Were you expecting a promotion to come but didn’t get promoted even though you had a great year and have been performing well? Many sales professionals I have talked to have shared with me their experiences about how they didn’t get promoted, when they felt that they deserved it.
DIDN’T GET PROMOTED!
The first thing to realize is that a promotion doesn’t come easily and does take some planning, patience and communication for it to occur. Most sales professionals who perform well, yet didn’t get promoted because they didn’t communicate their intentions to their sales manager and put together an individual development plan. Many professionals fall into this trap of thinking that if he/she works hard, perform well and is liked, that when it comes time to decide on who gets promoted, that their name will automatically come up. This will rarely happen but by having a personal professional sales career goal, you can work towards getting a promotion.
You will first need to know what kind of promotion you are striving for. Are you looking for a senior title, management or a totally different department? If you know this, and you mention it a few times to your manager and a few senior managers, or have it written on your mandatory personal development plan that you go over with your manager every year, don’t expect them to remember and work on your career progression plan. It is up to you to work at at, follow up and track your progress. In your mind, you might think you deserve a promotion, and when you didn’t get promoted, you feel offended. When you look at the situation and didn’t communicate your goals, then how do you expect others to know and all that happed was that you didn’t get promoted?
When you perform well, yet don’t have a career progression plan, or work towards developing your sales career progression plan, then don’t be surprised if you didn’t get promoted. To get promoted, you will might not see success immediately as others are also vying for the promotion and many of them also didn’t get promoted the first go around as well.
Remember, many people perform well and go above and beyond as well as have a sales career goal and progression plan, but still this isn’t a guarantee to get promoted and they didn’t get promoted. If you goal is to get promoted, set a goal for yourself, set a timeline and create a strategy to achieve this goal. It takes work on your part to get promoted, and if you didn’t get promoted after doing everything right, being persistent and reworking your strategy is the best you can do to keep progressing towards your goal. You also have to evaluate if your goals are realistic and obtainable. I have met 1 year sales representatives who already want to become sales managers, yet only have one year of experience under their belt. It is no surprise that they didn’t get promoted, yet they feel as if they deserve it. This ambition is fine, but being realistic and having a workable sales career plan will help you gain the promotion you are looking for.
Recommended article: Didn’t get promoted: Get over it! If you didn’t get promoted, don’t get mad but build a career plan and goal to reach your sales career goals. Have patience and perseverance and you will realize success.
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