What’s the final deal clincher that persuades the decision maker to employ you over someone else? Give this thought before working on your application process.

I’m going to share some popular business/sales and marketing advice with you that I think is conjecture, or just plain wrong, and then ask you to apply it to your own job application process:

If I hear this terribly over-used example in business books one more time, I’m going to scream:

“When you buy a drill, you’re not really buying a drill…you’re actually buying a hole”.

I’ve heard this so many times over the last 10 years, I feel I’m going loopy. And it’s not just because people mindlessly repeat it (because at first sight it seems an excitingly fresh perspective on sales and marketing, and what benefits really are.)  But it’s because it’s actually not true.

I like it for the fact that it shifts your thinking a little beyond the actual features of your product, service, or personal brand, but the reason it’s not true, is I’ve seen the fellas down my local hardware store buying drills!  Believe me, they’re NOT buying ‘holes’. They’re not even thinking about the holes.  Once in the shop, when their money is ready and it’s near to decision time, they’re thinking about the shiny new power drill they’re looking at.  They’re thinking about how it might perform, how it looks, and how it feels.  And they’re experiencing how it makes themselves feel.  And how it makes them feel like they’ve got a gun, and that they are, for one brief moment in their life, a little bit like James Bond, perhaps. They probably have the urge to point it at another customer and say, ‘bang!’ but they control themselves. They’re also enjoying the atmosphere of the hardware store too, where they feel instant calm pass over them, no screaming kids, just themselves and some sort of connection in the air between themselves and other shoppers. Like they’re all on a similar mission, living their role. It’s an experience. But when they’re in front of the drills, they’re not thinking about holes.

There’s an important lesson here on how to get ahead of others during the job application/interview process! The drill/hole example kind of tells people to stop thinking about the features, and look at the benefits. The people who read too much without thinking chant ‘people buy benefits not features!’  But actually, a lot of people out there buy features too, and don’t even consider or care about some of the benefits these features provide. Some people just want features. Yes, there’s the functional aspect to what they’re buying, but a lot of people like the flashy wow-factor of what they’re buying too. They like the thing that makes the product or service unique, beyond it’s primary functions.  The thing that you can’t always put into words. The feeling that the style creates within them. Some people aren’t buying a hole, they’re buying a drill. And they want a flashy shiny powerful looking one too that makes them feel big, strong and clever.

If you really want to take the ‘hole’ example further, you could argue that some people are buying ‘peace and quiet’ from their partners who keep nagging them to put some shelves up. But when they have a choice between the different drills in the shop, their mind shifts from ‘buying peace and quiet’ to ‘buying the drill that feels right for me’. Emotions take over, and the final decision is made.

So in your own work or career, demonstrate the ‘hole’ that you create through your work by proving that you can do the job, but get the edge over your competitors at decision time too by making yourself like that cool, shiny, exciting drill. The one that feels right to the buyer. When two applicants side by side can both do the job, it’s the one who makes the better impression through their appearance, personality, intelligence and questions and answers who clinches the deal.

Posted via email from Mark’s posterous

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It’s coming your way! Change is everywhere in your life and work right now, sometimes it will hit you head on and bowl you over, and other times opportunities for you to change things will keep popping up, tempting you.

But will you change? Will you embrace the change, or even proactively encourage and force the change?

Or will you resist the change and try to maintain a feeling of safety trying to keep things as they are?

Of course it depends on the change in question.  Right now I’m talking about the biggest most current change in your life that you’re going through, or at least thinking about going through. The one that’s perhaps long overdue. The one that keeps sneaking up on you, tapping you on the shoulder and reminding you that something’s not quite right, and that change is on the horizon.

So what are you going to do?

Since change is going to occur anyway sooner or later (whether you like it or not)…

“Nothing is permanent but change” – Heraclitus

The main reason most people don’t want to change (when they feel they perhaps should) is fear. They feel comfortable in what they know. They know the deal. But they fear what they don’t yet know or understand.

