I am offering my five best lessons for managing your career, gleaned since I launched this column in July 1993 … The lessons’ common theme?  No one can manage You Inc. better than you.

• Creative and intentional networking
• Being mindful of small (but ever-so-important) details
• Getting the most from your resume and business cards
• Helping others advance their careers
• Being prepared for reinvention

The column is a good overview for both unemployed and employed workers.

Interviewing for sales positions can be tricky. Sales people tend to be comfortable living in the “gray”. They also tend to be confident and optimistic in their sales abilities and chances of success. If they didn’t, then they would likely be in some other line of work.

While so much of a sales person’s success depends on factors they can control such as skill, discipline, work ethic, product or domain expertise, there are critical factors they can’t control. These are factors they need to measure in the interview process. The closer a company under consideration comes to satisfying these five areas, the higher your probabilities of success will be.

• Demand for Product or Service. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if the product you are selling has low demand, your path to commission dollars gets harder. It may be that this is the very reason you were hired by your company. Or perhaps the product is new and so innovative, that you will be creating the demand. Nevertheless, low demand impacts probability of sales success. If you step into a situation where the demand is low, then make sure you negotiate compensation terms that include guaranteed cash flow or excellent pay-offs for success.
• Product Salability. You may have an incredible demand for your product, but if your company’s product is not competitive, clearly inferior, or barely functional then you will have decreased odds of success. You need to gauge the products deficiency when joining the company. You may not have the best product, but feel confident in its value or in the company’s commitment to strengthening the product. The point is to measure the degree of the deficiency and discern whether it’s worth jumping into that fray.
• Territory. Good demand. Sellable product. Bad turf? Might as well abandon your plans for that new sports car. Much of this is industry specific, but make sure you know where the strong territories are for your industry and what the best vertical niches are. The Northeast has traditionally been a strong seat for financial services; the Midwest for manufacturing; the West for technology. If you are in Chicago and your assigned territory is Iowa, then you’re not going to have nearly as much sales opportunity as a colleague who has downtown Chicago as her turf. Make sure that your territory will have ample sales opportunity if you want to increase your probabilities of success.
• Competitive compensation. OK. Compensation, doesn’t directly determine success, but it does have a bearing on motivation. If earnings are one way you gauge your sales prowess, then this one is big. Most people get into sales for the opportunity to maximize income. If you have good demand, salability, and territory along with a weak compensation plan, then you may become a very good rep who is simply poorer than counterparts in other companies. You need to understand what is important to you, but make sure that the compensation you accept is fair and equitable for the required work and is balanced well against other things you value in a company. You may not be the top-paid rep in the industry, but you may have better quality of life. If you are in a sales job and find yourself consistently complaining about the commission structure, then you know how much value the right comp plan has on your ability to succeed.
• People. If all four of the above are strong, but the company culture is horrible, you have little respect for the management team, or have a poor relationship with your boss, then your ability to succeed will be impeded. I see this as a reason for sales people looking to make a change more than any other. Sometimes ethics are in question. Trust issues. Lack of support. The list goes on.

When you are considering various sales opportunities, take these five factors into account. It’s very rare that a company will score all five perfectly. That’s OK. They key is that you actually have given each full consideration and have a pretty good objective view of each. You may decide that it’s more imperative to have a good territory and culture than high compensation. Whatever the mix, the higher you can score each, the higher your probabilities of success will be.

What are the things most important to you when looking at a new sales opportunity?

My experience has given me a birds-eye view of these formulas and procedures.  I’ve also been able to see the results over multiple hires and sustained time frames. My conclusion:  There is no silver bullet.  I’ve seen “can’t miss” hires fail miserably and marginal, “we’ll take a chance” hires not only succeed, but eventually ascend to executive leadership.

The point is that there isn’t a fail-safe template when it comes to hiring quality people.  And the problem is complicated exponentially when companies need to build productive teams of people.

