Retired senior executives – reposition your personal brand
03 June 2014
Edwin Sim looks at optimizing retired senior executives post-retirement advisory careers.
Recently, many 50 year-old plus senior executives retired from top multinational firm positions asked us to assist with their post-retirement careers as senior corporate consultants.
They have successfully spent decades building multinational companies’ businesses and brands but few have considered pro-actively developing their own personal brands that are most important for successfully selling senior expert-resource advisory services.
The majority have stellar reputations as top business leaders, who contributed to their companies’ dynamic past two-decades’ growth.
To successfully optimize their value as senior-expert-resource advisors for transitioning regional companies, my experience indicates they must undertake several pro-active measures.
Identify value-added experience & skills
They must initially identify what specific value-added experiences and skills potential clients may need and how their own knowledge and experiences can successfully deliver these value-added services.
Much of this process can be ascertained by discussing potential opportunities with past employers or previous business contacts.
Valuable insight can also be obtained from executive advisory and consulting companies that address and provide solutions to these issues daily.
Develop simple compelling narrative
Secondly, these retired senior executives must develop a simple narrative explaining the compelling value-added services and unique knowledge and experiences they can provide potential clients. Their services will invariably augment and be value-added to work done by their potential clients’ current executives.
In most situations, companies take-on retired senior executives on short-term projects to access their unique knowledge and experiences. The advisor works closely with management teams as they develop and execute specific corporate strategies.
Reintroducing yourself to target markets
Retired senior executives must also pro-actively re-introduce themselves to their target markets, a critical important process.
In former lives, they may have been MNC CEOs, but current public perceptions are more than likely to be out-dated by several years.
We suggest that senior executives should strategically re-educate friends, acquaintances and past business associates about their new persona because they will inevitably be important customers and recommenders.
That means proactively using the most suitable media, ie phone, e-mail, blogs, podcasts, videocasts to let everyone know their new direction and if appropriate asking them for help, advice or business.
Consulting professionals
We also suggest that senior executives should consider consulting professionals to develop and execute simple, attractive and compelling materials that communicate unique strengths can be easily remembered.
Last but not least, our experience also indicates that upon completing the above-mentioned pro-active measures, they should seriously think about engaging a professional advisory services company to help them price and sell their individual unique services.
In Asian cultures, face is critical and a professional company can resolve many inherent cultural and pricing obstacles.
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