Paul M. Caffrey (00:01.774)
The promotion you want typically isn't that far away. There is usually three steps that people need to take to get the ball rolling and to build the momentum to become the number one undeniable candidate for promotion into their desired role. And they are number one, tell people that you want to go for a role at a certain level and a certain team in a certain environment. The second is identifying the people who you're going to tell.
And then the third is to understand what are the hidden requirements for that role so that you can make yourself that number one candidate and be above all others and show that you're ready to improve the team, not just table stakes and doing the role, but improve the overall performance of the entire team that you're looking to join. So if we break that down, what does it look like? Well,
If we're going to tell people about the role that we want, we need to know what that is. So do we want to be an enterprise account executive? Do we want to be working in mid -market? Do we want to be managing a team of STO's? We want to manage a team in the SMB segment, whatever it may be. We have to get clear on what that is. Then we move on to the next step, which is telling people. So who do we tell? Well, the first is running teams or overseeing the role that you want to do.
And if there's a couple of different teams, whether they're internal to your organization, whether some of them may be external, we need to network. We need to get out there and we need to let them know that, yep, I'm doing this role at the moment, but it is in my medium or my long term path to be in that role. Now, on top of that, we don't just want to tell a hiring manager. We also want to look at future colleagues. So who on these teams could become peers if we were successful and gained promotion?
that we could then go and work alongside. And we're looking to discuss with them, let them know that we want to do this and unpack how they got into the role. What was key for them to be successful? How did they get past the interview process? How did they even get into the interview process? And is it as good as it's cracked up to be? Are they happy with the role? Would they actually make the same move again or do they regret it? Would they have rather go somewhere else? And what's the bad side of the role?
Paul M. Caffrey (02:12.846)
What happened that they weren't expecting? Is it a huge, huge burden of prospecting? Is there a lot of pressure on certain activities or metrics that they didn't expect? Is it all great? And often it can be a mix of both. Key thing is get an opinion of a number of different people. Don't just focus on one because people can sometimes give opinions of really, really great in glowing terms or be really, really negative depending on what's going on for them at that given moment. So if they're having a bad month or if they're having a great quarter, that can really...
askew what they tell you. After that, then we want to think of, well, who is your leaders leader going to be? So who's second and third line leaders? Because if they know that you are capable and if they know you are interested and if they know you want to be in this position, they're then in the position to be able to influence the hiring manager themselves and go, well, we've got this great candidate here and I've had a couple of coffees and I'm aware that this person wants to be in the role and they're doing X, Y and Z to get there. Have you considered that?
they will also be able to open the door to some other candidates and some other roles and some other teams. So there might be other hiring managers that you're not aware of looking for people. And again, that could be external, that could be internal, who knows? But the key thing is if you don't put the message out there, you will just never find out. Now, the final piece to reach out to is the people that will influence the hiring manager's decision.
This can be their mentors. This can be their confidence. This can be, you know, key stakeholders or key executives in the business. So if you've narrowed it down to a specific team that you would like to work on or a range of teams, you know, well, these are the potential hiring managers. Well, it's not too difficult to find out, well, who are their mentors, who is inspiring them and who do they go, who do they go to for advice? Because they are the people that you can all see. What is missing?
The job description is going to outline what's required. It's essentially table stakes. It's a list of skills, traits, and experience that are needed to get you in the door. But at the end of the day, if you're going for a team, there needs to be a blend of skills and there needs to be additional skills beyond what everybody needs to have to do the role. So for example, maybe things have changed and there's more prospecting required, but you're going on to an enterprise team that hasn't had the prospect for a long time. If that's a strength of yours and you've uncovered that,
Paul M. Caffrey (04:38.702)
you know, AEs are struggling with it and the leadership wants someone who's great at prospecting. You can then build that into your talk track when you go for interview and when you campaign and when you speak with other people. Equally, when you're speaking with account executives, you might discover that there's a gap when it comes to doing live events and, you know, maybe live events took a hiatus due to everything that happened over the last couple of years, but they're coming back. Have you run events before? Have you run executive dinners?
Have you run events where we've gotten customers together and spoke and got speakers in, booked hotels, stuff that you may have done before that you can leverage to the team. Or it could even be a case of maybe, maybe the team hasn't had to demo their software before and now they do and you are really good at demoing. Could you actually bring that to the table? Now it's one thing to say that you'll bring that to the table. It's another thing to show that before you actually get that seat. So.
If you can prove that you can do it and you can prove that in advance when you're actually campaigning for promotion, that is really, really powerful. A great way to do this is if you're speaking with a hiring manager, you can offer to come onto a team meeting and give them an overview of prospecting or give them a whirlwind tour of how to actually demo and keep people engaged. Or you can offer to help people maybe one -on -one. Maybe there's somebody who's tasked with setting up an event for the team. You could offer to jump on a call and give some guidance.
It's important to let the hiring manager know that that's what you're actually doing so that you do get the kudos and recognition for the help when the event comes along, making sure that maybe you should try go to it and help as much as you can. But key things are, if you are seen to be doing this, going above and beyond, when it comes to the time of going through the interview process and the stack rank happens at the end of the year, if they want to bring in more prospecting, if they want our team to get better at demos, if they want to bring in events to the team,
you are going to be the number one standout candidate because yes, you've met the table stakes and you're able to do everything that is required. But you also will add this piece of extra power to the team. So if you're thinking of going for promotion, decide what promotion you want to go for, start telling people that matter. So the hiring manager, the peers, the influencers, the second line leaders, and also look to uncover what is not in the job description.
Paul M. Caffrey (07:02.286)
that the team needs. This also applies to if you're going into managing SMB team, if you're going into manage, you know, SDRs or whatever it may be, you will have other managers alongside you. And there will typically be something that that leader above you want to bring to the team, which is not in the description. So don't let it limit you. If you think you're going for leadership and it doesn't apply, it absolutely does. This is something which will really make you stand out. And I challenge you to...
Network, be brave, go out there and say what you want to do. Make the time to meet up with more and more people. And this is absolutely these few steps will absolutely bring that promotion closer and it will help you land that role that you want.
