1. Understand the customer. A common pitfall is to think we understand the customer and market. In reality, customers are moving targets. The marketplace, lifestyles, demographics, psychographics, and society constantly change. People can be spontaneous and unpredictable. Additionally, competition may be trying to change how customers perceive your product or service to enhance their position. To stay in tune with your customer and market, actively research what can potentially affect your business and sales.
2. Advertising is not about you, it's about the customer. We do, we have, or we provide, are not nearly as powerful as, “What's in it for me?” or “Why do I care?” Put the focus on “You” and the “customer.”
3. You don't advertise because others are advertising. Advertise because it improves sales, builds business, and helps create a brand. Good advertising will stand out whether it costs a hundred dollars or a million dollars. The key is to be sure it actually works and does what it's supposed to do. In advertising, the customer's reaction is what’s important.

Experience and education may not be a deciding factor in getting a job. Your wants and needs matter even less.

Getting a good job starts with a great interview and that means acknowledging the interview process is not just about you. It's equally important you understand the job you're applying for, what the company does and how it operates.

Without information about the job you may be putting yourself in a position of someone having little conviction or commitment. Worse yet, it may send a signal you have an entitlement mentality.

Competition for good jobs is fierce. Relying on skills, education and experience is not enough to cut it.

You must demonstrate you're not simply a candidate but the best candidate. Target your presentation to the company and people you're interviewing with.

Base your presentation on filling needs and fitting in. Don't leave key points to the interviewer's imagination.

Approach every interview like it's an opportunity to work for the next Cisco or Google. Keep in mind you can turn down a poor job offer but once you've blown an opportunity and been shown the door, it's almost impossible to get back in.

The knowledge you gain before the interview is what separates you from average. It's what helps get you to the top of the must-have list.

Use the internet to research the company. Seek help from people that can give you insight. In short, do whatever it takes to position you as the outstanding candidate and nothing less.

Don't take the risk of knocking yourself out of contention because you weren't willing to do the homework.

The secret to dazzling on job interviews is being prepared. Good interviews are not likely to happen by accident.

What gives your resume an edge is style and personality. All things considered, soft skills are as important as your degree, experience, and skill set. You’re more likely to get job interviews when people think they can work with you and you fit in with the company.

Strategies To Get Your Resume Read:

1. Make Your Job Search Personal

Decide what kind of job you want, desired salary, distance you’ll commute, and if you’ll move.

Use the internet, trade papers, newspapers, job bulletin boards, relatives, friends, and past co-workers to help you find companies and organizations you’re interested in.

But don’t just shoot off your resume to them. Find the names and addresses of individual department heads and HR directors and send them your information.

2. Create a Personalized Cover Letter

Think of your cover letter as a sales and marketing tool. Don’t view it as an after-thought to your resume; it may be the difference between getting an interview or landing on the bottom of the stack.

Make your cover letter short (one or two paragraphs) flawless and every word used correctly. Be positive and personalized, and make sure it shows your style. Include information to show that you know something about the company. The more you know about what a company does, the more you can personalize the letter and sell yourself. Your cover letter should tell a very short story which makes the data and information on the resume come to life.

And always state why you’d be a great addition to the company.

Leave detailed experience, history, details, and data to your attached resume.

Don’t take the risk that your resume won’t be seen, spam blockers are used by many to block scattershot job hunters and unwanted and impersonal junk emails. Job communications should be both electronic and followed up with a paper resume and cover letter.

Be sure you’re relevant and easy to identify but don’t be afraid to be different. Have fun, and show your personality to get people interested in you and what you can do for them.

Happy job hunting!

Copyright 2009 Brian J. Bieler - Reprints welcome so long as byline and article are published intact and all links made live.

Brian J. Bieler is an author, sales trainer and consultant offering unique and innovative sales, marketing and business solutions drawing from thirty plus years experience as a marketing director, sales manager, President of Viacom Radio and General Manager of seven major broadcast companies. Reach Brian at http://www.brianbieler.com

Groupthink tends to be conservative when often what is needed is more focus and calculated risk-taking.

I was creating a start up company and expressed concerns to my marketing consultant about playing it too safe.

Do you know how they make airline lasagna?” the consultant asked.

“No,” I said.

He said, “It works like this.”

“When decisions are critical, get expert opinions--the more the better. As airlines serve lasagna by the tens of thousands, they get the opinions of experts to create lasagna that will taste good to everyone.

Many experts came up with great tasting lasagna. However,when they started mixing recipes to gain mass appeal they wound up compromising.The result was average tasting lasagna.

Airline food is safe food carefully prepared to avoid offending anyone. It tastes OK but hardly award winning. If you want great tasting lasagna, you need spices and that means taking risks.

When you try to please everyone you’re likely to get average results.”

If you follow consensus because you don’t trust your instincts and judgment you may wind up serving “Airline Lasagna” and your strategies may lack an important edge.

Three Tips To Avoid Groupthink Symptoms

1. Doing things a certain way doesn’t make it the best way
2. Take more risks--mistakes are part of progress and winning
3. Allow yourself to think and see things differently

Get more comfortable taking risks and your game will likely improve and you’ll be less likely to serve up average ideas.

Don’t be over-concerned with making mistakes. Focus on what it takes to win. Spice up your unique and individual style and dare to be different.

When you trust your instincts, your ability to influence people improves and more often than not, your own thinking will prove you right.

To develop confidence in making good decisions, you must be able to trust your own judgment as well filter through the ideas of others.

Copyright 2009 Brian J. Bieler – Reprints welcome so long as byline and article are published intact and all links made live.