So what’s the remedy? Learn about it. Learn about the thing you don’t understand so that you get a better idea of it. The more you learn about it, and study it, and ask questions and talk to people who know about it, the more you understand it and the less you have to be fearful of. It begins to click. And so the more likely you are to embrace that change or even drive it forwards on your own terms.

Despite reading this, many people will continue to fear the change they feel they should make, because they won’t make the effort to learn about new possibilities. I don’t know, maybe they’re too busy or something. Too busy reacting to things because of a decision or two they made way back. These people will stay put, until they are forced to change, and forced down a particular path.

So there it is, decide if you’re going to change, or whether you’ll leave yourself open to being changed, and if fear is your main hurdle, learn all about how things would or could be after the change. Learn about it until you’re clear. You’ll probably reach that tipping point where you’re ready.

If it’s a career change you’re thinking of, this may be just what you need.

Here are 3 more quotes about why you should embrace both learning and change:

“In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists” – Eric Hoffer

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” – Clarence Darrow

“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy” – J. Paul Getty

My advice, learn how to learn fast (helps address fear and change) and proactively change under your own terms, in the direction you want. You do know which way you want to go don’t you? If not, try this.

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1. Become Indispensable
2. How to Create Better Quality Teachers (For Yourself, Your Organisation and Your Kids)
3. How to Leap Ahead in Your Career

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Do you work in sales? Yes you do. Do you educate others in your work or life? Your colleagues? Your kids? Then you’re definitely in sales.

Educating others is largely a sales challenge.

They don’t teach you sales skills at school, but they should.

They don’t teach people sales skills outside of the sales department in organisations, but they should.

And they don’t usually teach teachers, trainers and educators sales skills, which is why learning is often so ineffective, but they really really should.

Selling is the doorway to adding value, helping others, persuading for a win:win, getting agreement, getting alignment, enhancing engagement and leadership, and making progress faster, more easily or more enjoyably.  Selling is about changing mindsets. It’s about provoking thought and challenging ideas. It’s about re-directing someone’s actions and co-operation for the better of everyone involved. It all starts with the sale.  If the sale isn’t made, the rest doesn’t follow.  That’s potentially a lot of time, money and effort down the drain.  This definitely applies to learning.


Organisations, and educators, listen up:  If you want to educate people better, you need to

STOP thinking ‘here’s what you need to learn, now sit down and swallow it’, and

START thinking, ‘how can I help you really WANT to learn this?’

Once you’ve addressed that well and the learners are hungry for the benefits, you may even be able to step back and put your feet up, whilst the learner rushes off to learn in their time, in their style, with whoever they want, enjoying themselves as they go – the way learning should be done.

For more on smarter approaches to learning, contact me and ask how I can help your organisation learn and perform more effectively.  I’ll be glad to help.

You might also like these:

1. 4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out
2. Become Indispensable
3. How to Leap Ahead in Your Career

Here’s the common long way to do your job search: (afterward, I’ll show you the fast way)

1. start sighing, and begin your job search (sighing every so often to spur you on)

2. find and read tarted-up job spec ads designed to promise you a wonderful career doing wonderful things with wonderful people (ensure you don’t think about your long future ahead at all – instead picture yourself working in that role for just one day in the near future, nod your head, and follow their application instructions)

3. jump through the hoops they lay out for you, with your tongue out and panting if you like, make sure your hope is turned up to maximum

4. tart your own CV/resume up to match the big promises they made on the exciting job ad.  Create a new ‘you’ that makes the real you feel slightly inadequate and uneasy – ask your mate who works in a different field to check it, for some reason.  Spelling or something.  Get ready for him to say “yeah it’s fine”.  Thank him for his role in your bright future

5. realise you don’t understand cover letters properly.  Google to find a lame article that states the obvious and doesn’t really help you any further.  Make sure the article is off one of those vague ‘how to’ sites, because that’s where everyone else goes

6. wait to be accepted for interview.  Know full well that you really should keep job hunting, but instead decide to relax a little in case you get the offer on what you’re waiting for.  You don’t want to waste your efforts after all

