My List of Excuses to Avoid Stairs

Just like any other 'fat guy', even I need to motivate myself to climb stairs everyday. But sometimes 'laziness' takes priority over 'motivation'. And here are the excuses I use to reason out my laziness:

1. I climbed in morning, so let me avoid now.

2. I need to accompany my friend in elevator, else he will feel bad.

3. I am running out of time, need to be there on 6th floor immediately. So no stairs

4. These leather shoes will be folded and the marks dont go away

5. The lift is waiting here. Should not disappoint it.

6. I will compensate by taking  stairs in the evening, now I will take the elevator.

7. I am not that Fat!!!

My List of 7 Essentials while conducting a Sales Process

1.In-time replies – quick turn around

2.Acknowledging what is possible and what is not possible during the initial meetings – This will set expectations right

3.All rebuttals should have a valid sales arguments (rather than statements/claims)

4.Empathize client’s situation/needs

5.Be Assertive and not aggressive

6.Do not over-commit and under-deliver

7.Get payments at right time

Bottled-Water Economics in Train

During MBA, there was a popular case study in the macro-economics class on how poverty is a vicious circle. The case study demonstrates on how the poor are forced to stay poor. It takes a lot of Government intervention (as regulator and financier), opportunities and luck for someone to break the shackles of poverty and come out of it. The case study demonstrates the fact through an example of calculating the rate of interest/debt pay-back someone had to pay depending on the social class. Mukesh Ambani, because of all his wealth, can get a Rs. 10 lakh loan for a petty interest rate like 10%. (going by the basic interest rate, but actually he might end up getting for a rate less than that.). For him paying this debt back, does not make much of a difference. But a road-side vendor takes a credit (in form of vegetable stock) worth Rs.300 and ends up paying Rs.700 every day. That’s a shocking rate of interest (130%) which he ends up paying because he has no collaterals or wealth.  This Is the reason poor always are forced to stay poor until the government or other institutions intervene to regulate or finance.

In my long list of train journeys, I have seen a very shocking portrayal of this fact in real life. To my surprise I never thought that this big lesson would come from a simple life example of bottled water. A month back, I was travelling in AC 2-tier. It was around 10pm in night, I finished dinner, and needed a bottle of water. When a purveyor was going around I have asked him for two bottles of water. He said he can give me one bottle. I paid him Rs. 15 (printed rate) but immediately I saw that his case has more bottles. I raised my voice and exerted my right that he should sell one more to me. He said that if he will sell more bottles to me, he will lose business. ('Opportunity cost'). I was now curious and asked him to explain. He said he is going to the general-coaches (unreserved coaches) where he will sell the bottle for Rs.30. My first reaction was of shock I wondered how he could sell it at a higher price in a lower economy class. My next reaction was of skepticism, wondering who will buy his over-priced inventory. As though he read my face over the reaction, he began to explain, in General coaches which are cheaper (which most of lower social class people prefer), there is no allocation of seat and people cling to their seats/space which they occupy whenever they get. There is a lot of competition for the seat/space and hence no one would get up from seat to buy a water bottle from en-route stations (even if they were comfortable, buying from stations is difficult, as the train stops for a few mins and sometimes these shops on platforms are not near. Sometime the stations themselves are deserted or worse there are no stations for hours together). They have no option than to depend on the purveyors and buy at the price they sell. Though this cleared my skepticism, but made me furious that this guy is cheating on a poor man. My only consolation at that time was that even the purveyor is poor and he is cheating another poor man to make his living. However it still makes my blood boil that someone buys a general-class ticket to save money but the eco-system does not let him do that. He is always looted to keep him poor.

In this context, the Rs.10 drinking water scheme started by Jayalalita in Tamil Nadu is a welcome move. Many commuters now get access to cheap drinking water at all transit points. Hats Off to you Fat Madam!!

Selling to Clients Outside your Geography

I had a skeptical boss from one of my previous organizations, who never believed selling any-where outside the city we work out of. I had a tough time to convince him to at least start doing so. So I gave up… I gave up not only the idea of convincing him, but also gave up my job with him. Today again, I had a new-joinee who was skeptical about selling in US while sitting in India. Let me say that it is not only possible to build a business but also can build a thriving business on this basis. In fact not just in US, today most countries accept the idea of selling remotely. I go a leap ahead and say it is possible even in India. At my current organization, we have mastered the art of remote selling. (And I am talking about enterprise customers.) These are a few things which I learnt the hard-way which will ensure successful remote selling:

1.       Act, as if he is near you: A customer needs positive validation at all decision points. He wants to understand you, your organization and its processes. So all his small requests (however small) are to be taken as utmost important. Just like someone sitting next to you, you dare not forget his requests (lest you should take-in his sneers, stares and scolds).