So what is the right answer?  None of these approaches are inherently wrong.  Each company needs to deploy practices that make the most sense for them.  Ultimately, the goal is increasing the probabilities of success with each hire.  If you hire people, here are a few ways to improve your aim:

1. Cut the fodder. Please, please, please stop padding your job profiles with inane and innocuous qualifications that simply take up space.  I often have to discard up to 90% of the information in a corporate job description as useless so that I can get to the meat of what is truly important. 
2. Be realistic. When creating your job profile, think in terms of what the “reasonable” success qualifiers are.  All too often there is a duality of candidate expectation attached to the job description and requirements.  There is the “official” profile versus the “acceptable” profile that is locked in the manager’s head.  The publicly shared, internally dispersed profile is a wish list … the ultimate superhero candidate.  The thinking is that setting expectations this high will somehow screen “undesirable” resumes.  Yet, the company still gets inundated with resumes that woefully miss the mark.  The perfect candidate doesn’t exist, and if he/she does, they are not likely to be looking for a new position.  Understand the core criteria that you need to see in every candidate – without equivocation.  Build your interview process around this foundation.
3. Determine quantitative and qualitative attributes. Quantitative attributes are specific skills that one brings to the job.  These usually come through prior experience (specific product skill, territory knowledge, sales training, etc).  Qualitative attributes speak to a person’s character and make-up (work ethical, passion, ambition, driving motivations and influence).  Discipline yourself to identify the top 5, essential qualitative and quantitative characteristics and prepare your interview questions to plumb these areas.  The quantitative information is usually more black and white, but the qualitative is much harder to discern.  The focus is often so heavy on quantitative skill set, that qualitative is reduced to a “gut feeling” or positive first impressions.  A case can be made that more time should be spent on qualitative.
4. Identify muscle and warts. Every candidate has strengths and weakness.  Look for strengths that add value to the position.  Be careful to ignore strengths that aren’t critical to success as they can often blind you from seeing more germane traits.  The same goes for weaknesses.  Know which weaknesses you can overlook and which ones you can’t.  You can live with a few warts, but a malignancy will cost you dearly.
5. Think team. One important thing to remember is that you are bringing a new piece of machinery into an already operating machine environment.  If the pieces don’t fit together – regardless of the newest additions finest attributes – then your will not only fail with your newest acquisition, but throw a wrench into the works!

I’ve never been a fan of assessments that are used to make human decisions.  But I am a fan of assessments that assist the decision making process and are fluid enough to help a manager evaluate both qualitative and quantitative data in the context of their specific hiring and team environments.  Our Performance Optimization solutions do just that.  Silver bullet?  No.  A sure way to exponentially increase your probability of success?  Without a doubt.

You can learn more here.

In my twenty-five years of recruiting, I have experienced a few economic downturns and a few incredible times of economic boom. What never ceases to amaze me is how wide a variance a company will have in their recruiting practices to try and leverage market conditions that are subject to the economy.

The idea is to establish a set of practices that will yield good hires and increase probabilities of success. These practices should be well thought-out, include strategies for every part of the placement cycle (pre-recruiting through start date), and become a corporate standard that is predictable and proven to deliver good results.

In short, here is what many companies do during times of feast and famine:

• Feast: When the economy is doing well, candidates are scarce. Companies often short-circuit their proven best-practice standards and equivocate on the quality of candidate they are willing to hire. To be competitive, they often find themselves in an upward compensation spiral, trying to “buy” better prospects. The goal becomes filling openings as quickly as possible before they lose their candidate. Any “body” will do. The result? Lots of over-paid hires who bring marginal competency to the table and ultimately high turnover.
  

• Famine: During lean times, candidates are plentiful. Companies begin to cut proven recruiting practices supposing (often wrongly) that candidate volume will yield more legitimate choices. It’s a “smorgasbord” mentality. At the same time, they tighten their profile to the point that the person they are now looking for literally doesn’t exist. The smorgasbord doesn’t offer a “10lb prime-cut of beef that has the nutritional benefits of fish, the leanness of chicken and the dietary value of veggies – all for $3.99) The objective becomes making sure they get an A++ player instead of hiring proven performers with the right “stuff” – as defined in their best-practice standards. The result? Positions are open for long periods of time and productivity suffers.
  

To be sure, some variance in practice during market swings is wise. But best-practices establish an objective set of standards that will yield good results in any economy.

• Are candidates plentiful? (Lagging economy) Then don’t cut recruiting costs. Your recruiters will need to be diligent to screen the sea of people available to them and identify the keepers. Don’t cut external recruiting fees. Good headhunters have access to the best people in your industry – both the employed and unemployed. Your time-to-hire will be reduced dramatically in a market that is bogged-down with resume clutter.

