MY TURN

Why Your New LP Career Is Going Nowhere and How to Fix It

During my first year in the loss prevention field, I had a manager who routinely took walks around the outside of the store during his shift. He regularly asked me to join him, and he would use the time to simply talk. He discussed tricks of the trade, pitfalls, things I should remember for my safety, and other little golden nuggets of information. At the time I took these walks for granted. I viewed them as simple security checks and, frankly, annoying disruptions to my day. I mean c’mon, we had shoplifters to catch, right? But there comes a point in your career when you’re able to reflect with more clarity.

Today, I realize those walks were much more than just security checks. They provided my manager with time to teach in his environment, where he had my undivided attention. He knew that one day the information he was giving me would prove useful. He was right. Since his method was so effective, plus I could use more exercise, I thought I’d try it myself today. Let’s take a walk shall we?

This Is for the Rookies

Are you a public sector pro that recently made the jump to the private sector? Perhaps you’re fresh out of school looking to blaze your own trail in loss prevention. Or, maybe you’ve switched careers entirely and landed in this field looking to climb the corporate ladder. Regardless of how you’ve arrived, there’s one thing that you should focus on right out of the gate, as it can be the difference between upward mobility and a stagnant career. And if you apply enough effort to it, you’ll be rewarded with the career you want and deserve, instead of settling for one that someone else thinks you should have.

Personal branding—It isn’t just for mega companies with huge marketing budgets. It’s for you. Personal branding is simply the practice of marketing…well, you. It allows you to highlight the skills, traits, and accomplishments that make you unique. Your brand can ultimately become your reputation; what people think of when your name is mentioned.

Let’s Walk over This Way

When you need a dentist, plumber, or even an attorney, how do you evaluate talent before you make a decision on whom to hire? You probably start your search online or ask your friends and family. Before you hire them, the person’s talent and how they will treat you are probably paramount to you. But how do you measure this and what truly influences the decision you make? Most likely it comes down to one thing—perception.

Your own perception of the individual’s talent level and how they treat their customers will either compel you to hire them or keep you searching for a professional that meets your needs. You desperately search for information that will provide insight into this person. You make your own judgments using things like customer testimonials, “star” ratings, and other available data.

Throughout your LP career, the folks that will make decisions about you and your career path will do the same thing. And since much of evaluating your talent is subjective, it’s important that you’re involved in the process and proactively influence the perception those people have of you. This is exactly what personal branding will help you do.

You may be reading this thinking, “If I just do a great job, my results will highlight my talent.” Maybe; maybe not.

I’m sure by now in your new role, you’ve spent a considerable amount of time learning what’s expected of you. You understand the performance metric categories you’ll be measured by—case totals, recovery dollars, sales, accident frequency, shrink numbers, whatever. Producing exceptional results across these categories will surely help justify your employment and satisfy your superiors. But only excelling at them won’t necessarily get you to the next level without mixing in some personal branding. Why?

By Brandon Brown, CFI

Brown is a freelance writer and loss prevention professional with over seventeen years’ experience in the retail, financial, and food-service industries. He holds the Certified Forensic Interviewer (CFI) designation and has received advanced training in Wicklander-Zulawski interview and interrogation and practical kinesics interview and interrogation methods. Brown is a member of the National Writers Union, the International Association of Interviewers, and the Restaurant Loss Prevention and Security Association. He can be reached at brandonbrowncfi@gmail.com.

Let’s Walk across the Street Here

The reason is that real talent can sometimes be difficult to measure and see in the loss prevention industry, especially to the people who really matter when it comes to your career advancement. Whether it’s a superior a bit higher up the ladder in your current company, or a hiring manager at a different company, many times their lines of sight to your talents and accomplishments can be blocked. Sometimes it may be blocked by your immediate supervisor for a myriad of reasons, or sometimes simply because of the nature of our business. For example, the numbers used to evaluate you are often confidential in nature or difficult for hiring managers to locate. Things like privately-held company performance, shrink results, internal theft case totals, recovery dollars, and safety numbers are often very closely guarded.

There is also a component of our jobs that make it difficult to evaluate our talent based on numbers alone. Much of what we do as loss prevention professionals is intangible. Our ability to influence behavior, deter misconduct, train people, and “sell” our message to our business partners and organizations might be reflected in our numbers. Or, they might not be due to circumstances beyond our control. But these things are very important for people to understand when they are making a determination on our effectiveness.