2.       Be at his beck and call: No business-contact in this busy world likes to call you just for the fun of it. So if he calls, it becomes obligatory that you talk to him or at least reach out in a meaningful delayed time. That gives him a lot more confidence.

3.       Collaterals are to be speck-less: I keep meeting people who say ‘let’s fill crap in case studies, ppts’. They argument is that no-one looks into them. Mind you in this world of outsourcing, a prospect is just looking for a reason to strike you down. And if your collaterals do not have proper sentences, tone, connotations, images, content, specifications; trust me he will not be impressed by your organization. For him each artifact (whether it’s a website, case studies, docs, ppts) are all his decision-points to make decisions on your process, meticulous nature and the team. If you are not in proper order, trust me you lose the order.

4.       Collaterals are to be relevant: They need to be your extensions of sales arguments. They should understand that you know what you are talking about. Sending irrelevant collaterals just for heck of it, will cast a negative impression. Be choosy in sending artifact.

5.       Every conversation, every resource, every person is important: You might be an excellent orator, a tough sales guy, a near-perfectionist, but if your team is not up to the mark and the conversation involves someone from your team who do not match the client’s expectations, then please strike down the lead immediately after the call.

6.       Meet deadlines: Always meet the commitments or deadlines. I have lost quite a good number of deals just because we could not meet the time line. The moment you don’t match up to the timeline commitments, a client will always perceive it as the time zone difference coming into play (for clients in other time zones) or the remote connect lackadaisical nature coming into play. Both are dangerous for your business.

7.       Keep calling all your clients once in a while: Remote connectivity might turn out dangerous, if you happen to be away from your client’s voice-mails/emails/social-media. He will perceive that you are hiding behind the veil of remote connectivity. The reason will be presumed that you do not want him to see you. Just like you happen to run into a person in office, you also need to ‘happen to run’ into your clients communication channels. A seasoned sales guy knows the importance of this in building long term relationships/businesses.

8.       Access the breadth of the organization on both sides: Try to build relationship across the breadth of the organization. This will help in two ways: a. Help with other opportunities/leads b. Help with getting a second line of contacts, in case the first line moves out. Similarly let your client do the same. That way he will have more confidence on your organization. This is quite common in face to face relationships, then why should it be different in a remote connectivity relation?

9.       References/Testimonials from same geography: Every client needs positive assurances. More so for a remote connectivity client, who does not have the luxury of visiting your office or meeting your team? Sometime even after visiting your premises some customers, like to know how your past clients felt signing you. So references and testimonials from same geography will always help to overcome the mind blocks.

10.   Escalation matrix: A remote client wants to know what if you go absconding on the right time or if you purposefully don’t respond to his communication. So this is one more argument to present your case that you are trustworthy and though he does not sit close to your city, he can reach out to someone higher-up for issues.

11.   Process Driven: Organizations when dealing with unknown entities prefer dealing with a process-driven approach than ad-hoc personal basis. This will give an assurance to the client, that the vendor company has-been-there, done-that, analyzed-the-outcomes and established processes. So project your company as process driven than a free-lancer or a cheap sweatshop. It showcases how the company has matured from past executions.

12.   Virtual Infrastructure: Unfortunately, clients sitting outside your city cannot have a look at your infrastructure or take a call on the organization’s ability. But it is important for a client to get a feel-factor. Here virtual infrastructure like Project Management tools, deployment tools, ticketing systems come handy. Creation of virtual infrastructure needs investment (both effort and time), it surely pays off at the end (just like real infrastructure). The bigger (and better ) the infrastructure created, the more are the brownie points earned. Once created, a sales person should insist that the client goes through this infrastructure. (Just like you show-around your office space to a visiting client).

13.   Transparency: Last and most important is the transparency factor. In (all) long distance relationships, this plays a very important role in creation of mutual trust. If you do not have resources, tell them openly that you do not have, but can recruit. Rather if you say you have resources and then delay the project start for lack of them, it immediately makes clients lose trust.

Happy Selling!!!

Best sales people in the world never sold a thing ..

So goes a popular tenet in the sales circles. While misinterpretations can be many, I like to view it only from the positive perspective which it was meant to be viewed. :)

The day people try to push something very hard, then it is transactional. It will be one off thing, which will not sustain long relationship. And being a sales person, your clients are for relationships for long term, multiple selling and not transactions. So it is better to get in customer's shoes and view things as he wants and advise him as he needs. That is a better way to build ever-lasting relationships than doing one transaction.

