This brief blog post outlines my thoughts on the likely career progression for someone who is currently a location planning analyst. You may have been working for up to 5 years as a practitioner and are thinking about what next in terms of your career.
There are a number of pathways, whether you are working for an occupier, in public sector or in consultancy. A typical pathway is to gain promotion via various stages to become a head of a team or a department. The key strengths you need to develop are all around the relational: developing others, empathy, collaborate, relationship building to name a few.
One of the biggest challenges can be putting a clear dividing line between you as a manager and the team of analysts beneath you. This is certainly a skill that needs developing and our coaching practice supports people in transitioning from analyst to manager.
There are also other routes for experienced analysts. This route may be better aligned to those people who do not wish to have direct line management responsibility, but enjoy client facing activity and working as part of the team. If you have worked in consultancy you could be familiar with the term pre-sales. If you are not familiar with the term pre-sales I will now try and explain what it is.
Pre-sales is a term that some consultancies give to senior consultants (who have previously been analysts) whose responsibility is to support the sales function in winning and delivering new work. In my experience analysts tend to shy away from sales; there is obviously the necessary activities of sales people such as contracts and closing the deal, but pre-sales is merely a term used to describe someone who supports the sales process. They aren’t usually responsible for the whole sales process.
What are the typical attributes of a good pre-sales consultant?
I tend to describe the pre-sales person as being similar to a doctor. They are there to be the expert in the room, to gain the clients trust, and to build a relationship with various members of the client organisation. They are there to listen, and to ask probing questions, in order to determine what the business pains are and recommend a solution (medicine).
They have to be practical and realistic, so when they prescribe their solution they need to deliver something that is achievable, within budget and the timescales agreed.
They are then often tasked with liaising with other members of the delivery team in order to deliver the agreed solution. This means good project management skills and people skills in order to ensure that the project delivered is achieved on time and to the appropriate specification.
The rewards in pre-sales are significant: as well as a typical higher salary (and bonus), there is the opportunity to meet directly with a wide range of organisations and this could be at very senior levels. The pre-sales individual has a really good opportunity to build their own personal network.
Pre-sales are often tasked with driving forward product or service innovation, constantly adapting solutions to meet clients’ ever-changing needs. Variety is the spice of life for a pre-sales person.
A pre-sales person will develop a range of softer skills: presenting, stakeholder engagement, project management, proposal writing, objection handling, empathy, teamwork, and a deeper understanding of the industries they operate in.
So, in summary, a good pre-sales person should be credible and have gravitas, be personable and able to build a rapport quickly and easily. They need to be a good listener, be someone who is happy to ask probing questions to all levels of an organisation and have a good grounding in technical skills in order to tightly define or prescribe a solution. They also need to be adaptable. They need to think on their feet and be open-minded as to what the most appropriate solution might be for the client or organisation.
If this sort of role could appeal to you as you transition to the next stage in your career please contact Steve.
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