Job Responsibilities
Operational - My product is implemented throughout the firm for
different business units. When it goes down, I need it fixed. I
don't need to go out there to physical fix it, or even call the
people who do. There's an operations team at the firm who will
handle that. My role was to establish the right procedures for
that operations team to use when engaging a client to resolve
issues.
Financial - I manage a budget for the product. I spend on
marketing, engineering research, project management of the
implementation, all of which is done in-house. Regardless, I
have to move budget from my cost center to the respective
service's.
Marketing/sales - I need to sell my product to the business
clients. I hold conference calls, client forums for existing
customers to get feedback and for them to spread the news about
my product. Sometimes, they are refered to me by other service
groups or they see my internal website. I then have to ensure
that this technolog is a fit for them by engaging in a product
engineer to answer the technical questions, while I can provide
the answers to the financial questions.
|
Job Requirements
A technology background in my particular technology is not
important. Being technical is not that important though it
certainly helps. The main thing is being comfortable around
clients. During the sales-y parts of the job, you do not need to
know the answer to every question asked by the client, but you
do need to have the people who can answer it present in your
conference calls. That requires good people skills to pull
already busy engineers, project managers, and operations manager
together. Education of the servicce/product you sell will
probably be done on your own.
I started as an assistant service manager, helping out with
reports and research. I then was an associate service manager,
helping with client sales and presentations (along with the data
analysis). I then got my own service/product to manage. I
therefore owned the product from a sales, customer service and
financial focus, with matrix oversight of the technology
development and the day-2 operations.
|
Uppers
The skills are transferable to different industries as long as you can make a
case for it. It's broad business skills, ranging from sales, marketing, finance,
operations, technology. It's a people-oriented business and you can see results
immediately.
|
Downers
As with client-focused jobs, you can get pulled in many
directions since all clients think they are the most important
and require your immediate attention. Because a service manager
pulls the whole service/product together, he/she requires the
expertise of all these engineers, project managers and
operations folks. Getting their respect and their time is often
hard.
|
Lifestyle
The lifestyle is good. 8-6 pm. No weekends. When a big project comes on, you're
on call but you don't have to be on the hours-long conference calls as the
implementation happens. But be ready to make quick decisions if something does go
wrong. And be ready to explain to the client what went wrong and what the next
steps are.
|
Compensation
Base salary was about $50K when I first started in 1999. The
associate service manager brought around $60 and the full
fledged service manager was around $80. This was after 4 raises.
Bonus ranged from $10-13K per year (all pretax). Medical and
dental benefits are available. You pay around $80 per month for
both.
|
Advice to Jobseekers
Be proactive. Learn about the product. Find out about your
potential clients and ask about their business so that you can
find out how your product can fit into their business.
|
|
