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Many business owners I talk to claim that they don’t want to hire a marketing manager or a sales manager because they have a “bad manager.” That’s a big old no. But in my experience, there are a lot of businesses that do hire managers and sales managers, and those managers and sales managers understand their business so well that they can turn it into an effective marketing and sales organization.
Marketing and sales managers are people with the most training in the business because they are also the people most likely to understand the business. They are the ones who can tell you why you are losing customers (or why you are winning), what products are most effective for your market, how to manage your sales, and more.
Marketing and sales managers are people who work outside the conventional norms of business. They are the ones who are in charge of the whole organization, from sales and marketing to customer service and production. Those are the people that you see at companies that seem to have no trouble selling their brands to the people they know. They are the ones who are the most interested in sales and marketing, and are the ones who often make the most strategic decisions to make sure that they are successful.
In our experience, managers are people who are more concerned with their own needs than those of the organization. They are driven by a need to manage their own individual careers, and they use other people to do that. If you work with them, you usually find that they are passionate about their work, and are excited about the opportunity to have a direct impact on some of the biggest decisions in their careers.
We’ve seen this first-hand in our own careers. We have been successful managers because we are driven to make the most strategic decisions for our companies. We do these by first planning and then making sure to have a team that works on any of the major projects in our organization. We then plan and execute our major strategies and work to make sure the team is working on the right things.
In the past, I have done the majority of my strategic planning work as an analyst, but recently I have begun to see the value in having a senior strategic planner in my organization. I am now looking forward to having a strategic planner in my new team. The strategic planners are charged with creating long-term strategies and work to keep the team working on those. I think they will be great for the company.
I can think of no better person to build strategic plans around than a senior marketing manager. The way a marketing manager operates is so different from a general manager’s. They are more often than not in the thick of a crisis. They are not afraid to be in the spotlight and are not afraid to ask for what they want. In contrast, general managers typically are on the sidelines watching other departments and seeing how things are going.
This is particularly true in the digital world. Just because a company has a big budget doesn’t make it an advantage. A marketing manager should be able to get their budget and goals straight, and then have a plan for how the budget is going to be spent. A marketing manager isn’t going to be in the same position as the CEO. A marketing manager is going to be far more in tune with the business than someone who is just a manager in a company of, say, 25 people.
If you have a marketing manager, chances are good that company has the exact same marketing manager.
The problem is that companies don’t really want to hire their own marketing manager because it takes years of experience to develop a style of communication that truly speaks to the business. The reason companies want to hire someone who is a marketing strategist is because it takes a lot of time to make the relationship work. As a marketing manager, your job is to make sure the relationship works. That means you have to spend a lot of time getting to know the boss, your boss, etc.