7. fail to get the offer.  Get a bit annoyed at them for judging you like they have.  They probably didn’t even read your resume properly, idiots.  Tell your mates that the competition is high for this sort of thing.  Ensure you don’t even consider the limitations to how you come across once your colourful personality has been drained of it’s colour and you’ve been squashed into black ink on white paper, like everyone else

8. repeat steps 1 to 7 quite a few times

9. get an interview offer from one company and start getting nervous because you’ll have to pretend in person that you’re the star you wrote about in your resume. Check your resume again to remind yourself how you must act when you meet them

10. attend interview and act your way through it.  Whatever happens, don’t think about the 4 grey walls you’re working hard to secure a position between for the foreseeable future.  Ensure you do wonder what the people who work there are like, but don’t ask to meet any of them in case you look nosey

11. fail this interview, and a few others, go back to step 1 and repeat until you get accepted by one eventually

12.  discover to your astonishment months down the line that this isn’t what you thought life was all about.  Wonder why your life has come to this.  Come up with some reasons why your colleagues are annoying.  Tell your friends all about it

13.  get caught crying, but pretend it’s something in your eye so that your work friends don’t laugh at you

Or, you could go about your ‘job search’ this way:

1.  starting with a clean slate, identify your perfect career. Know exactly what it is – you can find your perfect career using my e-course

2.  identify who you most want to work for, and what you could do for them, whether they’re employing people or not right now. Research them thoroughly using contacts, the media and relevant websites.  Find out what’s ahead for them, what challenges they may be up against, what their competitors are up to,  and where you could probably add value. Note this

3.  know that because you’re aligned perfectly to do this sort of work and provide this sort of value to this sort of company (because you’ve planned thoroughly and arrived at this conclusion) then securing employment with them is going to be much easier than it would be applying for any other position anywhere else, and certainly much easier than the conventional job search process.  You’re a round peg in a round hole

4.  use Linkedin or similar social networking sites to locate a decision maker who’s as close as possible to your desired role and who might connect you to this company.  Learn about them as best you can.  Then start working for them right now, from home if you can.  Huh?  Come up with some plans, ideas, or improvements to something related to this person or the organisation, if you can.  Provide them with some relevant value somehow.  Demonstrate what you could do for them, just as a taster.  You love doing this anyway, so enjoy yourself.  Now’s also a good time to gather any comments or testimonials from other people who you’ve done similar work for.  Anything to back up your case

5.  contact them and share what you’ve been working on with them, and your testimonials if you have any.  Offer to work for them for free for 1 or 2 weeks.  This is less time than you’ll likely spend on your conventional job search, and it’s more enjoyable and productive too.  Tell them it’s your perfect career, and tell them why you’ve singled them out as being the best company to work for (and why you chose them over their competitors).  Tell them (or show them) that you’re practically born to work for them, and ask to work either for them directly or for one of their direct reports, for free, for 1-2 weeks

6.  Polish yourself up, make a plan to knock their socks off, get plenty of feedback and over-deliver to them for 2 weeks (loving every minute of it because it’s your ideal career).  Give yourself some good reasons to feel proud.  Ask to meet the decision maker for lunch at least once a week.  Ask questions, and seek problems that your boss and colleagues suffer from that you could solve.  Make as much impact as you can and as many contacts as you can whilst working there. Be very nice to everyone.  You’ll do this almost automatically because you’re so passionate about what you do.  Passion like that can’t help but shine through.  Don’t forget to tell them that you’re really keen to work for them full time and ask how you might go about getting full time employment there

7.  Get the good work you’ve done noticed by the decision maker somehow.  Try to work out a plan or job role that you could take on moving ahead with this company.  Have the conversation with the decision maker to work out next steps, and ask for more contacts

From that strong position, you’ll most likely find that you land a job in your perfect company in your perfect career in much much less time than you would have spent doing a conventional job search.

If not, you’ll have the experience to build upon by repeating the process with another company.  If the decision maker turns you down for now, they’ll almost certainly write you a glowing appraisal and give you further contacts to help you along your way.  But only if you ask for this.

Almost everything about this process makes more sense than doing the conventional job search which is tiring, and hit and miss.  You’re playing a different game this way – a game that you can win.  You’ll increase your chances, get in a stronger position, and you’ll get your ladder up against the right wall.  All you then have to do is climb it.

