subject: Looking Out For A Job - You Are In Sales Now [print this page] Meet Sam, a highly successful sales executiveMeet Sam, a highly successful sales executive. He consistently meets or exceeds budget in an extraordinarily competitive space. His company loves him.
Sam's strategy is easy: he regularly sends out some hundred brochures at a time - cold - to a list of unqualified names he pulls from the internet or varied directories lying round the office. Then he sits back and waits for the phone to ring.
It works every time.
In fact, it's not uncommon for potential customers to fight over him, each one making an attempt to coax him to come in and pitch them before he will sell to the competition.
Once a handful of corporations categorical an interest, he decides who's the foremost possible to grant him the most important sale, and schedules his calls based mostly on that ranking.
Presto!
Or not.
This can be, of course, ridiculous. Sales is tough work. Leads have to be developed and qualified. Once you identify your targets, you've got to work out how to get your foot in the door. You've got to convince the potential client that your product: a) meets her needs, and b) is best than what they next guy is selling. You've got to beat objections. The process may be protracted, in that case you may want to own what it takes to persevere. You may have to induce creative.
Once all that, in the top, you may be rewarded with the sale.
So let's shift gears and assume concerning the process of looking for a job. It's sales, pure and simple. Are you operating sort of a pro, or have you ever been relying more on Sam's approach?
Papering the universe with tons of copies of your resume (your product brochure) and then sitting back and anticipating the phone to ring with invites to interview is not the foremost effective strategy.
To begin with, are all those opportunities you see listed on the internet qualified? Tons of postings are previous, or they are compilations of more than one gap, or they are black holes...there extremely isn't any job.
Thus in effect, you are cold calling quite some people. Except this system is even less effective than a cold call, since you do not have the person on the phone. Suppose regarding it: you sent your product brochure to someone who may or might not be in the market for what you are selling (if the lead isn't qualified, you actually cannot grasp for positive). Whether or not she is, she's never heard of your brand. You are expecting her to choose up the phone and call you to express an interest in buying solely on the premise of having received that single brochure (oh - and that brochure might have been sent to her anonymously...do you recognize the hiring manager's name?). At the identical time, tons of different brochures might be sitting on her desk. Hmmm.....
The industrious salesperson could have a totally different approach. You should, too.
From our analogy, I am positive you'll see quite some things you'll be able to do to increase your chances of succeeding. In thus doing, you will be steps earlier than the various candidates who select to conduct passive searches - and then lament the actual fact that they've sent hundreds of resumes but not received one call.
