Just because you work for someone else, doesn’t mean you should not consider yourself 100% responsible for your own business success.

I am always surprised how many people, when asked why they were laid off, say “I don’t know why I was in the 10% laid off.” The same people frequently say things like  “I make my revenue quotas every year” without really knowing how they are viewed versus others at their current employer with the same quota track record or title. It is also typical of those who rely too heavily on relationship-building strategies.

You need to know how to make opportunities for yourself in any situation, independent of, or in spite of, the organization agenda.

Because employers will experience more and more pressure from globalization and innovation in the future, employers will have less and less ability to care for an individual’s destiny. It will be increasingly critical for you to know, defend, and augment your value to the current organization and the larger industry. It is just as important to a happy, currently working employee as to someone unemployed.

So how do you gain traction over your own image?

The key strategy is to gain awareness of your impact on the organization and customers as others measure it. You need to solicit constant feedback from your internal and external customers: What can I do to serve you better? Where do I (and we, the company) impact your business most? What do you value? What would you like me to do less of? Who are the other stakeholders I should get to know better (and serve) better? How do I rank versus your other providers? What are your unmet needs?

You need to be sincere about these questions, and ask them in an “open-ended manner” so that you hear issues other than the ones you expected.

If you have grown up in an engineering-driven or sales-driven environment, you need to become more customer-centric. The customer doesn’t care much about your agenda as provider, and will care less and less in the future as they will have more and more providers and services to choose from. You need to be seen as the preferred provider. Are you?

Career coaching is as relevant to someone happily working as to someone in transition.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, management skills, networking, selling skills, visibility | No Comments »

A huge percentage of the sales people I know brag about being “a relationship builder.” Simply because so many of you mention it, it is a useless differentiator, but there is a bigger problem with the positioning. A recent study proves that, if relationship building is your primary strategy as a sales person, you are relying on one of the least effective sales strategies for today’s market.

I am not suggesting the remedy is “consultative” or “SPIN Selling” where the rep asks the customer to identify his needs. This new study and resulting strategy comes from the same folks¹ who invented the SPIN Selling concept in the 1970s but they now recommend against a customer driven process. The sales people who are most successful in today’s market are collectively called “Challengers” and are in a position to LEAD the conversation with the client, not react to it.

Here is what we know about the sales process with challenger reps:

Success comes from helping customers think differently and bringing them new ideas. The challenger rep goes way beyond asking customers what their unmet needs are (VOC) or offering services to a customer driven solution that any competitor would have suggested. It is about identifying unarticulated needs no one else can meet. The challenger rep is more expert than the potential customer about how to grow business using the technology or services in discussion but the focus is not on selling the vendor’s product. It is about teaching the client to manage his business better.

Three-quarters of vendors currently attempt to be a solutions provider. The challenger rep can push the customer to a solution the customer had not imagined and can’t implement as well on his own. The solution will be one the competition cannot do as well or imitate for a lower price. The challenger rep is able to support his price and stay in control through the teaching role and strategic insight. This rep can sell his idea to different stakeholders across the client matrix. The soundness of the solution will make sense in spite of the condition of the economy.  (These reps gain share in a bad economy.)

Are you thinking the challenger rep walks on water? It all stems from having the self–awareness to understand why and when the client would buy from you over someone else. You can’t be all things to all people, but you can sell by knowing for which customers your company can be the preferred resource. What customers can you teach something to? Do you know the things each stakeholder at the client cares about? You must discover this before the first conversation, through in-depth market research, as discovery at a field sales call is way too late. You need to have several solutions and pitches to the different stakeholders already thought through at the first sales call and you must lead with a discussion of the client’s problem, not your products. A sales or engineering driven company is at a real disadvantage in this evolved solutions process.

Regardless of your present comfort zone or company commitment to the process, any rep can become more like a challenger rep. The key is to be pro-active and do discovery before approaching the client. Solve the client’s problems, don’t sell features. If you are in an environment of where complex sales are the rule, “Challenger” reps are 2.5 times more likely than the average sales person to be a high performer and 5 times likely than the “Relationship Builder”. The likelihood that a “Relationship Builder” achieves star status is nearly zero. Buy the book The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.

¹ Sales Exec Council, www.executiveboard.com

Topics: branding + positioning, getting ahead, ideation, innovation, leadership, selling skills, technical skills | 1 Comment »

A big (or small) “network” means little if you have not made a lasting, memorable impression on it. Meeting someone at an event or being connected to him/her in LinkedIn means nothing if that person is not subsequently a strong advocate of your personal and business value.

Business and personal value are measured by the trust and influence others assign to you, not the “power” of your title, degree, or size of your network. Think about this. There are many bosses you don’t respect and don’t listen to because they don’t seem to be open to their environment. Because they think they have all the answers and have stopped learning, you don’t trust their thinking. Influence comes from trust in their judgment and two-way input.

How do you demonstrate and increase your sphere of influence? Talk about the projects and the related employees, co-workers, and customers you have mentored. Be as quick to make a more junior co-worker look better as your boss. Show others how you were successful. Talk about smart articles you read that someone else authored. We need to hear and trust your judgment on issues that are most important to us.

