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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What is the measure of a good Manager? COO? CEO? Do you know how you measure against the top performers in your title category? If you are a strong performer, have you demonstrated and promoted your performance in the workplace against industry benchmarks of excellence? Are you participating in activities now to further build skills in the areas expected of a preferred candidate in the next tier?

Many of you are not sufficiently articulate about your performance versus norms to adequately manage your expectations and future promotion potential.

It is not usually technical skills or knowledge of IP (intellectual property) that sets apart top performers from others in the band. It is soft skills, attitude, and the ability to lead or influence the ideas and priorities of others. To identify and sell the concepts, strategies, or changes that increase share of market, profitability, or revenue beyond the expectations of your predecessors and management. To be a “rainmaker.”

Success is more about attitude than aptitude – that you may not have learned as much about the company, product, service, process, or customer as you could know tomorrow. That the best thing to do may be what is right for the customer and company, not you personally.

In future blogs I will discuss the characteristics of some specific executive titles. Look for discussion about the Product Manager next.

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A young job seeker named Joe applied to an engineering firm last week through a third party recruiter stating he would jump for the right opportunity accompanied by a salary around $70K.

Joe then told the corporate HR person in a phone screen a few days later he was making $72K salary and wouldn’t move for less than $80K.

The engineering firm knew his present salary was $62K because they had hired a number of other people from the same firm. 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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