Development Of Professional Development Plan: A Guide For Marketing Managers

Review of my job description

I work as a marketing manager of L’Oreal Australia.

My job holds me responsible for the expansion of the retail business of L’Oreal in Australia by adopting innovative marketing strategies. I am responsible to enhance the sales revenue of L’Oreal in Australia and also achieve an increase of annual sales growth.  I have the responsibility to develop operational plans with the higher management and implement this plan. I am responsible for organizing promotional campaigns of L’Oreal and focus on the success of planning and launching of products.   The promotional campaigns include both Above-The-Line and Below-The-Line promotional activities. I am responsible to review the supply chain management activities, channel management activities and distribution management activities of L’Oreal Australia. I have the prime responsibility of collaborating with distribution channels of L’Oreal including the physical retail stores like supermarkets and online retail stores. My job holds me accountable for analyzing the performance of retail business of L’Oreal Australia and provides powerful inputs to the meetings with higher management. I have the responsibility to design an incentive plan to boost sales growth and to develop a promotional calendar. I have the prime responsibility to collaborate with the Human Resource Management Team of L’Oreal to ensure that the training programs are conducted to develop skills and knowledge of the distribution team so that they can achieve sales target proficiently. I am also responsible for key account management and focus on Customer Relationship management.

• L’Oreal Australia has product lines in five major categories. These categories are fragrances, skin-care, hair-care, hair-color and make-up. The Research and Development team of the organization focuses on innovation and creativity in new product development and improvement of existing products. The organization focuses on a consumer oriented research where the diverse beauty needs of consumer are given top priority.
• L’Oreal is a global organization. So the organization collaborates with its business units located in the United States, France, Singapore, Canada and New Zealand.
• L’Oreal aims to achieve the goal of winning the trust and confidence of billions of customers within a decade. The organization also focuses on sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to create a positive image at workplace. These policies, procedures, plans and goals of L’Oreal will be informed in team and for personal goal setting(com.au 2017).

Team goals  

• To increase repetitive purchase from key accounts by 5% within a span of a quarter. L’Oreal has found that it becomes more difficult to acquire a new customer base than to retain old customers. So the organization aims to increase sales by focusing on a strong relationship building with old customers.
• To organize two cultural diversity training programs for from-line executives within next six months, these programs will help employees to build rapport with culturally diverse customers effectively.
• To achieve 40% growth in e-commerce sales in Australia in next five years. The organization has chosen this goal because e-commerce is booming and customers prefer to make purchases online

Personal goals

• To make myself familiar with modern technology and software of retail management. I have set this personal goal for myself because the L’Oreal plans to implement advancement of technology for attainment of business objectives.
• To develop time-management and creative skills for successful implementation of promotional campaigns within next 3 months. I have set this goal because management of promotional campaign is very important to boost sales of L’Oreal. 

Team goal setting is important for an organization because working together in a team helps in accomplishments of business objectives in an effective way. Team cohesion and team-work fosters innovation and helps to overcome individual weakness to accomplish business objectives. Personal goal setting helps to improve personal skill sets to embrace workplace challenges (Armstrong and Taylor 2014).

The KPIs that will be used to measure performance related to the work goals are sales revenue, customer value and traffic to lead ratio.

The sales revenue can be measured by calculating the difference between total sales of a year and total revenue gained from customers.

The traffic-to-lead ratio will help to measure the e-commerce performance. It will help to measure rate of new digital customers (Armstrong et al. 2015)

I can maintain performance under contingencies by adopting proper risk management techniques and contingency plans. For instance, the fall in sales of L’Oreal due to cultural gap and communication barrier between front-line executives and culturally diverse customers can be reduced by providing them cultural training.

My strength is that I have good emotional intelligence, conscientiousness and score high on extraversion personality traits. I can capitalize on these strengths to collaborate effectively with key accounts and

• I plan to focus on management of digital platform for the advancement of work goals.  We plan to retain loyal customers by focusing on Customer Loyalty programs. These programs will provide loyal customers discounts on next purchase; will offer them special gifts when they make a purchase of substantial amount. Also loyal customers will be invited in promotional events of store through e-mail invitation.
• The sales of L’Oreal Australia can be boosted by developing good relationship with distributors. The channel management activities are of paramount importance for the advancement of work goals.
• The training and development sessions of the front-line-employees of L’Oreal for achieving the sales growth is important because these employees are in direct contact with the customers
• Two Work goals for the development of Work Plans –Two work goals are increasing purchase from loyal customers by 5% within a quarter and organize  two cultural training program for front-line-executives within 6 months

For prioritizing activities, I have made a list of activities with due dates, assessed interdependent activities, analyzed consequence of activities to measure how these activities will help in attainment of work- goal, de-clutter the list and reassessed.

