Integrating Your Passion With Your Career

Do you wake up every morning excited about the prospects of going to work? Are you generally smiling during the day as you go about your activities? Do you love what you do? Do you love the people you do it with? These are all questions that I ask of people or try to uncover as I interview them for sales and marketing leadership roles. The fact is, there is a very high percentage of the population in today's workforce who views their work as "just another job." In fact, the level of discontentment amongst most people with respect to their daily work is really quite astounding; particularly given the fact that people spend more time at their work than any other activity.

When we interview people who are looking for sales and marketing positions, we always start by trying to understand what gets them excited. What do they love to do? What are they really good at? How do they plan to carry that passion and positive energy forward in their career? Unfortunately a lot of job seekers fail to make the connection between what they really love, what they're good at, and what they want to be doing in their job. A lot of times they follow a career path that someone else tells them to pursue, like their parents. You'd be surprised at how many people pursue a particular career in order to subconsciously please mom or dad.

The fact is, that people do best in their jobs when they really love what they do. When they get excited about the work they do every day. When it connects to their inner core and their own sense of purpose. That's when people perform best at work. That's when the days go by quickest and that's when people have a smile on their faces all day long.

If you work in sales because your dad did, or because you thought it might be a good career or because you couldn't figure out what else it was that you wanted to do, and you really view it more as a job than as a career, you might want to think about this. We see sales people come through our offices that view their job as just that - nothing more than a job. You can tell that's how their attitudes have shaped their career. As a result, they move from job to job. They jump from company to company and from industry to industry, searching for something they can't quite find. Their sales achievements are typically poor to average and they're not capable of really sticking with a company. We see sales people that come through like that and my best advice to them is, "Don't be a sales person because you've been told to, or because somebody thought it might be a good idea for you. Be a sales person because you love it."

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Recruiting Top Sales & Marketing Talent: It's All About Momentum

We're working with a client right now on a sales search, and unfortunately she has dragged out the recruiting process to the point where we are considering whether or not we can complete this assignment. In particular, I'm concerned that this client is about to lose a candidate that we've worked very hard to put in front of them, who is ideally suited, and who is very interested in taking the job.

Every once in a while we run into clients that lack a sense of urgency when it comes to completing a recruiting project.

This troubles me because when we work with these kinds of clients, we can see that they become their own worst enemy. Sometimes, clients go very slowly and methodically because they've been burned in the past and they want to avoid a miss-hire. Other times, the person who's responsible for making the decision has too many things on his/her plate, and is not able to continue forward at an acceptable pace.

Whatever the case may be, top sales and marketing candidates have a short "shelf life" for a specific position, and that shelf life can expire if the recruiting process is not proceeded through with haste. (When I talk about the word haste, I don't advocate making a hasty decision. A good recruiting process, particularly in sales and marketing, always requires a very deep level of diligence and a very rigorous process as I've advocated throughout this blog and in other materials in our website). Having said that, proceeding with a lack of purpose and a lack of momentum tends to send a message to top candidates that you're really not that interested in bringing them aboard.

The best sales and marketing candidates enter and exit the job market quickly, so you need to be willing to move quickly to recruit them onto your team.

The recruiting process needs to be looked at as something that has a start and an end. The end is either a yes/no decision and an offer letter, and in the middle, there's a series of steps that you pass through or phases of the process that you have to go through in order to get to that conclusion. My advice to companies that are trying to hire the best, is to make sure that you proceed purposefully and swiftly through each phase without skipping any steps and always move towards finalizing the process as quickly and as efficiently as possible. If you do this you'll have the best chance of capturing the kind of talent that you are looking for to drive the growth of your business. If you don't you'll end up losing the best candidates and have to settle for B or C players in order to staff your sales team.

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Remember The "Give/Get" When Networking For A New Job

This morning I had a top VP of sales candidate in my office. This person came to us because he's looking for a new career position. He asked us to spend some time with him to help him talk through his career search as well as do some networking and also give consideration to him for specific positions that we're searching for right now. We spent about 45 minutes together and through the conversation after hearing about his search and the direction that he was going I gave him several specific contacts, phone numbers and referrals that I felt would be useful. I also assured him that we would continue to keep him in consideration for positions which were appropriate as they became available.