Unfortunately, there’s no website that lists the top 100 most-talented loss prevention professionals, sorted by their unique traits and characteristics for companies to promote or recruit from. For those new to loss prevention, there’s no portfolio to display, showing the masterful work you’ve done in the industry, beyond your own statements and claims. And as long as that’s the case, then it would be prudent for you to be proactively involved in the process and spend some time influencing perception. Here's how.

Watch Your Step on That Curb and Let’s Walk on Back

Best-selling author and marketer, Seth Godin, advises, “Obsessively specialize. No niche is too small if it’s yours.”

Find Your Niche. What problem can you solve better than anyone else? For upward mobility you should invest the time to separate yourself from the rest of your peers, not mimic them. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the crowd. And you’re far better than that. Find your strengths and passions. Strive to be better than them at every other professional in the industry, because when you specialize and make yourself the expert in something, the right people will find you. If you needed heart surgery, would you be okay with any doctor performing the surgery, or would you seek a specialist?

If your forte is training, then be the authority on LP training and awareness. If you’re into safety, then own it. Interviewing? ORC? LP technology? Robbery prevention? Inventory? Know everything there is to know about your chosen niche. Read, study, interact with other industry leaders, and develop or improve your company’s processes in your niche area. It’s easier to market yourself as (insert name) expert on (insert niche), than it is to market (insert name) loss prevention professional. Stand out. Get noticed. Move up.

Conduct an Inventory. Not that kind of inventory—your inventory. Before you can really develop your personal brand, you should know how people currently perceive you. Ask for feedback from your coworkers and others who know you. Listen for the consistencies. Often times, people will give you a lot of information about how you’re perceived (positive and negative) so you can fine-tune their perception down the road. Ignoring your faults and negative traits will only delay your progress and can cause inconsistencies in the brand you are developing.

Network the Right Way. How many times have you received an email out of the blue from a former coworker who you haven’t seen or heard from in years, suddenly asking if you could help him or her find a job? How does that make you feel? Exactly. Don’t be that person. It hurts your brand.

Value the relationships you make and nurture them throughout your career. If you consistently interact, treat people right, and give your time and energy without expecting anything in return; good things will happen. When your network sees you as generous, helpful, and an industry expert, you’ll improve your “star rating” and receive the social proof needed to advertise that your personal brand is solid.

Tell your Story. Stories sell. You’re a human being; not a job title and a resume. Telling your story is really about just being yourself and showing your human side. It’s your personality and uniqueness that will build your personal brand. Your story makes you relatable to others. It drives connection and that’s what it’s all about. Be genuine. Tell your story across any medium you use to communicate your brand’s message, and you’ll make connections that will help your career when it matters most.

Perception Is Reality. Make sure that your brand’s message is consistent. It’s meaningless to spend the time and effort building your reputation offline, only to have your reputation be negatively affected online because you posted the wrong photos. It doesn’t really matter what you think; it matters what your audience thinks. And in your case, your audience is any hiring manager who offers career advancement. How they perceive you is reality.

Pay Attention to the Details. It’s the small things that make the biggest difference, especially because you never know when a networking opportunity might present itself. Make sure your brand is presented well and consistently across all mediums. When was the last time you freshened up your Business cards, Social media accounts, Resume, Email signature, or Professional headshot?

Prepare. Imagine yourself at an industry conference talking to a loss prevention hiring manager. Are you prepared? As Alec Baldwin, sales guru in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, said, “Always be closing.” What will you say if someone asks you what you do? You can’t just say, “I work in the loss prevention department for XYZ company.” Nope. Missed opportunity.

You should be ready with a practiced “elevator pitch”—a brief statement that highlights not only what you do, but communicates your value. You want to highlight why you’re different and what you can provide their company. Always be prepared to market your personal brand in a way that highlights why you’re unique and tells your story at the same time.

Looking Back down the Road

With time spent taking your personal inventory and establishing a personal brand, very soon, you’ll be looking back on a fantastic career that you’ve built in the loss prevention industry. You will have reached your goals because of your own hard work, talent, and personal branding efforts. One day, you’ll have a chance to influence someone else’s career. Share your experiences, struggles, and successes with them. In fact, when that day comes, you may want to ask them if they’d like to take a walk.