In competing demands, a buyer can have same level of satisfaction by buying competing products, For instance L’Oreal and Revlon cosmetics. I plan to focus on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) activities on digital platform by adopting an effective communication model to interact with customers on social media platform like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to manage competing demands. The organization will ensure to take customer feedback on social media platform, use the platform to understand diverse needs of customers and promote the brand on digital platform. Also, L’Oreal will focus to handle grievance of customers on digital platforms.

Review of the business plans, goals, policies, and procedures of L’Oreal Australia

Process of developing these plans to manage work priorities – The work plans has helped me manage work priorities. I have developed this plan after discussing the same with sales and marketing team and the marketing head. This plan has helped me to manage time effectively because we allotted a timeframe to each activity and followed it strictly.

Work Plan 1

Work Activity	Description	Goals	KPIs	Timeframe	Person Responsible
Introduction of cultural diversity training for the front-line executives of L’Oreal	Front-Line executives will be trained to handle culturally diverse customers by introducing them to different cultural models, role play activities	To increase Customer sales revenue by 20% from culturally diverse customers  in 6 months	The sales revenue can be measured by calculating the difference between total sales of a year and total revenue gained from customers.	6 months	The Human Resource Manager

Work Plan 2

Work Activity	Description	Goals	KPIs	Timeframe	Person Responsible
Boosting sales by retention of loyal customers.	Building an effective communication strategy with loyal customers by leveraging the social media platform. Also my plan is to focus on increasing the footfalls in the stores of L’Oreal by organizing special events in the stores where these loyal customers will be specially invited.	Increasing purchase from loyal customers by 5% within a quarter	Customer Value The traffic-to-lead ratio which will help to measure the e-commerce performance. It will help to measure rate of new digital customers(Hollensen 2015)	A quarter	The Marketing VP, marketing manager and marketing Team

I play a positive role model through work planning and organization. For instance, I collaborated with the human resource team of L’Oreal to organize a training and development session for the front-line executives of L’Oreal.

How my work plans serve as examples that are followed in my workplace- My work-plan helps to manage cultural diversity and boosts sales which are examples for others to follow. For instance, the training of front-line executives focused on two goals. The first goal was the development of technical skills of front-line-executives. The second goal focused on training about cultural diversity where these executives were trained to communicate effectively with culturally diverse customers.

I will adopt the strategy to introduce the practice of yoga class in L’Oreal Australia to manage stress and maintain health. My personal strategy to maintain work-life balance is to go for vacation with family and to spend quality time with family. My strategy to maintain health is to involve myself in physical activities like sports and follow a healthy diet. I plan to collaborate with the human resource department of L’Oreal Australia to organize sports events for the employees to maintain health and overcome stress.

• I have knowledge about management of human resource, marketing and finance. I have knowledge about promotional activities to achieve sales goals. I plan to increase knowledge about both in-store promotional events as well as knowledge about conducting promotional activities through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter   Development of knowledge of communication strategy to interact effectively with customers in social media platform is instrumental for me to meet industry standards.
• I have knowledge about the management of Above-The-Line promotional activities like advertisements in Television, Newspapers and Fashion magazines I have knowledge about celebrity endorsement, so relationship management with key celebrity endorsers. I have knowledge about Customer Relationship Management and repetitive purchase from loyal customers that boosts sales.
• I have skills to foster creativity and innovative thinking in workplace by adopting effective work culture which includes diversity management, open communication model, flexible and supportive work-culture.
• I have innovative skills of digital marketing, automation, Enterprise Resource Planning software, Supply Chain Management software for meeting industry standards. I plan to enhance skills of digital marketing strategies to engage customer on social media platforms.
• I have soft skills of time-management, good communication, team-working and networking skills.

Process undertaken to assess my professional competency

I have assessed my professional competency by taking 360 degree feedback from self, colleagues, employers and customers(Hendry 2012 ).In these feedback sessions I have asked questions about myself and requested my employers and colleagues who have observed me closely to review my knowledge and skills .I have assessed my professional competency by undertaking online personality tests and skill tests.  I have also made a note of my accomplishment and recognition at work to assess my professional competency.

