Your Inner CEO: "Hey, what's your problem?"

An old business truism states that everyone is really a salesperson. At every moment we’re all selling something. It may be a product or service, or it may be we’re just selling ourselves.

With that principle in mind, one of the strongest principles of marketing psychology is the concept that buyers don't really buy products or services. They don’t buy special features. They don't buy innovations, and they don’t buy bells and whistles. What they do buy is the perception that a product or service (or an individual) will make their lives easier in some very practical way. They buy the solution to a problem.

For example, a flat screen television might include the feature of internet connectivity. That’s technically impressive, but it’s only meaningful if a customer has the desire to connect to the internet through his television. And it’s most meaningful if the customer has been trying to connect a TV to the internet and has been having trouble doing it. No one is going to make a purchase simply because of a positive feature. But lots of people will make a purchase if that feature relieves them from some form of pain.

It's the savings in money, time, and aggravation that the customer is really buying. A salesperson who formulates a sales proposition or product offer around those benefits will sell far more internet TV's than someone who simply offers television with internet connectivity. The goal of solution-oriented selling is to create an offer that does two things at once. It highlights what the product or service will do -- and most importantly it links those capabilities to relieving some discomfort that the buyer now has to endure.

Making this happen involves deeper levels of questioning and exploration than was expected in the past. This kind of exploration brings greater understanding of the client’s needs, and the questioning process itself builds trust, rapport, and empathy with the client. Variations of this process have been followed instinctively by highly gifted executives for many years – but now it’s really essential for everyone who wants to do well in the profession. Tools that were previously known to only a few have become prerequisites for working in the new, faster-paced environment.

Needs-sensitive communication involves not only knowing what a client’s conscious requirements are – but also revealing a whole new set of problems and solutions that the clients themselves may have been unaware of. You are now not only the provider of a product or service, but a consultant and collaborator. The role is similar to that of professionals in engineering, law, finance, and other relatively abstract areas of business. 

You may drive a taxi, but but don't think of yourself as a taxi driver. In the 21st Century, you're an urban travel consultant.

A Kick In The Career: Let’s See Your C.V.

There are lots of things you can do to improve your life. Give up fatty foods, for example, or get more exercise. Take a meditation or yoga class. (But why is the so-called downward facing dog pose so popular in the stately and dignified discipline of yoga? Not exactly a power position for the next interview.)

And there is always one thing you can do to improve your economic outlook: make sure your resume is up to snuff.  Reviewing your accomplishments can be a self-affirming experience. It can psych you up for diving into the job market.  So instead of binge watching American Horror Story when you should be trolling LinkedIn, you can make sure your resume sparkles by avoiding a few key mistakes. Here’s how:

EIGHT MISTAKES I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT MAKE ON MY RESUME 

1.     Forget to spell check. You really don’t want a prospective employer to see that you worked for the professional services firm of Delight & Tush, do you?

2.     Use a funky font. Your new maybe boss has thousands of these things to go through. The last thing he or she needs is to try and figure out how to read your name in Brush Script.

3.     Include irreverent, irrelevant personal interests. If you are applying for an aerospace job, you are within your rights to include the fact that you are a weekend pilot. But if you are applying for a job with an accounting firm, you needn’t mention your stint as Gandalf at the Renaissance Faire.

4.     Use buzzwords instead of emphasizing performance. If you increased productivity at your last job by fifty percent, say so. Nobody cares that you were “part of an aggressive, team-centered workforce.”

5.     Forget to customize your objective. That statement about wanting to carve out a niche as someone who is admired for taking on sacred cows is okay for the sales job. But when you don’t bother to change it for the job at the slaughterhouse, well, don’t blame them for being confused.

6.     Fashion a ‘clever’ standout resume. Unless you are applying for a job as a designer for a shooter game, please don’t include any DVDs with your resume. And no, your funny hanging mobile made from the logos of your last six companies will not go over well.

7.     Fail to demonstrate why they need you. If the job listing asks for one set of skills, and the key words in your resume match a total of none of them, perhaps you will be joining your friends in the shredder.

8.     Be all over the place. Your resume should demonstrate an easily identifiable progression of your job history; it should tell a compelling story in a simple way. Your employer wants to spend a few minutes with Steven Spielberg, not David Lynch.

So get out there and curriculum up your vitae. And a little yoga probably wouldn’t hurt either.   

A Kick In The Career: Hold All My Tough Calls

One of the hardest leadership qualities to develop is making the really tough calls.

Firing somebody, for example: “You’re just not working out. I don’t know what else to say except that your sucky qualities have begun to outweigh your non-sucky ones.”

Or telling someone that the heartfelt idea for improving workplace productivity is just not going to fly: “It’s great that you brought this to the table, but I’ve seen more fully-developed strategies on an ant farm.”

Or letting people know to leave their attitudes at the door: “In a perfect world, scumbags like you would not be allowed to keep their parking card.”

Those are the kind of extreme cases that develop when we’re called upon to convey difficult truths. But every day we have to face minor versions of these same situations in our daily lives. Ever had to inform a friend that he hurt your feelings? (I know, guys, the very idea is frightening. After all, it’s why men always slap each other’s backs when they hug rather than cope with the emotional vulnerability of an honest-to-goodness hug.) 

Ever had to tell kids that their plan for building the fort out of matchsticks is not quite the best-engineered idea in the world? (Or worse, watch the “waterworks” when they have to find it out for themselves?) 

What did you do in these cases? Chances are, you either found the most tactful way to express yourself, or you blew it and learned from it. Either way, interpersonal relationships are no different from work relationships. In fact, work relationships are interpersonal relationships.

 Steve Vamos is a board member and a former executive of both Apple and Microsoft. He says the best way to make the tough calls is to “take it personally.” In an interview with Smart Company, Vamos describes how he fires people himself instead of referring it to Human Resources. He goes straight into an honest explanation of what is going on. One in five employees, he says, are still upset, but the other four are grateful.

Imagine not deferring to the big anonymous corporate entity that cuts the paychecks and instead going one on one with the person most impacted by the bad news? Dang, if that catches on we’ll all be respecting each other and bringing new levels of understanding into the volatile dynamic of workplace hierarchy.

I wonder if we have the guts it takes to do that? Tough call.

Here’s a link to the interview:

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/leadership/29775-why-good-leaders-need-to-be-able-to-make-the-tough-calls-vamos.html#