As a start-up assess your priorities ...

I have recently met a start-up team. The team is quite an enthusiatic team on verge of launching yet another 'path-breaking' online store in India. They are funded by a popular hotel chain. We were referred to them by our technology partner company, a big cloud player. Three minutes in the meeting, I realized that they are cash strapped. (Most Indian biggies say funding but give peanuts.). I have suggested them options but cautioned that they need to look at their budgets. So while the CEO shied away, the other guys were insisting that I need to work out something for a start-up. I indicated to them my costs will not vary with the client. Irrespective of the client being an American, Indian, Established firm, start up firm, they are same. And in current age the margins are low in IT services industry, so I cant push much. Then I asked the fundamental question here: As a start-up do you need all the services? Thats when they were dumbfolded.

Most start-ups fancy the idea of having big bells and whistles to their core offering. It works fine for a big companies with deep pockets, but small companies should realize that there means are limited. So they need to assess the priorities: must-have; good-to-have; can-do-away. That way they are much comfortable in taking what is needed. In this current case, the start-up needed a 24/7 monitoring for their systems. They wanted this to claim that they can give this on par with other ecommerce stores in market. But they did not realize that when a customer signs, he is aware of the limitations of a start-up. He does not expect everything to be in order from day-1 but expects that his needs/pangs to be heard out. I advised them that they better stay close to their customers and call them on daily/weekly basis to figure out if things were in order and solve them than have a 24/7 customer support team. While it is important for the team to put money in performance tweaking and better tele-support than a monitoring service.

Charaterstics of a good sales guy

I have seen a lot of people talk to stereotype sales guys. A few of times I correct, a few times I ignore and a few times I provoke the debate, what are the characteristics of a sales guy. So I list them here:
1. Patient ( and not pushy as most people perceive)
2. No attention to detail.... Seriously NO. He should be able to see the big picture, forget the tactical ones, the operation teams can ponder on those.
3. Empathy, No sales guy has ever able to sell anything without empathizing with the client. So unlike the perception that sales guys are insensitive, sales guys are empathetic.
4. Truth nothing but truth. A very common misconception is a sales guy lies.. and lies glibly and blissfully. Though I do not blame the perception as some sales guy do resort to selling by hiding truth or lying about them. But the fact is most of this lot are not born sales guys. And not successful sales person. They are existing on a temporary basis, but can never make it in long run. Customers are not ignorant. They will at some point come to know the truth. When they do, it hurts them so badly that not only your reputation but also your company's is at stake.
5. Ignorant and dumb. Salesmen can never be ignorant and dumb. They need to understand the product what they sell. They need to understand why they are selling, what purpose it solves/addresses for its buyers. Only successful sales folk are the ones who know the product/service/solution at hand thoroughly.
6. Lazy. If there is anything someone successful in career has done, it is hard-work. All that pays in end is hard-work. Do not go by the time they hang around in office. Or the time to work on a deck/ppt. The picture perfect deck, the dug-out contacts requires more than just an 8 hour job.
7. Less of Directionless. If anything the process of selling is anything but direction less. There are a lot of things a sales person need to worry about with complete focus.
8. Discipline masked with Glamour, Drink, Dine: That's what it might appear at top. But it requires a lot of discipline to network right, dig out well and wind up cheerful. Though the glamor, drink and dine might be enticing for an observer, but for the right incumbent he knows the responsibilities right.
9. Differentiate between aggressiveness and assertiveness. A sales guy need not be aggressive, but he need to be assertive. He need to know not only where not to bend but also how to pass on the message without offending that things cannot be made to happen as needed.
10. Read to practice: Without evolving market dynamics , a sales person has to be on his toes. He need to know the next wave and also be prepared for it. To ensure this, he need to read a lot and at the same time practice all that is read.

Who obstructs your sales?

So you are again short of your targets. What went wrong? You were able to achieve it in yester-quarters then what happened this quarter? Where is the problem? It is the same you... so no change can occur in sales pitch. It is the same process so no deviations allowed. Who is the stumbling block? The first peeve is the market. Markets do not take excuses, markets are demanding and markets are forgetful. But that's not the complete picture about markets... MARKETS ARE FAIR. Markets follow the theory of natural selection, picking the best. So who let you down? Its your delivery team ... the flip side of your selling team. They are the ones who did not deliver in time or deliver the best quality or not let you keep up your (company's) reputation in the market.They are not in the same league as you are. They do not have KRAs or Targets as you do. They are not motivated with success of the deal. They are not concerned about the business side, as long as they get challenging work to do. So how to mitigate them? Lets talk about it in next post.