• Are candidates scarce? (Strong economy) Then maintain the integrity of your compensation plan. Tell recruiters to find people that have career goals that align with your company’s direction. Emphasize the aggregate of your opportunity and don’t allow mercenary candidates to sway you. In my experience, they are never worth what you pay them and they will leave for the next high bidder.

Smart companies establish standards and processes that are objective and work. They determine how long an average cycle should take, what the proper steps in the process are, and who has ownership over each task. They hold their leadership team accountable to these standards. These practices are then reviewed at least twice a year to gauge results and make appropriate adjustments. These companies are shamelessly committed to their process and trust it regardless of market swings. The clients I serve who understand this also have the highest consistency in successful hires, time-to-hire rates, and employee longevity.

Crane Kenney was talking about the various discussions surrounding innovations that are in the works to improve Wrigley Field. He talked about protecting the Wrigley brand and ideas that are on the table to maximize revenue without destroying the historic feel of the ballpark. He said that in the never-ending quest for ambitious and innovative revenue generation, there are frequently suggestions that include pyrogenic use or mascots. But Crane Kenney knows where to draw the line. He explains “that’s just not who we are”. His concise and clear understanding of who his organization is defines what his organization does. While he is innovative and thinking laterally, he instinctively knows what the wrong type of shoe and size of shoe for his organization is. “Right shoe, wrong size” is useless as is “Right size, wrong shoe”.

Know who your organization is. What is your unique identity? Don’t try to be everything to everyone. If you glibly try every scheme and jump every bandwagon trying to catch lightning in a bottle, your organization will be dressed like a clown and will have about as much effectiveness as a clown does in the marketplace. Know who you are and then allow that to define what you do. Your company will then be comfortable and natural in its own skin and will communicate a fresh uniqueness and distinctiveness to your customers.

Patricia Sellers at Fortune blogged a great piece here on advice she received from advertising legend David Ogilvy, who died 10 years ago. Some principles are timeless and can be applied to any generation of leaders. Timeless advice transcends cultural and societal shifts and tends to provide sanity and balance to what seems to be an ever-changing and more complex world. Timeless advice is a compass that helps us get back to things that are of critical importance. I look at Ogilvy’s advice to Patricia Sellers as “timeless”.

Here are Ogilvy’s top 7 business principles (as penned in 1991):

1. Remember that Abraham Lincoln spoke of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He left out the pursuit of profit.

2. Remember the old Scottish motto: “Be happy while you’re living, for you are a long time dead.”

3. If you have to reduce your company’s payroll, don’t fire your people until you have cut your compensation and the compensation of your big-shots.

4. Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don’t delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.

5. Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices — and punishes you.

6. Never spend money on advertising which does not sell.

7. Bear in mind that the consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Do not insult her intelligence.

You can view his original handwritten notes at Patricia Sellers Blog.

“Claim your name. Before someone else does it, you’ll want to “claim your name” on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.”

“Practice prudence. Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of digital media at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, made the decision early on to limit himself to three social-networking sites: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. “There is just not enough time,” he says. “Pick two or three, then cultivate a presence there.”

“Choose connections wisely. You’ll also want to choose your network carefully; only add people you actually know or with whom you’ve done business.”

“Consistency is key. You’ll need to update your profile regularly. “Curate [your online profile] the same way you would curate your one-page résumé,” says Mr. Sreenivasan.”

— Elizabeth Garone at cjeditor@dowjones.com

There are always a few things that will kill your candidacy like water-on-fire. Here is a brief list of a few of the more common mistakes:

http://ow.ly/7Th7

And what about social functions or happenstance meetings? You don’t want to give out your business card since that information is tied to corporate email and phone lines. And if you are unemployed, then you haven’t even a business card available to you to offer the option of handing it out.

You may want to consider getting a “personal” card. Pick a design, put any information you want on it from cell numbers, social media account access, blogs, personal websites or even links to associations you belong to. You will now always have something you can give – either in an interview or social setting – that will allow people to access your contact information or direct them to sites that help market you.

VistaPrint is a good place to start. They offer free card packages and have an exceptional array of design choices. You can select one of their boilerplate designs or upload your own. I have ordered cards from them and found the quality to be excellent. The cards arrived in under a week.