My client gave me feedback that I provide tailor-made and personalized service to clients by focusing on their individual needs. My client has told me that I provide them a good demonstration of products by introducing the features and benefits of the product. My client has told me that I demonstrate professionalism in my behavior .However; my client suggested that I need to improve skill of cultural sensitivity because I often sound culturally biased.

Meeting with colleague-My colleague has told me that I have good communication skills. I demonstrate ability to work effectively within a team. My colleague has also appreciated my knowledge about management, my technical and analytical skills.

I have conducted meetings with my client in his office. I have informed him one week in-advance about the meeting so that his personal schedule is not disturbed because of the feedback session. I have asked open-ended questions to my client and asked him to fill-up a multiple choice questionnaire feedback form. I have applied active listening techniques like I utilized by gestures to convey attention to the client and provided undivided attention to him by acknowledging his message.

I have conducted the meeting with my colleague in the office. I have asked my colleague questions about my technical as well as soft-skills. However my colleague suggested learning advanced course of digital marketing and ERP.I asked my colleague to avoid personal biases while answering these questions. I have adopted active listening skills like. I paid attention to what my colleague is saying without interfering, I took notes while he spoke, and I adopted an attentive body language and responded to him actively.

Timeframe	Description of opportunity/ training	Skills/Competency to Develop
i)One year ii)Five years	I plan to attend a training of cultural diversity within one year. The cultural diversity training is conducted in every corporate office. I have got the opportunity to attend a training of advanced course Enterprise Resource Planning Management within one year. I plan to attend a training of advanced course digital marketing within five years.	The skill that I can develop by attending cultural diversity training is the skill of cultural sensitivity and diversity management. The skill that I can develop by attending Enterprise Resource Management is a technological skill that will help me to manage customer base, employee and product database using software.CRM and Supply chain management are part of ERM  The skill I can develop by pursuing digital marketing training is the skill to manage digital clients effectively.

It is important to acquire new skills to gain competitive edge .I plan to acquire the new skill of automation, digital technology, advanced courses of software management like ERP and SCM. I also plan to develop skills of business analytics. It is important for me to develop skills of effective and ethical communication to maintain competitive edge.

Timeframe	Description of Networking activities	Opportunity/ Professional advantage
One year	I plan to participate in professional networks like staying active in LinkedIn I plan to attend alumni meetings of college to enhance professional network I plan to attend seminars and workshops related to business and entrepreneurship to enhance my professional network	Networking is a very important skill to survive in today’s competitive business world (Bresler and Lubbe 2014) Effective networking will give the opportunity to increase my contacts with industrial professionals who can provide me with good work opportunities in future. I will get professional advantage of having a huge networking circle. I can learn new business skills and gather external information about competitors from this professional network.

The timeframe I have chosen for chosen for developing professional network is one year; the time-frame I have chosen for attending the cultural training is one year. The timeframe I have allotted for attending advanced course of ERP management is one year because I have basic knowledge of this subject. The time I have allotted for attending the advanced Digital Marketing course is five years.

 The professional development plan was developed by applying the feedback session with client and colleague. My client provided me the feedback that I often sound culturally biased. Thus I planned to include cultural diversity training for professional development plan. I also planned to undertake the advanced course of ERP and digital marketing incorporating the feedback of my colleague.

I undertook online personality tests and skill tests to identify the areas where I should improve to develop myself professionally. I also evaluated my skills by categorizing them into soft skills and technical skills. I have adopted procedures like 360 degree feedback and held feedback session with colleague and client, and have utilized my professional network to develop opportunities of professional development plan.

Acquiring new skills can give me competitive edge because the competitive business era is embracing new technological advancement as well as change in work culture. Learning new skills can enhance my professional profile.

I want to build good work-relationship with alumni members, employers to enhance skills. Examples of networking skills include building professional network in LinkedIn

I plan to align my professional development plan to organizational policies, procedures and my work role. For instance, if my work demands me to learn a new technical skill, I will include the same in my professional development plan. I will also learn soft-skills demanded by my work role. 

Reference Lists

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Bresler, M. and Lubbe, I., 2014. Marketing management.

Hendry, C., 2012. Human resource management. Routledge.

Hollensen, S., 2015. Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.

loreal.com.au. 2017. l’OREAL. [online] Available at: https://www.loreal.com.au/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].