Someone usually gets promoted to Sales Manager based on his/her track record as a solo Account Executive rather than on his/her potential as a leader and sales coach. Most often the AE received limited training, but not enough to explain the good sales numbers. Ranking is more the result of personality (relationship building) and persistence. When that AE is promoted to the supervise others, the team’s numbers are most heavily dependent on the innate skills that came with the team.

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.

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Most Product Managers and even Directors have “complete responsibility” over product features and pricing with influence over strategies within marketing objectives approved by the GM or CEO. However, it is easy for the mid-level manager to get caught up in the decisions that have to be made every day. A typical Manager is at the helm of a product for only 18-24 months before being rotated to another product. So the scope of a Manager is necessarily short-sighted and fairly tactical and it is easy to lose sight of long term product priorities and the big picture of what is good for the company and customer.

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.

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Most folks assume getting married or accepting a job will bring long-term financial and emotional security. 10% of marriages end in divorce after 5 years, 40% of marriages by the 50^th year ^(a). Comparatively, the average job tenure is now 2-3 years.

Someone who has been out of a relationship or work many months may take a questionable spouse or job out of financial desperation or the need to be “wanted.”

In both marriage and work, you should do more homework about long-range goals and the cultural fit before committing. Beauty is only skin deep. One-night-stand and one interview decisions carry a lot of risk. Consider Contract-2-Hire. Read the rest of this entry »

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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.” Read the rest of this entry »

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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.

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