Check VistaPrint out at http://bit.ly/URs7i

So, you have completed your interview. The question is “What next?” The wrong thing to do at his point is to hope that you left a positive impression on the company and hope that they will call you back for another round of interviews or hope that they will call references. Here are a few actionable steps you can take that will enhance your chances of success:

• Recruiter follow-up: If you secured the interview through an Executive Recruiter, make certain that you call them shortly after the interview to debrief. Be prepared to step through the interview in some detail so the recruiter can get a read on how the interview dialog went. Remember, your recruiter has an excellent understanding of how the company will conduct their process. That process will usually take distinctly different paths based on the company’s interest. Your feedback will prove to be invaluable as it will help your recruiter devise creative follow-up strategies that would work well with a particular client. Each client is unique and has different expectations of how they would like to be approached by candidates – both during and after the interview process. Your recruiter has a unique perspective on this.

• Email correspondence: As stated above, your recruiter will guide you on this step. But if you secured the interview without a recruiter, you should still correspond with the company within twenty-four hours of the interview. Make note of this very important step: NEVER LEAVE THE INTERVIEW WITHOUT A BUSINESS CARD FROM EACH PERSON YOU MET! The reasons are obvious, but it’s amazing how many people I debrief who failed to take this simple step. Not only do you get accurate contact information, but you also have each person’s proper (versus functional) title. People can be funny about their titles. A functional sales manager may have a VP Sales title. If you address him in your correspondence as “Regional Manager”, it won’t likely reflect well on you. Send a personalized (not cc’d) note to each person and make each note somewhat unique. Anymore, email follow-up is preferable to hard copy. Some companies just want to see that you have enough savvy to send a follow-up note to them and don’t care too much about content. Other managers like to see good content and look for writing and grammar skills so make sure you pay attention to content, clarity and presentation.
  • Content: The note should be personable yet professional. Do not exceed three paragraphs. If your note (and notice I’m calling it a “note” and not a “letter”) begins to scroll down your screen, it’s too long. Your first paragraph should express gratitude for the opportunity to meet, the managers personal time spent with you, how much you enjoyed meeting him/her and that you enjoyed (or were excited) to learn more about the company and opportunity. This paragraph should be very upbeat and positive while adding a personal touch to the dialog. Use words that create energy and excitement throughout. The second paragraph should (briefly) restate what your main interview take-aways are, what your understanding of the positions responsibilities or requirements are and how you feel you match those requirements. The third paragraph should close with a positive affirmation and confidence in your unique ability to contribute to the organizations success and your desire to continue forward in the process. If you have already scheduled a follow-up interview, confirm the time and date and your anticipation for the meeting. If you have not yet secured the next meeting, this is where you express anticipation of a next meeting and you can even list some calendar slots for the next two weeks that work for you. Be presumptive that you will hear back from them. Encourage direct communication from the hiring manager should they have any lingering questions that you can answer.
  • Clarity: Be sure that you are concise, on-topic and crystal clear in your communication. You want to be neither too terse (which comes off as distant and cold) nor too familiar and verbose (which comes off as self-focused and presumptuous). Show concern for the manager’s time and schedule and be direct but without an edge.
  • Presentation: Keep in mind that this note is not a tweet or text message. I recommend that you do not send it from your mobile computing platform unless you have no other option (especially if you are early in the process). Chose an east to read font style (Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, Tahoma, and Verdana are good choices) and a font pitch that will be suitable to most any size screen. Typically a 9-12 pitch range is good. Times New Roman 9 pitch reads very differently than Arial 9 pitch so use discretion. The idea is to make sure that the font size is easy to read without being over bearing. Stay away from fancy backgrounds, font styles, etc. Address the note appropriately. “Mr.” or “Ms” salutations are fine, but not usually expected. Most managers will be fine (and prefer) first name communication. But use your best judgment in each scenario based on your perceptions after meeting the person. Make sure your phone number is in your email signature.

• Phone Calls: Phone follow-ups are not typically expected (especially early in the process). They are warranted once mutual interest has been established and there is specific reason for the call. Many times, a candidate may ask a manger if they can call directly on a certain date for feedback. Often, the manager will open that door of opportunity. Just be careful not to abuse this privilege.

Your post interview follow-up is important as it is a way to bridge two interviews and maintain some momentum in the process. Your promptness and professionalism and effectiveness at his juncture can give you a competitive edge in the interview process.