At the end of our conversation this individual said, "Now I'd like to ask you: what can I do for you? You folks have been very gracious with your time and giving me ideas and some great referrals. What can I do to help you in return for your time and all of the good will that you've established here?"

This was an excellent example of how professional sales people understand that in any relationship there needs to be a positive "give/get" for both parties. This individual obviously understood this, because he took the time to ask us what it was that he could do to help us. I, of course, gratefully responded that we would be very anxious to get any referrals that he has to top sales and marketing candidates for the positions that we're filling right now. I also told him that we would love to get referrals for any companies which need to retain the services of a firm like ours in order to hire sales and marketing talent.

If you're out there looking for your next great job, make sure that you're a giver and not just a taker. If you simply ask how can you help in return at the end of every networking interview, you'll go a long way toward establishing good will. You'll also build relationships that last beyond your job search.

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Good Recruiters Do The Right Thing

I have a situation developing today whereby a client of mine is avoiding engaging us in a recruiting project, while at the same time going through the final interview process to hire somebody who got introduced to him from me through my network. Both the candidate and the client are uncomfortable with this situation. In particular, because they're worried they're going to ruffle my feathers and I’m going to lose my recruiting fees from this project.

Well the fact is that we are going to lose our recruiting fees, but there is nothing I can do about it except take the high road and accept that when I do the right thing and help people, they will ultimately reward me by maintaining our relationship. I expect that over time those relationships will be far more important than the transaction fee or the recruiting fee that I just gave up in this particular instance.

Some recruiting companies are so focused on working for their fees that they forget who they're really working for. Some recruiting companies are so focused on closing deals that they forget what the primary purpose of their job is. It's really easy for recruiting firms to become very transactional and money driven. In fact, right now is a perfect time for people to be that way because the market is booming and there's so much opportunity, but the fact is that the best search firms are the ones that treat both their candidates and clients with the utmost dignity and respect, and look beyond the value of their monetary goals towards the value of their relationships, and how those relationships over time will reward them.

I believe a good recruiter, particularly in sales and marketing, has a long-term perspective. In our niche of this business, what we find is that good candidates end up becoming good clients. When I introduce a VP of sales candidate to a particular client and that candidate ends up being placed in a position, often times he/she will become my client. As a result of that, anything that I've done to maintain the integrity and value of my relationship with that person through the process will pay me back in spades.

If you are in the process of looking for a good recruiting firm to outsource your hiring process in sales and marketing to, make sure that you go beyond the surface and explore the values and ethics the firm has, before you decide to retain them. I believe that if the values and ethics of the firm are aligned with your own, you'll have the best success in getting the kind of results that you're looking for.

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How to Decide When a Sales and Marketing Job is for You

Today I had a 45 minute conversation with a very senior sales and marketing leader who wanted my advice regarding her decision on whether or not to take a VP of Sales and Marketing job at a leading company in the technology space. I spent time walking through her decision criteria and helping her to work to a conclusion on this subject. One of the key things that came out of our discussion was she was having serious trepidation about whether or not this particular job was a good fit with her career goals. While she liked many attributes of the job, she wasn't really excited about it, and so we talked a lot about why this particular position was not something that sparked her passion. At the end of our discussion, I said, "I'm going to let you make this decision on your own, but my advice to you is that if you are right up against the edge on whether or not to take a job opportunity, even if it's highly compensated like this one is, if the answer is "maybe," then it should be "no."

The reason why, is if you're not completely passionate about an opportunity, you're not really excited about the prospects of joining the company, and if you're not visualizing exactly how you can make a difference to help the company grow it's top-line revenues and transform itself, why would you settle for just another “job?”

The most precious thing you have as a career-minded professional is your time, and how you decide to devote it. We spend most of our waking hours working, and if we aren't excited about the work that we're doing, if we aren't passionate, if we don't feel the drive ignited within us when we go to work every day, the only question I have is, "Why are we doing it?"

