Recruiting a Top Marketing Manager
While there are a lot of
people with marketing qualifications, it is a matter of finding the
right person for your business. Personal qualities such as passion and
good commercial sense are among the attributes you should look for.
When the time comes for a
small to medium-sized organization to appoint a marketing specialist,
many managers and business owners are not sure about the type of person
to look for, the skill set, the level of marketing experience nor the
measurable objectives they should set.
The salaries for top-flight
marketing managers invariably seem high when you run a small company. In
addition, there is the worry about selecting the right person with the
right cultural fit.
And in the marketplace today, judging by the large number of applicants
that go for every advertised position, there seems to be a scarcity of
marketing people who have worthwhile credentials and concrete marketing
achievements.
Meantime, there is no shortage of marketing courses with institutes and
universities everywhere delivering quality diplomas and degrees to an
apparently ever-expanding number of students.
So what does the business owner look for?
Apart from commercial sense and business acumen that you would like to
think every manager would possess, there is such a thing as a "marketing
personality" and there are personal attributes to look out for in
candidates.
True marketing executives intensely observe the marketplace around them
and constantly recognize opportunities for brands to grab an advantage.
They are forever on the alert for any points of competitive difference.
It is a sort of sixth sense that is part of their competitive make-up.
Such thought processes are not necessarily observable at a single
interview but they are always there inside any individual with a flair
for marketing.
In addition to such a mental approach, outstanding marketing people will
have the abilities and personal attributes mentioned below:
A genuine interest in human behavior. After all, that's where
marketing starts, with the audience. A smart marketer will love people
and be a keen observer of people of all ages and life stages.
The confidence to trust personal intuition.
There always comes a point where innovative marketers have to go with
their judgment. Without the confidence to do this, they will be bogged
down in analysis to the point of paralysis.
A willingness to challenge their own thinking and
to be challenged by new evidence of changes in marketplace thinking.
The marketplace is a dynamic entity and marketers who are not alert to
the constant change are the ones who continue to run campaigns long
after they have outlived their usefulness.
Perception. There is no shortage of marketing
information and data of all kinds today. Marketing managers have to be
able to not only ask for the right research in the first place but they
must have the ability and the perception to extract the relevant
conclusions that can lead to action.
The discipline to remain focused on the real
issues that can make a measurable difference to their major objectives.
It is easy for marketing managers to be distracted by the many fads or
"quick fixes" that pass by from "customer focus" to "relationship
marketing". Such prescriptions invariably have some underlying value to
offer but none will be the all-embracing "answer" that they so often
purport to be.
Sustained enthusiasm for success and for fresh and
innovative ways to improve performance.Personal enthusiasm is almost
always observable. Marketing people have an enthusiasm for life, for
people and for the challenges that they accept. Only people who can
sustain enthusiasm will have the ability to carry a team with them over
an extended period of time for ultimate marketing success.
A well-developed commercial sense with the
financial understanding that enables them to manage marketing
investments as well as marketing expenditure. Over the years it has
probably been marketing people with little or no financial skills who
have done more harm to the credibility of marketing than any other
group.
Above all, effective marketing people have
passion. A passion for marketing, a passion for life and a passion
for successful results. Without such passion, your new marketing team
member may become nothing more than an overpaid administrator and your
competitors will happily sail away into the sunset leaving you to wonder
what went wrong.
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