A very Happy New Year!  2025 promises to be a year of solid business growth, but as usual, a number of unexpected speed bumps as we speed along the highway. In addition to making personal new year resolutions while formalizing our business sales and marketing plans, it's also a time when many managers at all levels begin to think about possible job or career changes.  It's just the normal rhythm of the year and planning out the year ahead.   As a result, those individuals do the normal thing and reach out confidentially to their friends and business colleagues, dust off their resume and send an email vaguely worded as "if you see something, please keep me in mind."   The absolute worst waste of time in trying to market yourself!  

In my own case, now putting on my professor hat since both of my courses in Marketing and in Sales kicked off this week, each semester I have 60+ junior and seniors looking for either internships for this summer or full time first jobs following May graduation. 

Again, just the normal rhythm of the year.

What's very different this January is that it's much tougher to get a job right now than last year at this time!

• The same jobs my students were being hired for last April were $5K-$10K less in Q4 2024.
• The number of jobs-both for my students and my 30-40 year olds is 60+% less than Q2, '24.
• Check out yesterday's WSJ article that Havard MBAs are having difficulty finding jobs.

In my teaching the deep science of the business of Marketing and of Sales, we utilize a number of formal processes and tools all rooted in our HubSpot software and brought to real life since the students work in teams of 6 in projects from real life companies where management provides 40% of the semester-end grade.  In order to make those processes and tools most impactful, each class we take a short period of time and discuss "The Marketing of Me".  Each student over the course of the semester provides their own 90 second Value Proposition as if they were talking to a recruiter, and they receive immediate feedback from the class as a whole.  

Since I strongly believe that as professors, we have a responsibility to directly assist our students in preparing them for careers, I personally take a lot of one-on-one time each week with students. It's fun, it's required, and it also gives me an opportunity to check in on how the course and their projects are progressing.  Having said that, it does take a fair amount of time not only with my current students, but my alums, many of whom are now in their 30's are also thinking through their next steps in their careers.   

To make my short bursts of one-on-one times a bit more impactful and memorable, I wrote this e-book on "The Marketing of Me" over the holiday as a guide for both my students and my older friends and colleagues who may be going through their own new year assessment of their job and perhaps their career.  It explains: 

• Why resumes are a waste of time...even though you need one.
• The critical requirements of your own use of social media and video.
• The definition of the #1 most critical Sales and Marketing tool-Your Personal Value Proposition".
• ...and a whole bunch of other practical, hands-on stuff.

Let me know what you think...and I'm sure you will find an edit or two that I missed, so please let me know.

Have a great day selling today!  We've already used up half of the month, and I have a sales call at 9:00!

working on your 2025 Sales plans!

For a few ideas on your own sales planning for 2025, click here for our new "Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2025, outlining ideas on structure, models, process funnels, productivity tools and how to recruit, hire and onboard the best. 

Connect with me any time at jack@derbymanagement.com, and let's discuss having us facilitate tuning up your 2025 planning processes in your business planning, in your marketing plans or in your sales processes.