The Great Career Escape will help you find and get in to your ideal career and provide you with plenty more ideas like this to help you create a highly rewarding living.

You might also like these:

1. Become Indispensable
2. Employees: Earn More for Less Effort
3. Are You About to Lose Your Job?

I prefer to use email often as you can keep the message on track, you’re not interrupting anyone and you can send your message without waiting for their immediate attention.  They can then read it at a convenient time.  But this is all very passive.  It’s not so good if the person you’re communicating with isn’t much of a reader, doesn’t pay attention to detail in your note, is unlikely to type back, is on the road all the time without email access, or is someone you need to develop rapport with first before asking for action.

So do you call then?  It’s certainly more active.  Doesn’t mean it’s more effective though.  If I’m working on something that’s likely to be more important than my ringing phone, unless I need a break I ignore the phone.  I’m not ignoring the person, I’m ignoring their demand for my immediate attention.  My answer phone takes their call and I can get back when it suits, just like I do with email.

So which is best?  It depends on the nature of the communication, your job role (the types of calls and emails you receive and their importance), who’s involved and the timing.

My simplified easy-to-apply advice for which is best:

Know the outcome you want and then get to know the other person as fast as possible.  Starting by knowing the nature of their job, make an educated guess as to which method they’d respond best to that will get your desired outcome.  If you’re wrong, it doesn’t matter, you’ll soon learn and you’ll know for next time.

Does anyone have any other thoughts on which works best?

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1. How to Communicate for an Easier Life
2. How to Be More Productive Than Your Computer
3. Your Perfect Office?

I’ve also met and worked with lots of people over the years who consider teaching for one reason above all else: because it’s great for the holidays.  What?  What about the longer working part?  And the effect it has on your personal life?

Of course, you’re sending your kids along (or at least you probably will be) to spend much of their time with people who either don’t want to be there, or who only want to be there because they can’t wait until school’s out.  (This might ring alarm bells in your own work too).  That’s an awful lot of people who don’t really want to be there teaching your kids.  I don’t know about you, but it scares me.  I don’t want someone helping to grow, develop and teach my children, when their heart isn’t in it.  Because when their heart isn’t in it, then their performance, energy and results aren’t in it either.  The impact on your child’s learning, results and life, is huge.

For the record, I’ve also met a handful of teachers over the years who are in their ideal career, working not for the holidays, but for their passion and enjoyment for teaching and helping integrate children into the real world.  These people are the bridge to accelerating learning.  These people are driven to make it work.  They really care about their pupils and seem to put the needs of their pupils before their own.  And they tend to be remembered by their pupils. You may remember some of yours and you may even have the urge to get hold of them if you could, to thank them.  They made impact and they made learning enjoyable and powerful too.  A couple of my teachers stood out like that.  A couple, out of about 50.

Please note, I don’t blame teachers at all and I’m not having a go at teachers.  Because what’s going on here is going on in your field too.  My advice to teachers though who don’t really love their work is to get out and find and get into something that really makes you bounce out of bed in the morning and give it everything.  Something you’re driven to get better and better at and something that puts you in the best position to really help others doing what you do best.  My advice to everyone else (especially if you have kids) is to help teachers you know who are considering a career change to see it through.  They might be very pleased to hear of www.thegreatcareerescape.com.  Getting in to their ideal career will make them happier more productive people, and it will make way for teachers who were born to teach well.  They are out there, possibly working in the wrong job.  Think of the number of children’s lives this will positively influence over time.

And while you’re at it, consider how and where this is going on in your own industry too.  Perhaps some strategic repositioning will positively change your life and the lives of your customers?

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It does matter.  Especially when you want people to co-operate with you.  And people do instantaneously judge you on how you look and come across, even if they say they don’t.  They judge your look relative to what role you’re supposed to be playing, or what you’re claiming to be able to do for them.  And most people behave differently in front of different looking people.  We’re all at it, and we can’t help it.  Even if we agree ‘you can’t judge a book by it’s cover’ we still do it.  And we do it for products we buy too.  The packaging and presentation give signals to us about the product and it’s quality, and ultimately make us feel a certain way.

