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Sales, Marketing, and Business Development Professionals: Do you look the part?
by Sharon Graham. Filed under: $100k+ Job Seekers.
To be considered seriously as a sales, marketing, or business development candidate, you must look the part. You need to capture your prospective employer’s interest, present your product, highlight its features, demonstrate how the employer will benefit, negotiate the agreement, and close your next job offer. If you fail in any of these steps, you are showing by example that you cannot do the job.
If you are a seasoned business development professional, you already know that a value proposition is key to selling any product. This tactic can also be applied to your career transition. Think of yourself as a product. Potential employers are shopping around and looking at various candidates. You need to stand apart from this competition.
To present your own value proposition, you must persuasively advertise your precise features and benefits. The employers who are potentially purchasing you have very specific buying motivators. Address these buying motivators by introducing your supporting qualifications. To add value, bring to the table your supplementary offerings – unique talents, characteristics, and competencies that others may not be able to offer.
As a sales professional, you arm yourself with a hard-hitting “elevator speech” – your 30-second sales pitch. When you are selling yourself, you must strategically position your value and entice your target market. The story you tell must be a concise summary that addresses the top- and bottom-line results that you can produce for your next employer.
Above all else, you must emphasize your numbers. In the sales, marketing, and business development arena, you have many, many quantifiable achievements, results, measurements and other data that can you can feature in your sales pitch. Use them to your advantage.
If you are a strong salesperson, then you know that every time you meet someone, there is a potential business or career development opportunity. Your business card is the essential networking tool. There are many scenarios where you encounter people who can help you in your career progression. Often, it is inappropriate to hand out resumes in bulk. You need a “calling card” that provides concise contact information so that you can make a great first impression and ensure that it is a lasting one.
Bring your business cards everywhere. You never know when you will run into someone who may be able to refer you to a potential opportunity. Be sure to include pertinent and current information. To present a professional image, brand your business card to match your resume, portfolio, and any other supporting documentation you use.
Whether you are advertising, merchandising, or selling, you always require effective tools. Many professionals ignore this outstanding opportunity and serve up a typical “homemade” resume. What kind of impression will this make?
The way you present yourself to others says a lot about you. Show your superior skills by presenting a portfolio – a package of material – that is geared towards showcasing your value. Your marketing documents provide employers with an indication of the impeccable work you will be doing for them.
If you build the brand, they will come. Create a unique brand-identity with a “look and feel” that is reflective of who you are. Branding is all about value. Hone in on what makes you unique and use this to differentiate yourself.
There are many ways to attract, persuade, and convince your next employer to buy you. You could include a wide range of creative marketing communications such as targeted letters, a business case, a T-chart, and a resume addendum. Use bite-sized case studies to emphasize what you can do for the employer. By incorporating charts, tables, and other graphic representations of measurable successes, you can easily highlight your value.
Throughout your marketing material, incorporate your value proposition as your brand message. You can attract employers and create a memorable presentation with a strong, consistent message.
Your Marketing and Advertising
Effective professionals advertise in venues where they have a captive market. When you know to whom you are marketing, it’s easy to determine where to invest your time and energy. Employers are not posting good, senior-level sales, marketing, and business development jobs online, so don’t make yourself look like a junior telemarketer by applying to low-level jobs on the internet.
Employers typically hire people who have already made a mark for themselves as experts in generating revenue, increasing profitability, and growing market share – and they know how to find those people. If you are a sales and marketing professional and you are not on LinkedIn, you do not exist. When it comes to online networking, LinkedIn is the giant, but you can use many other social networking sites to raise your profile and gain further exposure.
When it comes to relationship building, it’s all about “who you know.” You need to take active steps to connect with decision-makers, executives, and other influential people. If you can do this well, recruiters and hiring managers will do everything they can to attract you into their organization.
Obviously most spectacular sales professionals have superb cold calling and networking skills. However, any good business development person will know that you must develop a meaningful relationship so that you can then use your excellent closing skills.
An interview is like any business meeting where you are presenting a business proposal. This is the place where you must show off your superb presentation skills. A passionate and believable presentation will go a long way, but you also need to be able to handle objections like an expert.
Because there are so many highly qualified candidates in the market, you will be competing with others. Your goal is to make your prospective employer need you and want to invest in you. Be ready to hit the right notes with your audience by communicating a very clear but authentic point of view. You must impress, but you must also be real. If you develop rapport with the people you are meeting with, you will find it much easier to close the sale.
Many professionals are outstanding business developers, but have difficulty selling, marketing, and presenting themselves. There is no shame in employing an executive resume writer or career strategist to present yourself more effectively. These days, employers expect that the senior-level businesspeople they retain use experts to their benefit. This is because the most successful professionals understand the value of leveraging others to help them achieve their goals. Asking for support and entrusting others when they need help it is a primary reason that they succeed when others do not.
As a sales, marketing, or business development professional, your career transition is the ultimate opportunity for you to show, by example, all the strengths that you bring to the table. If you do an exemplary job of marketing and selling yourself, you will find that employers will be competing for the opportunity to nab you. Wouldn’t it be great to be presented with many offers so that you can choose the best one and happily sign on the dotted line?
Thank you for reading my blog! Please email me if you spot any errors in this post.
August 31st, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Wow, superb blog format! How long have you ever been running a blog for? you make running a blog look easy. The overall look of your site is great, as smartly the content!