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Are job developers salespeople or sales managers?
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Clearly, job developers are salespeople. They are actively marketing individuals to employers, marketing their strengths and trying to understand the challenges employers are facing to address them. In fact, almost every week we write that job developers need to develop many of the strong skills that salespeople possess.
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Job developers are salespeople every bit has much as agents or recruiters who are constantly marketing clients in a commission-based structure. And yet, it seems unlikely that I’m going to address this topic in just two paragraphs.
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In a classic turnaround – clearly job developers are sales managers. Well, I suppose they are also sales managers. While the job developer is out there actively marketing their client, they also need to direct, motivate and support clients in marketing themselves. In fact, having a a well-prepared, practiced and engaging client is far more productive than marketing the client and hoping they will follow-through on job leads you provide.
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To be successful as a job developer, you need to be able to provide both areas of support. You need to create and cultivate meaningful relationships with employers and presenting clients effectively is a unique skill in this area.
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We also need to remember that clients are not products or services in a catalogue. They aren’t uniform and employers will expect them to speak for themselves.
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Navigating the difference between being a salesperson and a sales manager can be difficult. Quite often companies will promote successful salespeople into sales manager roles with the hopes of having them teach the skills they incorporated as a successful sales person. Sadly, this often doesn’t work. Sales people who thrive on competition sometimes have difficulty cultivating a spirt of collaboration.
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If you explore the primary work values for salespeople vs. sales managers, you'll see sales people value: relationships, support and achievement while sales managers value: independence, working conditions and achievement.
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Frankly, it’s perfectly natural that we would see ourselves as one more than the other. You may be a natural facilitator who can motivate job seekers to excel in their job search or you may be the independent free spirit who would prefer the day to day interaction with employers.
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To assist you in stretching yourself in the area of sales management, you might want to consider these skills outlined in a Salesforce.com article titled: '10 Sales management skills that make a sales manager stand out':
- Strategic Vision and Planning
- Motivating and Inspiring Leadership
- Effective Communication
- Expert Negotiation
- Closing Deals
- Time and Resource Management
- Data Analysis and Decision-Making
- Relationship Building
- Adaptability and Resilience
- Continuous Learning and Development
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What we see from this list is that the skills of a successful sales manager are not too dissimilar from the successful skills of a salesperson.
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Successful sales managers do much of the same work of salespeople, it’s just focused on building people up and frankly a client who is continually being motivated to proceed in their job search, have confidence in their skills and their self-worth is going to be far more successful and easier for you to market.
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Just like I encourage you to have weekly targets for employer engagement, so should your clients and you should be following up with them to ensure they meet those targets. And when they fail to meet those targets, as they will frequently, to take steps to move forward and make up for those missed targets rather than wiping the board clean and starting from scratch.
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Whichever you are, more of a salesperson or a sales manager, lean into your strengths but don’t loose sight of the other side of the role. The job developers who will be the most successful will be those who can effectively act as both.
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We’ll be discussing the impact of immigration changes at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Tuesday Nov. 12th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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On the morning of Tuesday November 12th, 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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