I am often asked for my career advice, having been lucky enough to have varied and fairly successful career. My experiences to date, include;
- Sales
- Business Development
- Key Account Management
- Sales leadership
- Commercial Leadership
- Business leadership
I am now a business owner and I gave the following advice recently and thought it would make a good article.
Here are my Top 5 tips:
1 – Always focus on over-delivering in your role. Do more than is expected of you!
2 – Be clear on what future role/ roles you want, and then go after them. Communicate what you want to people who are more senior to you, they want to see that ambition!
3 – Identify the key skills you need to develop and the experiences you need. Once you know what they are, your job is to ‘get them in advance’ of getting the role!
4 – Start ‘acting up’! Identify the key tasks you can take from your manager NOW. Offer to do that work (without the extra pay) so that you can get the experience as soon as you can!
5 – Find a Mentor – spend time with someone who is already doing what you would like to do in the future. They will teach you more than you will believe!
These are the Key 5 principles and approaches I have taken in my career – they have served me well and I hope they will do the same for you.
Good luck with your career and if I can help, please feel free to contact me.
Justin Leigh is an accredited Executive Coach and Leadership Mentor. He works with Senior Leaders to develop High Performance organisations. His passion is helping people to become the best they can be. He has worked for large corporations for over 20 years and is experienced in Leadership, Business, Sales & Marketing.
Justin is the Managing Director of Focus4growth Ltd. He can be reached at the following address:
email: [email protected]
The Sales Acceleration Scorecard!
Schedule 15 minutes In your diary, follow the link below, answer the questions and you’ll be starting a process that will change everything.
CLICK HERE to access the Scorecard.
Learn more about the SCORECARD HERE
Whether you’re new to sales, an experienced sales professional or a leader looking to improve the consistency and performance of your sales organisation, you’ll gain immense value from these articles, the scorecard and the INSPIRE, INFLUENCE, SELL book. Our systems map out a memorable sales process over several steps and also include mastery content for each stage of the system, which will give you deeper insight and expertise. The combination of foundational and specialist material ensures that no matter where you’re starting from, you can become a skilled salesperson.
You might want to work through these articles at the foundational level and return to the Sales Mastery sections once you get to grips with the overall system and have developed your skills. Each article starts with an experience story in which I share relevant, valuable anecdotes. If you prefer to dive straight into the sales system, you can skip that content. These articles are designed to be accessible and flexible, so that you get the most out of them.
As you work through each stage, I suggest you make notes in a journal or notebook. This will help you learn and adopt the content.