So if you are faced with the hard decision about whether or not to accept a job offer, whether or not it's the only job offer you have, my advice to you is, if the answer is "maybe," and if you're not totally excited about the opportunity, then pass. Pass and keep looking for that special career move that's going to get your juices flowing, ignite your passion and get you totally committed and totally jazzed about how you're spending your day. That's something worth working for, and that's a hell of a lot more than just a job.

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Recruiting Marketing Talent: Hire the Artist or the Scientist?

Following my last blogs, let's talk a little bit more about the difference between the artistic and creative side of marketing communications and the science of marketing and what's more important to a successful company.

When you are recruiting a marketing executive, you should be looking for somebody who much more resembles a scientist than an artist. Why? The scientist is the one who's going to bring you the analytical, quantitative, and strategic thinking skills that are necessary to properly target the right markets and reach the right customers with the right products. This requires more technical and scientific skills than it does artistic/creative skills, such as what you'd find in a marketing communications person.

Many of the top marketing people we meet and who we place, have deep quantitative analysis skills and often times come from technical backgrounds. In the technology sector, many of the marketing executives we place actually come from an engineering background and have moved up through product management or product development into a marketing executive role. These are the kinds of "scientists" who have the quantitative and analytic skills that are so important to modern marketing effectiveness.

The "empty marketing suits" we meet may have the ability to develop flashy ad campaigns and be very polished communicators, but often lack the substance to analyze, create or manage a company's core strategy. For this reason, if a company has to pick between marketing disciplines (the strategic and quantitative side vs. the creative side), it should focus on the former and outsource the latter.

Why is this? Well, there are thousands of creative agencies out there that are capable of taking your company's messaging and positioning and translating it into effective sales tools, advertising copy, brochures, collateral, etc. But there aren't lots of people that can actually lead a company's strategic marketing effort internally.

If you are up against a decision on what kind of person you hire to lead your marketing efforts, I would opt for the quantitative, analytical, scientific marketing type and I would outsource the creative, qualitative, marketing communications types of activities.

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Hiring Marketing Executives With Substance

If you're a senior executive looking to add a key member to your marketing staff, but you've never hired marketing people before: buyer beware! Why do I say this? While there are a lot of talented marketing executives out there with an excellent repertoire of skills and experience, there also are marketing people who lack the substance, the training, the skill sets, and the understanding of marketing dynamics in order to really have a positive impact on your business.

What is the profile of an empty marketing suit? Well, typically it's somebody who dresses well, is very polished, speaks nicely, and uses all the latest fancy buzzwords, but who has little/no track record of actual execution or success. This person is great at "wowing" a CEO through the interviewing process, but that's about all they're good at.

What you should be looking for is a marketing executive who's got true substance and capabilities.

What I want to outline here are some of the key hiring criteria when you're looking for a good marketing executive:

• They should have outstanding quantitative training with a strong background in mathematics, which translates into being able to do budgeting, forecasting and tracking.

• They should have proven analytical skills that are used to survey and analyze complex sets of data, do market segmentations, sizing, competitive analysis, etc.

• They should have strong strategic thinking skills and a strong grasp of marketing strategy, as evidenced by previous challenges they have faced and dealt with in their career.

• They should have formal training in strategic marketing planning, product planning, new product development, etc.

• They should understand the modern methods for marketing communications for both awareness building as well as lead generation. In particular, a marketing executive of today needs to have a very strong grasp of Internet marketing since that’s how so much of today’s successful marketing gets done.

• A marketing executive needs to be able to lead. That means they have to have very strong collaborative and influencing skills, that can be brought to bear on setting a direction for an executive team. They also need to know how to instill good marketing discipline.

Today's "best in class" companies are both market and customer driven. The marketing leader needs to be the voice of the customer and the marketplace as it relates to setting strategy on target markets, new product development, gross margins, sales channels, messaging, etc. – the list goes on. Given this level of complexity in skills and experience, making a good hire can be a real challenge for the untrained eye. This is why bringing in a recruiter or executive search firm which specializes in marketing is so important for many firms who lack this expertise in-house.

If you are in the process of looking for a member of your marketing team, make sure that you follow a rigorous process to clearly understand what's under the hood with the people who you are interviewing. If you don't, and you end up with an empty marketing suit, it'll cost you tremendous amounts of money, lost market share, and lost opportunity.

Can you afford that?

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