I saw this morning that CNBC had a slideshow on Jobs People Hate.  Marketing was mentioned as no. 10, indirectly mentioned as Product Management at no. 3 and coming in at no. 2 was Director of Sales and Marketing.  The reasons they are listed?  Lack of direction and an absence of opportunity for growth were blamed as the top two reasons for dissatisfaction.

Of course, most people would hate a job where there was a lack of direction and no room to grow.  On the other hand, in today's economy, a pragmatist might ask, "who has the luxury of loving their job?"  I wrote my book, Buyer Steps to help business obtain direction in their marketing and sales efforts.  My experience would tell me that a byproduct of getting an organization moving in the right direction is more opportunity for most people in the company.

A few questions for a marketing team:

1) Do you truly understand your buyers from a persona, motivation (pain/gain) and expectations standpoint? If you're not speaking from their viewpoint, using their words, there is no relevancy to the message.  It's often surprising how many companies have not done their buyer homework.

2) What is your "so what" - what makes you stand out in impact to the buying organization?  Without this, expect long buying cycles and poor leads.  We love to live in the world of mediocrity because it's safe there.

3) Are you using the same techniques and getting the same (if not diminishing) results?  It's time to take some well-considered chances and teach the organization some new tricks.

4) Do you receive proper and fair support from the CEO?  Ever get out there, look back and the CEO isn't behind you?  Marketers are supposed to be good communicators, but often don't communicate well enough with their own executive team.  It happens to all of us at some point, but we have to realize this is a priority so our team gets the proper support.

I'm not sure if people hate working in marketing and sales or if they just hate it right now.  It's tough out there for many companies and being on the frontline is where you feel the market mood first.  Corporate leadership is critical but so is personal leadership.  When it's dark, one really has to become their own light.

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