When people who are out of work come to me for guidance and my expertise one of the first things I tell them is this. “If you are intent on finding a new job in considerably less time than the current 35-45 week national average you must view yourself as a marketable product and learn how to be new school B2B salesperson who can market and sell a product in the most effective and efficient ways possible.”
As I’ve said and written many times over, the rules of writing a résumé and conducting a job search change with the times and résumé writers and coaches like me and the job seekers I help must explore new options, methods and approaches as the marketplace evolves.
This is why I found a recent Harvard Business Review article I read of great interest and why I think it may be worthwhile food for thought for all job hunters, especially those of you with 5-10+ years of experience.
In the article “The End of Solution Sales” Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman write “The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to. In recent decades sales reps have become adept at discovering customers’ needs and selling them “solutions”—generally, complex combinations of products and services. This worked because customers didn’t know how to solve their own problems, even though they often had a good understanding of what their problems were. But now, owing to increasingly sophisticated procurement teams and purchasing consultants armed with troves of data, companies can readily define solutions for themselves.”
The first and most telling similarity I found is that employers (aka customers) don’t need you the way they used to. The 2012 talent pool is deep, hungry and very competitive and employers today are sitting in the proverbial catbird seat. They dictate what they want and how much they’ will pay, and they rarely have to settle for less.
I also find that most employers and decision makers today (aka customers) know what their problems are and how to solve them; what they want to hire is someone who can execute their plan.
Most conspicuous I find that recruiters, HR departments, decision makers, and business owners today are much better informed than in the past and have more sophisticated tools to source and hire talent; notably social media and ATS software.
Since there is a correlation between B2B selling and conducting a job search it may be wise to look at what the new breed of successful B2B salespeople are doing instead of 100% solution based selling.
According to “The End of Solution Sales” this is what the new breed of B2B salespeople do and how they think.
• They “evaluate prospects according to criteria different from those used by other reps, targeting agile organizations in a state of flux rather than ones with a clear understanding of their needs.”
• They “seek out a very different set of stakeholders, preferring skeptical change agents over friendly informants.” This is something I am not sure is as applicable for job hunting as it is for B2B sales.
• They “coach… change agents on how to buy, instead of quizzing them about their company’s purchasing process.” This can be adapted to a job search especially in networking.
Let me know what you think. Do you think these are applicable points for job hunters.
Next week I hope to continue with this topic and discuss solution selling vs. insight selling.
As usual I am available to offer a professional critique of resumes and social media profiles and offer thoughts on how to improve them. Just send your resume to perry@perrynewman.com. No cost/no obligation.
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