The best mix...

The best of all possible worlds...I love what I do! 

Add to the Derby Management work, the fact that I'm also fully engaged with a team of bright, witty and entrepreneur-friendly fellow investors as the chairman of Common Angels, which keeps me more than busy.  And then I also have the privilege of being a professor of marketing at Tufts and a lecturer on business planning at MIT.  Throw in the whole weekly balancing act driving between the Vermont mountains, the NH beach and the excitement of Kendall Square and Waltham, and who's got it better than me?  Most probably, only the LP ("Little Princess"), my wife, the artist, beach glass collector, jewelry maker and currently marine biologist who is always in search of new quests.   

But then, there's also Lindsey.  In my Tufts class each semester, we all work very hard at making sure that we accomplish two tasks:

• Successfully complete the complex, semester-long, marketing projects that have been provided by our 6 customers. With more than 60 company projects now completed, we have a great track record of succcesses both for the companies and the students. 
• Successfully prepare these juniors and seniors for the real world and make sure that we use all of the tools learned in class to prepare them for thier most important marketing campaign-their first full time job.

I spend a lot of time outside class with my students talking through the job hunt (substitute "marketing & selling process"), connecting them to our customers (~40 now employed over the years) and providing them with a sounding board about the process, salaries and a host of other decisions during that anxious time of finding their first job.  At various times during the year, this becomes the most important work that I do.

And every once in a while, I find that standout student (of which I have a number) like Lindsey Kirchoff.  Lindsey is an energetic, bright, very hard working young woman with whom I worked closely to make sure that she got to where she wanted, which was to help her land her job with my friends at HubSpot.  I noticed her blog last week (http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/01/31/how-i-went-from-unemployed-grad-to-landing-my-dream-job/), and it goes a long way in defining how to find the perfect job...not just for graduating seniors, but for anyone looking for a job in what is still a highly competitive market. 

Looking for a job today is exactly like running a fully developed, well-oiled, perfectly tooled marketing and sales campaign. 

Leave nothing to chance...

If you think that finding the best job today is about polishing up your resume and emailing a few of your connections to ask them "to keep you in mind", forget it!  A "nice to have" tool, resumes for most sales and marketing jobs are merely to make sure that your name will be typed correctly into LinkedIn so that the potential employer can see just how much of a marketer and well-connected salesperson you really are.  Today, if you don't have a robust LinkedIn, you're not even going to get a call for a telephone interview. 

And yet, I receive 2-4 emails a week from good people, who I am well connected to and are already in the workforce, asking me to send on their resume to "anyone who I might think would be interested".  

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Either this request isn't very important to the job seeker, or that person just wants to make me do a lot of extra work.  Better that they should staple their resume on street signs in Boston and Cambridge since maybe some potential employer might just actually bump into the sign.  But then, we all supposedly know-through our sales and marketing work with our products-that not much successfull selling results from bumping into things.  Then why attempt to use such a weak tactic when we're out marketing ourselves-the most important product?  Today, no matter if you're out looking for that first job or a mid-career change, you need to arm yourself with at least the very basic marketing tools... 

• What's the market segmentation grid of what you want to do?
• Define the size of company, type of job, the verticals, & geography.
• What's your value proposition?
• Identify target names of companies, even if it's...companies such as...
   

Cheerios & Value Props

If the outside of the Cheerios box tells you what's inside-calories, riboflavin and all that other stuff, think about that as your resume.  It's the outside of you, which makes your resume nothing more than your packaging...just like all of those other perfectly packaged boxes neatly stacked side by side on the shelf, or in the resume pile, each one shouting out..."buy me".  

We also know, because they do a great job at marketing, that Cheerios is "Heart Healthy".  That's their Value Proposition!  Riboflavian, oats and gram weights are the resume, but who cares about any of that?  Today, the response to most resumes and most product packaging is simply, SO WHAT? or WHAT'S IN THIS FOR ME?  

Value Propositions (click for a Brainshark on VPs) answer that question.  Cheerios let me know, through their marketing, that I might be able to prevent a heart attack.  That's pretty cool.  I'll take two, please.  

What's your Value Proposition as a job seeker?  ...as a product salesperson? 

Unless you're able to develop, promote, market and back up the VALUE that you're going to bring that new employeer either as an ex-college student come this May or as a 50 year old, heavily experienced sales professional, you're simply not going to find the best job today...except my luck.  And, what we know about sales and marketing today, nothing happens by luck or following the strategy of hope (a pretty good book, btw).

In a fast-paced, highly focused, time-squeezed world where senior decision makers have extraordinarily little time, trying to market your next whiz-bang product, or yourself, merely on the basis of the packaging of smaller, faster, cuter, and cheaper will get you exactly what you deserve...Zippo, Nada, the Big Doughnut!  You might get some mid-level manager to care about your product or that nice person in HR to give you an initial screening call, but you're never going to get any senior manager to even budge unless you market Value first.  

• Market & Sell high only to Decison Makers
• They've already read your packaging by the time you begin to talk
• Immediately spell out your specific Value
• Focus Value on the economics of what you bring them
• In 2013, Value is how you're going to increase revenue
• In 2013, Value is how you're going to reduce costs and expenses

This weekend, take a couple of hours and write out your Value Proposition. Maybe that's it's your personal Value Prop or maybe it's for your company.  In either case, refining your Value Proposition is a critical requirement for becoming a successful salesperson this year.  It's tough work, but extemely rewarding.

Welcome to 2013...and Good Selling! 
   -January was a real solid month
   -Remember:  Q1 always sets the tone, pace & success for the year

Jack,
Head Coach

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