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Joy Andrews lost her position as a $100K+ executive about three months ago. Devastated, Joy took some time off to clear her head and get ready for her job search. Joy implemented the four tips that I teach in my article, “4 Critical Steps to Launching Your $100K Executive Job Search & Getting Hired.” But now she wants to know, “What do I need to do to be more effective and keep my job search alive?”

In this article, I give you four sure-fire tactics to implement so that you can keep your job search campaign kicking!

4 Steps to Keep Your 100K+ Executive Job Search Alive:

Step #1 – Reach Out

Networking is more than just going to professional association meetings, eating lunch or dinner with strangers and collecting business cards. There are specific methods for getting a pay off in every networking activity that you engage in!

1. Be intentional. Even before you sign-up for an event, before you pick up the phone, or before you send a resume to anyone, you should have a plan, a goal and an expected outcome for each and every activity that you perform.

2. Categorize Your Contacts. Organizing and categorizing your contact database is key to understanding how to communicate with each contact and what to expect. I recommend that you classify your contacts into three types: power brokers, peers, and pay-it-forward individuals.

3. Customize Your Communications. Once you’ve classified your contacts appropriately, develop different messages for each. Power Brokers, who are one or two levels above you in their career, require valuable strategically positioned messages. Peers, those who are at the same level as you, are great sources for information about companies and contacts. Pay-it-forward groups, those who are one or two levels below you, need only brief and infrequent contact.

Step #2 – Build Trust

Building trust should be part of your continual networking efforts. Building trust is essential in getting others to give you leads and potential opportunities.

1. Intentional Volunteering. When you give, you get. But giving of your time, resources and expertise should be more than just “hoping something will happen.” To volunteer to give AND get results, you need to intentionally volunteer where you can be visible and valuable.

2. Attitude Determine Altitude. Your attitude to volunteering should be about providing value to the other person/group and that you are going to give your very best. This is not the time to “act as a volunteer.”

3. Insider Information. The goal of volunteering is that you should be of such value that you are brought into the “insider group” so that you are the first to know about any opportunities or job searches that companies are conducting BEFORE they post the job.

Step #3 – Develop Talking Points

It is what you SAY that gets you hired; not what you write. Finding opportunities are all part of the process of getting hired. Developing Oral Talking Points that are crisp, clear and memorable will set you apart from the pack.

1. Elevator Pitch. First impressions, as the saying goes, last forever. Yet most $100K+ executives develop their elevator pitch like a mini-resume and often they are boring! In my book, Market Your Potential, Not Your Past, I have a full chapter on the 7 rules for developing an elevator pitch that gets results, including real-life before and after examples!

2. Informational Interview. Why would you call anyone without writing out a script? Yet over and over again, people pick up the phone, dial the number of their contact and then freeze because they don’t know what to say. Write, re-write, and rehearse your introduction along with a closing that gets results.

3. Face-to-Face Meetings. Let’s say you get someone interested in you and invites you to meet with them even if they don’t have an opening at the time. What do you say? How can you make sure that it is a valuable two-way conversation about the business? What will you do to paint the picture in your listener’s mind where they “see” you working at their company? By now, you know the answer – script it out!

Step #4 – Use Low-Key Sales Tactics

Learning how to sell is vital to moving opportunities along – whether or not you are in sales or not. Asking for a job when you haven’t moved the relationship along is not appropriate and neither is it appropriate, if you are a top $100K+ Executive talent, to not “ask for the order.”

1. Prepare to close. Learn to develop and incorporate trial closes, which are open-ended questions (those that start with who, what, where, why, when and/or how,) to gain information and valuable insights along the way towards a final sale.

2. Use Resources Available. Your local library is filled with books about how to sell. Ask a business associate who is a sales professional to help you. Practice orally your trial closes and get comfortable using low-key sales tactics.

These four sure-fire tactics are necessary to get you moving today. However, these are just the beginning. For more tools and information about how to get better results in your executive-level job search, read my bio and click on the link to my website – www.MarketOneExecutive.com

Whether you like KFC or not, the story of Colonel Harland Sanders is truly amazing. This story is inspirational because it’s an example of how perseverance, dedication, and ambition along with hard work can create success; regardless of your age.

Humble Beginnings

Harland Sanders was born September 9, 1890 near Henryville, Indiana. His father died when he was just 6 years old, leaving him the man of the house with a mother and two younger siblings; a brother and a sister. He picked up the art of cooking very quickly and mastered many dishes by the age of 7. During his early years, Harland worked different odd jobs such as farm-hand, streetcar conductor, soldier, fireman, self-taught lawyer, insurance salesman, and steamboat operator.