Just being a nice guy is not enough. I won’t invest any of my money in that guy. On the other hand, showing that you helped Joe learn how to afford his first house does have value in establishing your ethics and character even if it didn’t make you money. (And I couldn’t actually have advised Joe how to be credit worthy.)

LinkedIn can be a tool to demonstrate and exercise your influence, but most users have not learned to use it that way. I would argue that you are better off staying out if you don’t use it well.

The most influential networking is more about giving than receiving and more about listening than preaching. A sincere effort to help others will be most memorable to your audience.

Topics: branding + positioning, business skills, communications, getting ahead, leadership, networking, selling skills, visibility | 3 Comments »

In my last blog I mentioned there is a very simple, free, low-tech way to track information of business (or personal) connections so you can search them by keyword and collect notes over time. My personal database has loads of information not available in the typical LinkedIn profile and is searchable on hundreds of keywords. The process below could include much more information but is very easy to execute with either a little or a lot of information per person.

Many people have an Excel or Outlook database that provides name, title, company, phone, and email but does not offer the ability to find someone who was, but is no longer, at a medical device company or someone who is an expert in Quality Assurance. One can add columns in an Excel spreadsheet to track who has experience in each of 20 industries or Commercialization or Voice of Customer but the spreadsheet soon gets too large to search easily. I have also destroyed my Excel database more than once by not sorting carefully and ending up with data irretrievably next to the wrong person when, of course, I did not have a recent backup available.

Because you can search for keywords  in many documents simultaneously from the file directory (in Windows) or from Finder (in Apple,) here is a simple search tool. It is simply a page created in Word, for instance, one for each person, with keywords that can be searched with the assurance you have not missed any files. Contain all of these files to a single folder in your computer so searching amongst them is easier. The other trick is to keep a separate list of keywords on your desk to guarantee you always use exactly the same spelling of a keyword or company name. In other words, so you always use “QA” instead of “Quality Assurance” spelled out.  “UMN” versus “University of Minnesota” versus “University of MN.”

Below is what might be in the Word document named “Smith_Pete_notes.doc”   :

Pete Smith notes

01/12/12 had lunch to catch up
07/09 hired him for 3 month contract at Ameriprise, focus process improvement
04/03 Hired him at State of MN, 8 mo sales tax project, saved us $108K by automating testing

2002- current, Independent contractor, Software QA Consultant
• Process improvement using Six Sigma techniques
• Project management
• Quality methodology implementation
• Unit, integration, functional, system, user acceptance testing
• Creates training on quality techniques and testing
• Creates training on writing and managing requirements

Clients
Medtronic, Ameriprise, State of Minnesota, Digital River, Best Buy

Industries
Manufacturing, Finance, Retail, Mortgage, Medical, start-ups

Keywords
Contractor, SaaS, FDA compliance, POS, RUP, CMM, ISO 9000 certified Auditor, Method1, Six Sigma Black Belt, unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, system testing, user acceptance testing, training, managing requirements, writing, best practices, implementation, process improvement

Family
Wife Lisa Manufacturing Engineer at Honeywell ECC, gourmet cook (remember the chocolate croissants?)
Son Sean, 12 in 2011, is soccer nut, goalie on Blake School team

QualityWorkExcellent (glued together as one word so searchable with more software tools and distinguishable from personal skills comment)

PersonalSkillsExcellent

CheckInMar2012, CheckInJune2012  (when to call back to check in)

BirthdayFeb232012

Topics: business skills, communications, hidden job market, networking, selling skills | 2 Comments »

Rather than think of LinkedIn only as away to meet new people, consider it a powerful tool to maintain contact with old acquaintances. LinkedIn offers a terrific networking advantage to older business people who have a huge list of names in their files going back 30 years.

Use LinkedIn to find people you have lost contact with. There are no restrictions on how many people you can look up if you already know the name and a former company or school. So go back to your old Rolodex and find out where those former clients, co-workers, and schoolmates are now. Then CALL them on the phone. A request to link before calling may be presumptuous at this point. I also believe smaller, very intimate LinkedIn networks are more powerful, so I am not quick to add connections in LinkedIn.

Your long-term contacts could provide a good lead-in for a junior sales person or a business associate. Consider creating a shared, internal, private database of the highest value contacts with all of your collective insights available in detailed notes. Don’t settle for a CRM with only superficial contact info.

I have developed my own database over time that goes way beyond what LinkedIn offers and provides me a measurable competitive advantage. I track people by industry keywords, strategic strengths (turnarounds, commercialization…), by who they know (close friends include CTO of 3M and Dir Engineering at Medtronic), and personal information on their family (wife Robin is gourmet cook.) I can track connections by several hundred filters and rank them by strategic or personal value. If you are not tech savvy, there is a way to do this using a simple Word document of notes per person and keywords. I will cover in my next blog. Read Harvey Mackay if you want a checklist of what to track.

Stay in closer touch in the future. Remember others can also easily find your old connections in LinkedIn and attempt to pre-empt your relationship. In your private database, plant a searchable keyword phrase like “checkMar2012″.

Topics: communications, hidden job market, networking, selling skills, visibility | 2 Comments »