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Is Your Job Title Holding You Back?

Written by: Laura Posey

Article Overview: Take out your business card and look at your job title. If you are a typical salesperson, your title is likely something like “Account Manager” or “Sales Representative”. If you are a business owner, you’ll read “Owner” or “President” on your card.

Is Your Job Title Holding You Back?

Take out your business card and look at your job title.

If you are a typical salesperson, your title is likely something like “Account Manager” or “Sales Representative”. If you are a business owner, you’ll read “Owner” or “President” on your card.

Americans are obsessed with titles and labels. We like to be able to define people and classify them easily. That’s why your company gives you a title for your card; so they know what department you work in and so clients will also. As an owner, your title conveys that the buck stops with you. Are these titles holding you back, though?

Think about the job title “account manager” for a moment. As a customer, that tells me that I am an account to you and your job is to keep me in line. Not very exciting for me, is it?

The same goes for “Sales Representative”; you’ve made it abundantly clear to me that you work for the company and are an agent of the sales department. I’m not getting all warm and fuzzy about that.

What if your card said “customer caretaker” instead? How would my perception as a customer differ? More importantly, how would you approach me differently?

As an owner, if your card says “President”, that means to me, as a customer, that you are the most senior officer in the company. As an employee, it tells me that you are the one in charge of everything. Is that message you want to convey? And is that what you really do?

At Play, a Richmond-based consulting company, the top officer in the company uses the title, “In Charge of What’s Next” because that is exactly what his role in the company is. That is all he focuses on and he delegates all other duties.

When you talk to Andy Stefanovich, you’ll never be offended if he doesn’t personally service you as a customer because you understand immediately what he really does in the organization. His employees know not to expect him to deal with mundane details so they go to other members of the company for help with issues. This frees Andy up to work on the important growth initiatives in his company.

If you’ve met Hugh Goldthorpe of Owens Minor, you’ll know that “Head Cheerleader” accurately describes his role as the man in charge of employee morale. His job encompasses training, motivating and leadership development, but rather than be pigeon-holed in any of these departments, he is focused on the people he serves. His title demonstrates that.

We all live up to, or down to, our job titles. They become our identity and shape our behavior subtly but powerfully. You need just one interaction with our “Queen of Everything”, Lynn Bailes, to understand how important a title can be.

So, what will your next set of business cards say about you?

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Article Tags: marketing, motivation, sales, sales tips, small business



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9 Lies that are holding you back - I've picked up this book to assist me with my conversations when coaching business clients and I've found it to be quite enlightening as distinctions are made. The book is titled "9 Lies That are Holding Your Business Back..." by Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford (aka Small Business Millionaire). I'll use this post in two ways: 1. To highlight A Lie 2. To help me internalize the concepts by writing about it in my own terms/understanding so that I can use it in future conversations (yes, I'm feeling a lil selfish and want to take you guys along with the journey) first post to arrive shortly on the First chapter: Lie#1: I Just Need to Know [i:23sag391]How[/i:23sag391] to Do This"
Re: SEO... - 1: Find the Best Keywords 2: Discover Your Competitors 3: Optimize Your Title 4: Optimize Your META Tags 5: Use Headings 6: Use Title and ALT Attributes 7: Nomenclatures 8: Create a Site Map Page 9: Include a robots.txt File 10: Install a sitemap.xml for Google MySQL/Oracle:
Re: I'm Back - Welcome Back! Hope you are doing great and looking forward to hearing from you.. Jude
Free Commercial Lending Seminar - Holding Seminars is also a great way to get people into your sales funnel. It's establishes yourself as an expert in the field and builds trust. You can use direct mail or advertising to get the word out about your seminar. A Listing with the local Chamber is also good as you'll benefit from the trust they have built with their members. Offer the seminar for free and remember to hold some sort of door prize to capture peoples contact information. This method will require some creativity from you as your dealing with the Commercial Lending market but take an angle where you will show decision makers (maybe over lunch) how they can save thousands of Dollars on their current loans.
Re: MUST READ: Rules & Guidelines for Review My... - No problem DH, Another thing about posting your own thread is your Title becomes the title in search results. It's why we want original topics to have their own thread. You'll get more "eyes" viewing and hopefully participating in the discussion. I'll redirect to your new thread. Look forward to discussing your site, very interesting.... Zac


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