A group within a company

You head up a division, business unit, group or team within an organisation. You manage a team of people and have targets you must meet for the benefit of the company, your remuneration package and career prospects.

You are responsible for achieving certain business targets for the group and so you treat your area as you would your own business.

You may be responsible for one or more of the following:

• The revenue and profit of your group.
• New product development and launch within your business unit.
• The Operational effectiveness of the company.
• A regional sales team.
• Providing the remote and field-based technical design-in support of your products.

You lead and manage a team of people and are responsible for their productivity, motivation and career path. You resolve issues and make sure they meet the milestones and targets you've set.

You report to the next level up within the company and are responsible for ensuring the group's targets are being hit. With the support of your manager, you decide how to hit these targets and look for creative ways to increase business and improve processes and make your team work as efficiently and effctively as possiblew within the constraints of your budget.

Regardless of whether you're running a company or a group within one, it's vital that you develop and implement a startegy plan which aligns with the corporate startegy plan and ensures you deliver on your targets.

Your career is important to you and you want to be a good leader, show initiative and creativity and meet your targets. If only there were more hours in the day.

Download either the Strategic Planning Health Check Lite to help you create and implement a successful strategy plan, meet your targets, be an effective leader that maintains a balanced, effective and motivated team and which can ultimately help you in the progress of your career.

Below are examples of the challenges you may relate to.

Is this you?

The semiconductor business unit

You’re the head of a business unit for a semiconductor company. Your target market segment is highly competitive with long design-in periods and competitive solutions that rival your own from companies at least as large as yours.

Business is still pretty healthy but you have found that you’re competing more on price which isn’t sustainable. There is less budget to create new products and so you need to make sure that any new solution will be a winner and meets the needs of your key customers.

You cannot afford to be designed out of any of your customers because it will take years to get back in so you look after them. You keep them informed of new developments and work closely with the sales team to ensure they're identifying all projects and potential opportunities and FAEs to make sure that Tier1 customers are receiving all the support they need.

You understand that your Tier2 customers could be next year's Tier1 and so you and your team work closely with your sales channels in supporting them.

The distributor product manager

You a responsible for a (number of) product line(s) for an electronics distributor. You manage a team of internal sales people and field application engineers. You have P&L reposnsibility and an aggressive sales target to hit. You and your team work closely with the field sales teams to ensure as much of your product portfolio is designed in. You are responsible for training and incentivising the sales force to meet their targets so that you hit yours.

Business is picking up after a couple of really tough years and the loss of some key people. There is however, much pressure from your boss and from the suppliers of the lines you run. Design-in to production can take six months or longer and so you have to balance, managing volume business and winning enough design slots to secure future business.

You hold quarterly review meetings with your suppliers which can sometimes feel more like an inquisition. And you fight for margin.

There is pressure from above and your stress levels, as-well-as hours, have been steadily increasing. However, most of the time you love your job, the industry, the people and want to do well.

The regional sales manager

You a responsible for a geographical region and team of field sales people. The more experienced members of your team manage a set of key accounts and you have a couple of young, less experienced people who manage lower tier accounts and new opportunities. Your region contributes a major percentage of the company's total revenue and you have a large portfolio of products in your linecard.

Customers have been struggling and it's been tough meeting your sales targets. You've had motivational and productive issues with some of your people which you're trying to sort out before they demoralise the rest of your team.

As well as needing to meet a target number of weekly customer visits and submit visit reports, you and your team also get called in for supplier training and review meetings which you try to keep down as you're aware that if your team isn't visiting customers then your competitors will be.

You can't always get the supported pricing you need to win the business and get involved in a number of price, stocking and delivery negotiations.

You enjoy your work; your team and your customers but feel swamped by the paperwork and can spend hours in the evenings completing it.

You want your group and team to succeed. You want to feel in control and you want your career to advance.

Download the Health Check Lite it will give you the perspective and guidance you need and help you lead confidently from the front and stay in control of your domain.