I try my best not to judge people when I first meet them.  But try as I might, my subconscious still decides a few things about them and what’s important to them, and how likely they are to co-operate with me.  Of course, I might be completely wrong, but regardless my mind still guesses.  Can’t help it.

When I took my broken Mac in to a computer repair shop and got served by a young guy with rings and studs all over his face, I have to admit I wasn’t sure about the professionalism of their service.  The look of their customer facing employees certainly wasn’t important to them.  As for how good a job they’d do with my Mac, I wasn’t sure, as nothing yet gave me the signals I was looking for.  If there was a repair shop next door, I may have checked them out for signs of professionalism and credibility.

My point is, it’s true you can’t always judge people correctly, but we still judge nevertheless and our judgment influences our behaviour and decisions which impact the person we’re judging.  Others do the same to us.  It’s easier to get people to co-operate with you when your packaging supports what you want them to do for you (eg when you want them to offer you a job). And if you insist that your packaging should remain as it is, and it’s not in line with your work, then perhaps you’re in the wrong line of work?  The only exceptions I know of are when people have already built a reputation for doing excellent work.  Sometimes they have earned the right to dress how they want because enough people know they’re good enough.  But if you’re not in that position, then definitely give your packaging some thought.

I believe your packaging has a direct effect on your performance, how people perceive you, quality of relationships and co-operation from others, and your overall results. It’s a major part of your personal marketing. Decide what you want, how you would rather people judge or perceive you, and then create your message through your packaging.

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I meet plenty of people through my work, all at different stages in their career.  It doesn’t take me long to decide which of three general attitudes they have towards their work:

1.  There are those who think they’re on a moving walkway in their career.  They think that just because they’re employed in a certain position, that all it takes is time for them to move up the ranks, and that in 30 years they’ll be in a successful, senior position.  It happens to some, but not to most (how can it work for everyone when there’s only a few places at the top anyway?)  If that’s you, then you can leap forwards in your career by understanding my next point…

2.  There are those who realise that there’s no moving walkway, and that no one owes them anything, that it’s not a fair playing field they’re playing on, and that they won’t get their ‘turn’.  They realise that if they want more back from their career, their employer or their life, then they’re going to have to get up and make it happen themselves.  You have to earn what you want.  Their priority is to get their hands on what they need to learn, and then put it into practice as fast and effectively as possible. They can leap forwards in their career by learning how to learn twice as fast (they need their employer to provide them with something like this) and learning how to manage themselves effectively to apply what they learn fluidly and consistently.

3.  There are those who just don’t care.  They just potter along.  They just go to work because, well you have to don’t you?  They’re in the wrong job.  Because when you’re in the right job, you do care.  You’re compelled to make things happen and do a great job, because you enjoy doing just that, and you’re proud of the results you create.  Unfortunately, those who don’t care about their career progress because they’re in the wrong job are unlikely to be reading this blog post.  So you might need to point them towards what they need, which is this.

Join the Queue?

Brian Tracy says that you only have to do 2 things to get to the front of a queue, or to advance your career:  ‘Get in line and stay in line.’

The truth is, you don’t have to stay in line where you’re at.  You can jump the career queue, and the beauty is, it’s a fair jump too. You earn the right to jump the queue by becoming more valuable to those who pay you (and to your colleagues too).  And it’s not a single line anyway.  It’s a mass huddle of people.  It’s a crowd.  It’s like a chess board full of pieces, and you can move like a knight.  You can jump people sideways, if you like, to get to where you want.

Just follow these steps:

1.  work out what position you want to be in and why (make it a position you really care about and will be proud of)
2.  work out what value you’d need to provide to who (and how often) in order to earn the right to be in that position
3.  work out what you need to LEARN and then APPLY in order to provide that value
4.  learn it
5.  apply it
6.  repeat

Of course there are plenty of stumbling points along the way, and there are ways to move through these steps faster, more easily and enjoyably too. If you’ve got a question for me related to this, please post it below or email me and I may blog my response.

