Don’t underrate your skills, great marketers are made

Learn the personalities of those you want to hire to know people who can best fit the job. Photo/FILE 

By DR FRANK NJENGA

Q. I have just been offered a job in the marketing department of a blue chip company in Nairobi. I am, however, really not sure of taking up the offer because I was head-hunted and did not apply for the job. 

But more importantly, I think I don’t have the qualities of a good marketer. My friends tell me that to be a good marketer one has to be loud and outgoing, qualities that I don’t have.

The package offered is good but I think my personality doesn’t match the requirements of a marketer as stated by my friends. Should I take up the job?”

You have given enough reasons for you not taking up the job and the simple answer to your question is, do not take the job.

For a start, you seem very comfortable in your present job, and I must assume that you have a clear cut career path drawn out in your present employment. If that is the case, then you can politely point out to the head hunter that you already have what your heart desires.

You must make it plain to him and to yourself, that in your life, a good package is a good thing, but job satisfaction and career growth are what drives you.

Sadly however, rather than put the blue chip company off, they might increase the offer because you are precisely the kind of employee they are looking for.

This where the second reason comes in. You have no wish to go into marketing. Your intention is to remain in production where you have already achieved a measure of competence and in any case, you plan to set up on your own, producing tinned vegetables for local consumption (mostly schools), in competition with your present employer.

Tell them that you feel comfortable in the area of your training and that your husband, who has a degree in marketing, will play that role in your intended company. This might make them go for you even harder.

A 35-year-old woman who has a good education, stable family and a clear cut plan for a career in industry would become irresistible to a head hunter!

Remember that in all this interaction, the head hunter and the blue chip company have checked your background and are satisfied that whatever the potential employer pays you, you will be worth more to them.

It is therefore possible that you have more skills in production as well as marketing than you give yourself credit for. While your friends are partly right about the traditional personality of a person working in marketing, remind them that this is the 21st Century and marketing is no longer about meeting people in social gatherings and persuading them to buy your latest brand of fruit juice.

Marketing requires a number of skills that include analytical capacity to help one clearly define the product, its quality and the segment in the market that product will fill. That done, the analytical mind is directed to developing a marketing strategy.

These skills demand a person who is able to define the product, its potential customers, the nature of the completion as well as whether the product will provide wide margins with relatively few sales, or whether volumes will drive profits.

An analysis of many other factors, including the size of the market locally, potential for exports as well as potential for partnerships with, say, supermarket chains must be carried out.