My father was a salesman – apparently, a great one. He used to tell this story.

The Area Sales Manager is going through the office one day and he sees the Salesman in his office. The Salesman isn’t making calls or writing proposals or chasing leads or doing any of the stuff that salesmen are meant to be doing. Rather, he has his feet on the desk, is making paper jets and flying them across the office. Apparently he has been doing this for some time – there is a large pile of paper jets on the floor.

The Area Sales Manager comes in and angrily demands to know why the Salesman isn’t making calls/writing proposals/chasing leads.

‘Go **** yourself’, the Salesman says casually.

The Area Sales Manager is outraged. He can hardly believe his ears. Furiously, he storms out of the office, goes to his boss, the Regional Sales Manager and tells him what’s happened.

The Regional Sales Manager too is very, very angry. He can’t have things like this going on in his organization. He accompanies the Area Sales Manager down to the Salesman’s office. The pile of paper jets has gotten bigger. The Regional Sales Manager demands to know whether it’s true that the Salesman told the Area Sales Manager to go **** himself.

Hardly batting an eyelid, the Salesman says that it is.

‘And you can go **** yourself too’, he adds.

At this stage both men are incandescent with anger and indignation. As luck would have it, the Head of Sales for the entire company happens to be in the office that day. The Area and Regional Sales Managers go to this exalted person and tell him what’s happened. They demand that he take some drastic action with the Salesman.

The Head of Sales accompanies the two men down to the Salesman’s office. The Salesman is just putting the finishing touches to another paper jet. The Head of Sales asks the Salesman whether it is true what the two other gentlemen have told him – that he told them to go **** themselves.

‘Yes, it’s true’, the Salesman says agreeably, ‘and you can go for a long walk on a short pier’.

Without another word, the Head of Sales turns on his heel and out of the Salesman’s office. The two other men scurry after him.

‘What are you going to do?’ they ask eagerly.

‘How’s he doing on his targets?’ asks the Head of Sales.

Surprised, the two men look at each other.

‘I think he’s ahead. Isn’t he?’ the Regional Sales Manager asks the Area Sales Manager.

‘Way ahead’, admits the Area Sales Manager. ‘He’s more than 200% over the target’.

The Head of Sales considers this for a moment. Then he starts heading for the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ the two men ask in surprise.

‘I’m going down to the seafront to find a pier’, the Head of Sales says. ‘You two can make your own arrangements’.

The moral of the story? If you’re doing what you said you’d do, then everybody else can go **** themselves.

It’s the key to getting a raise and the key to getting promoted.

Getting a raise

I know somebody who recently got a 40% salary hike! In the current economic climate!! In doing so they turned down what would have been a 50% salary hike to go to a competitor.

Here’s how he did it:

1. He proved he was doing an outstanding job. Just like the Salesman in my story, his job had measures and he showed that he was exceeding them. Significantly. If your job has measures then proving that you’re exceeding them is idiotically simple. If your job doesn’t have measures, then it’s impossible.
2. If your job doesn’t have measures you need to go and work with your boss to put some in place. It’s the conversation that begins with the words, ‘Hey boss, when the end of the year comes, how would we both know that I’ve done an amazing job?’ Don’t bring your boss problems, bring solutions – propose some measures. Without measures, it’s impossible to know if you’re doing a good job or not. And then it becomes very difficult to ask for anything other than a fairly paltry raise. And you might still get stiff resistance to that.
3. Back to my story. That person got another offer. You don’t have to do this but it certainly focuses the boss’s mind. Provided you have measures and provided you are exceeding them, then the decision to pay you more is going to become something of a no-brainer.
4. He asked for a raise. Whether you have another offer or not, with you exceeding your measures, it’s hard to see how they could turn you down. Again, don’t bring them problems, bring them solutions. Explain the salary you’d like and how your performance against that would get measured. You’re already teeing up your next raise.

Getting promoted

To get promoted, to move up or get ahead, you need to show that you can do the job you’re aiming for. The simplest way to do this is with the idea of ‘acting as if’.

‘Acting as if’ is a simple idea. The way you do it is that you try to behave – as far as possible – as though you already had the new job.

Here are some ways of doing that.

• Ask yourself, if you had this new job, what are the measures of success, i.e. how would you know if you had been outstandingly successful? Do you have all the necessary skills and/or qualifications to achieve these measures? If not, what are you going to do about that? Are there certain tools that you need to do that new job? If so, maybe you need to be getting your hands on these and familiarizing yourself with them.
• Imagine what a typical day in this new job would be like? Picture the challenges you would be faced with. How would you deal with those challenges? What people would you have to deal with? Would you be up to coping with those people? What do you even know about those people? How can you find out more? How can you make your current day more like that typical day?
• Are there things you do now which you wouldn’t have to do in the job you’re going after? If so, can you find ways of getting rid of them? And similarly, are there aspects of the job you’re going after that you could start to do now? Could you offer to take on some extra responsibilities (and maybe shed some to counterbalance that)?
• When you go to meetings or presentations, attend them as though you already had this new job. What kind of things would you be hoping to achieve from these meetings or get from these presentations? What points would you be making? Presumably you would view these things from a different standpoint from where you are at the moment. What would that standpoint be?
• Imagine you had the new salary package that goes with this new job. What would that be like? Are there things you’d be able to do that you can’t do now?
• Are there things that you worry about now that you wouldn’t have to worry about in the job you’re going after? If so, could you stop fretting about them now? And equally, what are the things that you’ll have to concern yourself with if you get this new job? How do you feel about those? Will there be a lot more stress involved? Do you want that stress? Will you be able to cope with it?
• Are you ready for the transition to your new job when it comes? If you had to do it right now – I mean, if at this instant, you were told you had the job, what things would you have to get sorted before you could take it up?

All of these things are candidates for being done now.

By acting as if, when the time comes to compete for this job, you’ll be in pole position. On the application form, at the interview, you’ll be able to talk authoritatively of what the world would be like if you got this job.

Do that and you’re most of the way there.