zenika-career-paths-framework
Business path
The business path focuses on our ability to satisfy our interlocutor needs.
The objective is not to sell all the items in the shop to someone. It is rather to be a good “personnal advisor”, in order to go beyond the demand, to be able to understand the real need, or even to anticipate the future needs based on our experiences or our market knowledge.
Path breakdown
All types of businesspersons share common fundamental abilities:
- Ability to listen to needs
- Ability to extract actual needs from demands
- Ability to anticipate needs within a situation
- Ability to transpose knowledge from another domain to our iterlocutors’ contexts
In order to grow in that path, we designed 3 different levels we thought relevant for any type of Business person:
- Opportunity seeker: is able to listen to the demand and satisfy it
- Business Creator: is able to analyze the demand and satisfy the underlying need
- Business Developer: is able to manage a growing set of demands and to satisfy needs of the recipient according to their capacity
- New Market Explorer: is able to anticipate the demand and create a new need
Overview
Steps overview
Dedicated servant
As stated above, the main objectve is not to sell an encyclopedia to the grand’ma in your neighbourhood. It is to best answer the need of your interlocutor and, depending on your level, to either:
- directly address it
- reassess it
- look beyond it
Let’s go over an example.
You work with your friend, lunch time is coming. They tell you: “I want a pizza”.
If you answer their demand, you call the pizzeria to order one.
If you focus on their need, have lunch or eat something, you can either check if they will accept something else (Indian, Mexican) or go deeper into the requirement: “Do you want a drink and an icecream in addition to that?”.
If you anticipate future needs: “Let’s go for the pizza. But, you know, what about doing sports as well? It will not be very healthy to eat pizzas every day.” This is based on your experience of delivering pizzas to thousands of persons.
Steps details
Opportunity seeker
Persons may be afraid of “selling” something. However, the key objective here is to help our interlocutor, sometimes even without immediate benefit.
The key abilities of an Opportunity Seeker are:
- Ability to understand the demand
- Ability to convert the demand to an answer
Business Creator
Sometimes, people may have the feeling to try to sell all the shop to the interlocutor. This is, again, not the aim. the objective is to satisfy the customer’s need, to be able to go beyond their demand and to understand their real need. Product owners are used to saying “customers have difficulties to clearly express their needs: they often focus on a specific demand or detail”.
The key abilities of a Business Creator are:
- Ability to go over the demand to identify the real needs
- Ability to validate the identified needs
- Ability to question the expression of the need
Business Developer
When we work on a specified need, we usually want to satisfy it in a “perfect” way. However, taking into account the cost and scope of a solution is key to a durable relationship. Being able to cover a large scope of needs / topics is also important to help the business partner globally and not only on a specific area.
The key abilities of a Business Developer are:
- Ability to manage and connect different sets of needs
- Ability to use a “Design-to-Cost” approach
- Ability to help on a global scope
New Market Explorer
Sometimes, people are stuck in a particular domain. They are not able to transpose what happens in other domains to their own context. New Market Explorers are persons with the ability to extrapolate to other domains. They are also persons who can innovate within a contextual domain. Both aspects are equally important.
The key abilities of a New Market Explorer are :
- Ability to extrapolate and/or correlate needs across different domains
- Ability to explain why an out-of-band solution can be suitable in a given context