You might also like these:

1. Become Indispensable
2. Employees: Earn More for Less Effort
3. 4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out

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If you could work from home, would you? I find myself
having or hearing this conversation a lot. Many people surprise me by saying, ‘I just couldn’t work from home’.

What ‘Working From Home’ Really Means

What they may be overlooking, is once you work ‘from home’ you’re pretty much managing yourself. So long as you get your job done well, you can work where and how you want. The only real limits are technological and what you put on yourself. When I’m not working in a clients office or running a workshop  then I work wherever I feel happiest and most productive.

I write in cafes or sometimes from my iPhone in a park. I read and think on the beach, or in the shade under a tree. I learn by audio whilst walking or jogging. And if I need to socialise I’ve got the phone, skype, friends locally who work in a similar way, or plenty of people to chat to in cafes. All day long I can maintain a high level of productivity by positioning myself correctly. You don’t have that level of control and flexibility in an office.

But what about maintaining the discipline to work?

How to Maintain Self Discipline to Work

At this stage some people point out that they couldn’t discipline themselves to do their work without their boss breathing down their neck, or even whipping them! You can if you’re in the right job. You can if you’re compelled to solve other people’s problems doing what you enjoy doing and do best. It comes down to ‘how do you enjoy spending your time? What rewards, benefits and feelings do you get from doing your job well?’

Working ‘from home’ doesn’t actually have to mean from ‘home’ anymore. It means working ‘wherever you can and want’. And self discipline is not a problem when you’re fully driven to do your job well because you chose the right career path and you  have a burning desire to serve people doing what you do best.

Next time I find myself having this conversation, don’t be surprised when I flick you over this link

You might also like these:

1. Employees: Earn More for Less Effort
2. Become Indispensable
3. 4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out

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I just finished reading Harvey Mackay’s new book ‘Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door’ which in my opinion had some useful tips in, but was nothing particularly ground breaking.  There were two major points that stood out to me that people should take on board above all others.  The rest of the points in the book were really tactics to get a job.  Useful if you know for sure what you want.

Here are the 2 major points you should think about:

1.  The title is a major tip in itself ‘Use Your Head’. It’s where most people seem to stumble.  I watch people around me almost every day looking for new jobs and trying to get in to something else, and few of them seem to use their heads.  Most just seem to clumsily grab hold of the traditional job search process, and wade through like everyone else.  This is not smart thinking. You’re doing what everyone else is doing, so your competition via this approach is very high and hard to break through.  The people getting the jobs are no doubt doing or at least demonstrating something very different to everyone else.  If you use your head to get the job, then your smart approach tells your prospective employer a lot about you already too.  It may demonstrate your thinking, problem solving, creativity, determination and potential value.  If you go down the common job application road, it still says a lot about you, but what it says isn’t all that exciting.  It says you don’t think beyond the norm.

If I was employing people, I’d be tempted to set up the standard application process to filter all the people I didn’t want to employ into a ‘pot’.  Anyone who tried to get the job I was offering via a smarter more innovative approach would get my interest, attention and more respect, and probably get the job.

Think about it.  Use your head.

2.  A quote, right near the end of the book.  Harvey Mackay said,

“When it comes to a job, if you don’t love it, you’re likely to lose it”

His point was that the people who don’t love what they do stand out in many ways, and in this day and age, are the first to go when they’re making cut backs.  If you don’t love your job, be afraid!  And do something about it.

It’s your real job, in fact it’s your duty to get yourself into work you love and are best at. You haven’t lived until you do.  You get one shot at life, you have to earn a living, and you really should strive to maximise your enjoyment and what you get out of your work.  No excuses not to do this. No point defending your ‘right’ to be misplaced and miserable.  Whatever you’ll come up with won’t make real sense and will just sound lame.  There’s a solution to get you into your ideal career here, if you’re prepared to put some planning and thinking time in.

You might also like these:

1. How to Be the Best, Fastest or Smartest Employee in Your Team
2. Employees: Earn More for Less Effort
3. Are You a Cog in Your Job?