BrianJ. Bieler is the author of Powerful Steps and The Sales Operator. He draws on thirty plus years of experience as the President Viacom Radio Group and VP/General Manager of seven broadcast companies. He is a one-one-one leadership coach and consults companies on strategic planning and sales development. Visit http://www.brianbieler.com or e-mail Brian at brian@brianbieler.com.

What holds salespeople back from selling more?

They don’t spend enough time selling!

Salespeople typically spend twenty-five to thirty-eight percent of their time devoted to selling and getting orders.

The rest of the time is spent juggling balls, dealing with mistakes, fixing problems, fulfilling orders,searching for information, spending time in unproductive sales meetings,managing inventory, collecting data for company CRM reports, and servicing accounts to reduce customer costs.

No wonder salespeople complain there’s not enough time to sell.

Selling efforts must be organized for maximum performance; time is a limited resource. You may be working to hard to get things done, but the sales job is to work smart and make things happen.

Successful Selling Is About Productivity, Not Activity.

Here’s a simple two-step plan to help focus on what really matters; closing deals and making sales.

#1 – Stop creating a daily schedule of things to do

Every action we take does not have equal impact on achieving success or reaching goals.

If you don’t use this principle to your advantage it’s likely to accelerate poor performance and eventually lead to failure.

Use time and organization as a selling asset. Without a sense of priority, time may be eaten up dealing with things that have little to do with achieving goals.

Become a master of structuring activities for peak efficiency.

#2 – Start scheduling your top priorities first

The concept of “fit” or knowing how to fill up a jar with rocks, pebbles and sand illustrate the importance of doing the critical things first:

Start with a large jar. To fill the jar completely, put the big rocks in first. Next, add the pebbles and finally, fill the jar with sand. If you have a jar filled with rocks, pebble sand sand, you have effectively filled in the space.

However, if you empty the jar and fill it with the sand first, you will not be able to put all the rocks and pebbles back in the jar.

Just like getting the big rocks in the jar, manage time by scheduling priorities before you move on to less important tasks.

Don’t lose track of what you’re hired to do or what the sales job is. Salaries, commissions, advancement, added responsibility and security are based on your ability to perform.

What separates average salespeople from top sales performers is focus. Get more efficient at doing what works and dumping what doesn’t.

Don’t try and do it all, just do the sales two-step. It’s only what you sell and the deals you create that get measured,applauded and rewarded.

Copyright 2009 Brian J. Bieler – Reprints welcome so long as byline and article are published intact and all links made live.

Brian J. Bieler is the author of Powerful Steps and The Sales Operator. He draws on thirty plus years of experience as the President Viacom Radio Group and VP/General Manager of seven broadcast companies. He is a one-one-one leadership coach and consults companies on strategic planning and sales development. Visit www.brianbieler.com or e-mail Brian at brian@brianbieler.com

In good times, when the pendulum swings in the right direction, people get hired to fill needs with the anticipation of growth and often silly inane expenses get overlooked.

However, when the pendulum swings the other way, even paper clips will be counted and your job may show up on the expendable expense column of the company excel spread sheet.

Here are some ideas how you maybe able to avoid being a casualty of hard times:

1. Blend in and you could be setting yourself up to get blown out. If business in your company is going south it’s a sign that even more things are going to happen - if they haven’t already.

The wrong time to blend in or hide is when business is tough. Looking like you’re an average commodity may accelerate the perception your job has less value. When you blend in with other workers and managers you may be losing that important competitive advantage.

Everyone is uniquely different and you must make that uniqueness a competitive advantage. Don’t be afraid to be different and don’t think that simply following the crowd will keep you employed. Companies are likely to throw out babies with bath water.

2. Being a scaredy-cat won’t help. Fear is both a mental and physical reaction to something that may (or may not) happen. It’s hard to disguise the body language of fear; people around you are likely to catch on to your feelings.

What is most likely to keep you employed is the ability to overcome obstacles. You may have little control over a situation, but that is no excuse for throwing up your hands and giving up.

Don’t just stand there looking good and wait for things to happen to you. You don’t want to show up on the radar screen as excess baggage because that’s the first thing to get unloaded.

3. Use other people’s strengths to become more effective. People around you can help your success. Hang out with winners, watch what they do and think about how they can help you.

If you’re not running the team,department or company don’t let your ego tell you it’s simply because you have been overlooked. It may be a wake up call that you need to learn more and sharpen your skills.

Surround yourself with people that are the best at what they do, you may be able to catch a halo effect and pickup better habits.

When companies thin the ranks they try to save muscle and cut the fat. Your job is to get fit and strong. Play with the strongest people around you at work and expand your networking.

4. Give the news media a cautious eye. The media feeds on bad news to spice up stories often making small problems into huge news stories. Be careful of reacting to hype.

Balance what you hear and see with the reality of your experience and knowledge.

Trust your instincts, be a calm thinker and use your brains. Act on what will help you survive.

5. Dare to be different and see change as opportunity. When job markets get tight and the economy tanks, make the paradox of advantage work for you:

Changes and problems open new doors of opportunity

People willing to take chances and not give up when things get tough will most likely be the winners in both good times and bad.

Copyright 2009 Brian J. Bieler –Reprints welcome so long as byline and article are published intact and all links made live.

Brian J. Bieler is the author of Powerful Steps and The Sales Operator. He draws on thirty plus years of experience as the President Viacom Radio Group and VP/General Manager of seven broadcast companies. He is a one-one-one leadership coach and consults companies on strategic planning and sales development. Visit www.brianbieler.com or e-mail Brian at brian@brianbieler.com.