Mastering Chicken

At the age of 40, he was cooking for travelers out of his service station. His cooking fame spread and soon there were huge lines for his food. Sanders then moved across the street to a motel/restaurant to service the high demand. During this time, Sanders had also been tinkering with his special herbs and spices to make the perfect fried chicken.

The Secret Ingredient

During his search to make the perfect chicken, he was approached by a pressure cooker salesman who convinced Sanders to invest in this product to quicken his cooking process. He ended up investing in 12 pressure cookers. Somewhere around this time, Sanders also ended up reaching his trademark 11 herbs and spices.

Some say that his 11th secret herb/spice was nothing more than regular sea salt. Whatever it was, it worked and sold a lot of chicken. In 1935, Sanders was made into an honorary Colonel by the governor of Kentucky for his cooking skills.

Forced Retirment

Fast forward to 1950. The Colonel is 60 years old and has to shut down his restaurant business because a new highway was being built where his restaurant was located. Colonel Sanders decided to retire and lived off of $105 in the form of social security checks. Not wanting to accept this as his fate, he decided to franchise his chicken at the age of 65.

The Comeback – Relentless Perseverance

He started travelling by car to different restaurants and cooked his fried chicken on the spot for restaurant owners. If the owner liked the chicken, they would enter into a handshake agreement to sell the Colonel’s chicken. Legend has it that Colonel Sanders heard 1009 “no’s” before he heard his first “yes”.

Ok, let me repeat that.

He was turned down one-thousand and nine times before his chicken was accepted once!

The deal was that for each piece of chicken the restaurant sold, Sanders would receive a nickel. The restaurant would receive packets of Colonel’s secret herbs and spices in order to avoid them knowing the recipe. By 1964, Colonel Sanders had 600 franchises selling his trademark chicken. At this time, he sold his company for $2 million dollars but remained as a spokesperson. In 1976, the Colonel was ranked as the world’s second most recognizable celebrity.

The Legacy

Fast forward to today. KFC is one of the largest fast food franchises in the world. Over the years, the company has been owned by RJ Reynolds (now Reynolds American; NYSE: RAI), Pepsico (NYSE: PEP), and is currently under Yum Brands (NYSE: YUM). Yum Brands family also includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silvers, and A&W Restaurants. This brand is the largest restaurant operator in the world in terms of units.

It’s amazing how the man started at the age of 65, when most retire, and built a global empire out of fried chicken.

Now… I’m hungry.

More and more people are getting fat. The incidence of obesity, heart diseases, diabetes and artherosclerosis are rising in the United States, Europe and Asia. This is mainly due to the fact that our lifestyles have become pretty much sedentary, and our diets have mainly consists of downing fats, salts, and sugar. The fast-food industry, with the likes of McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza hut, have been raking in lots of money out of people’s gluttonous desires. And the next generation does not seem to care about their future.

How can we instill in teens the desire to maintain a healthy life? Fear conditioning – bombarding them with “You will die young” ads? Or starting them young – engaging them in fun cooking activities, which is also a great bonding session for the whole family. Teaching children and teenagers about cooking is the beginning of creating a healthier lifestyle for the family. Most kids have the idea that cooking is boring, but it is important to let them know that cooking is a whole lot more. Cooking involves technical know-how in mixing the right ingredients. Cooking opens doors for different tastes and flavors of different cultures, and teaches people to appreciate sophistication and élan in serving and eating a variety of dishes. Cooking is an adventure – not knowing how the food will come up can be both nerve-wrecking and pleasantly surprising. Cooking also gives people the opportunity to switch to healthier and more nutritious foods, and not to rely on too much take outs, fast food or instant food.

Start teaching kids how to cook simpler recipes, which takes about twenty or thirty minutes to create. This makes the task challenging for them, and less time consuming. Involve the kids when mixing, pouring or measuring ingredients. Let them taste test your dish and ask their opinion about its flavor – whether it is too salty, too sweet or just right. Teach them basic knife skills and how to handle different knives properly.

Make cooking a challenging and learning activity inside the household. It is important that kids know making mistakes are okay and that what counts is knowing how the right way is done. Looking over different recipes like a Dutch oven recipe book or a Dutch oven ebook allows kids to explore different dishes, or even experiment with leftovers with different kitchen utensils and tools. Best of all, cooking is both good healthy – not only for the body and mind but also for the heart.