A common Social Media strategy amongst companies I know:

Objective:

1)     Build business.

2)     Reduce customer service costs and identify unarticulated product and service problems.

3)     Provide content helpful to the customer.

I heard a similar Public Relations strategy recently. Employees of this company are asked to participate in everything from walk-a-thons to collecting clothes for disadvantaged inner city job seekers.

Objective:

1)     Build business.

2)     Build team spirit amongst our employees by having them participate in these activities as a group.

3)     Generate news media mentions of our company to build awareness of our services.

4)     Establish our reputation as ethical and caring.

5)     Do good for the community.

What’s wrong with doing things for the customer and community because it is the right thing to do? Regardless of return???

If you go into these activities with money generation as your primary agenda, I will make a bet your audience (and employees) can hear the lack of authenticity and sincerity.

If you have substituted Social Media and PR activities for what used to be your advertising budget, it is unreasonable to expect the same ROI from it. In fact, you may create a negative ROI by targeting the wrong objectives.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, leadership, selling skills | No Comments »

One of the ways to prove your readiness for a promotion or why you should be hired before a sea of other candidates is to create hypothetical case histories of different business problems and discuss the problems, business ramifications, and proposed solutions in great detail. We are talking pages, not two lines on your resume. Put your remedies on the table with a deep, strategic discussion of why they offer the best ROI (return on investment) for the business situation and be willing to be graded/critiqued for your proposed fixes before or early in the interview process. It will help you get into higher level interviews sooner and more often.

It is giving away free consulting, perhaps, but in a risk-adverse job market, it may move you past other contestants. It is actually safer in this instance not to offer remedies to the potential employer’s current problems, because it is likely you will not know some choice business tidbit that suddenly makes your proposed remedy look foolish. If you write about enough different business situations credibly, you will suggest that you could make future headway on the problems of the employer you are hoping to impress even if you don’t currently have all the information to score an A+ today for the target project. It is an effective way to show you are viable for a new industry.

If you were thinking of whining about all the work I am suggesting, one of my coaching clients, who had been at $150K before being laid off, moved to a $235K salary in his next move by creating a “portfolio” showcasing his business insights. He intends to repeat the strategy in the near future to accelerate his next promotion. (He also pointed out the exercise cost less than his MBA and accomplished more.)

Another approach is to write an erudite white paper or two on bleeding edge industry issues. Write an article that gets into the WSJ or Financial Times or the leading trade magazine in your industry. You can’t plagiarize or try to “snow” anyone with these. You need to be ready to discuss any of the topics for 2-3 hours convincingly in an interview.

This process is a good exercise to test how credible you are as a candidate for a more senior role than you have had previously without long term risk to any party. Both you and the hiring manager may need to see the concrete proof of how you rank versus other candidates.

It is also good way to remove the personal stigma of having been at a failing company in a senior title. I just recommended the process to someone who has been at several small start-ups that did not make it long term.

The flip side of this strategy is that, for something like 10 years now, companies have been pulling in 10-15 candidates and giving them 40-70 hour assignments of what would they do in X situation without paying consulting fees. Then the company takes the consensus of all the hopeful applicants and doesn’t hire any of them. I first saw this phenomenon amongst high level IT Project Managers with PMPs. I happen to think this is unethical and would never work for a company that asked it. One way to defend yourself against it is to offer solutions to problems at other companies as suggested in the second paragraph, before or regardless if the company asks for “free advice” with bad intentions.

It is all about demonstrating your thought leadership in a way that allows you to hop, skip, and jump past other potential candidates.  It also allows you to grow as fast as you can rather than waiting for company projects that allow you to flex your muscles.

Topics: branding + positioning, communications, getting ahead, innovation, interviews, leadership, management skills, salary, selling skills, solving problems, technical skills, visibility | 1 Comment »

In my last blog, I pointed out that even if you work for someone else, you are CEO of your own destiny. You need to take 100% responsibility for the success of your own future. Alex Neff expanded on my concept using Sales and Sales Operations examples. Below are his thoughts:

I meet people frequently who don’t know how to advance their own career. Here are the kinds of things they say:

1 – I don’t know why I was part of the group that was laid off.

2 – I don’t know how to move past “meets expectations” in my annual review.

3 – I don’t know how to get more than a 2.5% annual raise.

By comparison, the CEO of the average multi-person company expects (demands) 10-15% growth year over year. Why are you settling for less growth for your one-person company?

America rewards the entrepreneur, the innovator, the one who thinks “outside of the box.” Regardless if your passion is sales or operations, anyone can succeed by thinking as the CEO of You, Inc. and by putting you, as the customer, first. By doing both, you will help your career grow.

Examples:

If you are in B2B sales, many of you have provided a customer-centric sales story via your employer’s company that 100 of your customers used to build the business of 100 of their customers. Consider the pitch you created was worthy of being retold 10,000 times.

Check out Nike’s Fuel Band. It counts your calories, your number of steps, your time. It makes staying in shape a game that you play against yourself. It provides a message that people embrace and repeat. It adds personal value. Social Media was used to help Nike’s product go viral at relatively little cost. Can you use Social Media to do the same for yourself via You, Inc.?

If you are in operations, as CEO of You, Inc., are you creating repeatable and scalable processes to ensure the future of you the customer? Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, sweated the details to ensure that the French fries one eats at McDonald’s are the same each time and at each location. The repeatable and scalable processes provide predictable consistency, and comfort for the customer. People know what to expect regardless of whether they are in the big city or the heartland. They want to experience a Zen moment, no surprises. Strive to achieve the same predictable results and peace of mind for the customer of You, Inc..

When you are working with your employer’s clients, it is important to solve their problems and needs and to provide on-going process improvement and value-add. The CEO of You, Inc. must similarly come in each morning and say “I’ve been thinking of our challenges, and I believe I may have a couple of new solutions that we should try.” Never stop seeking innovation and test-marketing alternatives of achieving better results.

As CEO of You, Inc., you need to continually challenge your company to increase value to the customer, grow, adapt, and be forward thinking. Failure to do so will cost you money and, more importantly, time. The company You, Inc. will be looking for your next client versus having prospective external clients reach out to you as a solution provider. Thinking as a CEO is something that is learned. A great career coach will help you learn it faster.

By the way, regardless of your age, planning done now should set the stage for your later success as CEO of Your Retirement, Inc.. Another reason to take command of your strategic direction as soon as possible.

Note: I don’t know if the concepts of “You, Inc.” and “CEO of You” are copyrightable. I have found several previous variations on the phrases on the Internet and in book titles. My apologies if this use of them offends anyone. Pat O’Donnell.

Topics: branding + positioning, getting ahead, leadership, 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 »