as well as knowledge is being addressed in the bullets below:

• “I really enjoy being on teams which solve problems and grow business.” Don’t just say “I have lots of experience” which would emphasize the gap in age but not the quality of experience and your willingness to be a team member.
• “I have the contacts to drive growth.”
• “I thrive in fast-paced environments.”
• To an insurance or medical company with older customers: “I may understand your customer better than a younger applicant.”
• “Yes, I supervised many people. Learned how to work with lots of different kinds of people. Can we take a tour of the company? I would like to see how you do it.“
• “I can start as a part-time consultant to let you evaluate what I offer at a small cost.”
• “I just attended a conference on that new technology and was a panelist.”