While the world was busy with the dilemma and consequences of Black and White a simple strategy turned into a marketing phenomenon!
On 11.11.2016 Alibaba broke all previous records and crossed sales of 121 bn Yuan – $ 18bn a rise of 32% on last year’s sales which were worth $14.3bn. Continue reading
How many quotes do you submit in a week? How many of those land up just being column fodder to an excel sheet?
Few decades ago, sales people were taught that sales is the game of probability and if you do 8 calls a day, 40 calls per week you will automatically achieve your targets. Continue reading
What drives you, each day – every day? Are you fighting to survive, or are you focused on winning? Without context, this could seem like a mere play of words. But, you see examples of this all around you – in people, athletes and all those who compete in any way. Continue reading
Business challenge running a business a businessman isolated on a white background
“We have some really good sales people working hard to win business we don’t want”
This is what I heard from a Sales Leader recently and I thought, is this the paradox sales people are facing? When we started our careers in sales, we were taught that persistence pays, stay at it and finally you will get it, keep following up, they will buy. So we believed we should and will win all deals. Continue reading
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein
Are you aware of the Insanity trap? I feel this is more visible with people who have been in the same industry for fairly long and believe they know the industry better than anyone else. While it is true that being in an industry would build the subject matter expertise however, what it also does is solidify the perspectives so much that they defy change.“ I have been here for a long time”, “ I know how this works”, “This is the way it works in our industry”, “ We are different”! If you have ever caught yourself saying any of these phrases beware, it’s a one way ticket into the insanity trap, where we continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.
In economics and engineering, the price–performance ratio refers to a product’s ability to deliver performance, of any sort, for its price. So the question to sales people then is do you loose deals on price or on the perceived price performance?
As a sales professional I am sure everyone has had this experience. You work on a deal for a very very long time and then you loose it! It is so painful ! However one thing I hear most sales professionals say is” I just knew it!” Or sometimes even -“ I should have just stopped working on it long ago”. Continue reading
“Don’t try to tell the customer what he wants. If you want to be smart, be smart in the shower. Then get out, go to work and serve the customer!” ~ Gene Buckley
Working with sales professionals I have realized that sometimes you are dealing with a really confused lot of people. With so many messages and buzzwords being thrown at them, sometimes, they really don’t know what is the expectation of the customer. The quote really sums up my sentiment – It’s all about serving the customer.
“Nothing happens till someone sells something” I heard Bob Miller say this the first time at our roadshow in India and maybe it was the passion he said it with that hit the point home! The more you think about it the more you realize the power of this.
The one innate ability we have as humans is the power to influence each other, a mother influences her child to follow the discipline of values she wants to enforce, friends influence each other to form their own rules, bosses influence their team to deliver on tasks. So then your success is dependent on your power of influencing, right?
Growing up in a populous country it was always easy to be a part of the crowd and there was a merit given to it as well. Blend in, be like the others ! I still remember back in school how parents and teachers often asked us to observe certain things…like how some students study, how they dress, how they behave etc. At that time it started to seem to me as if being different may be wrong because then you would not blend in. Even in the corporate world systems and processes were imposed so to ensure that you blend in and not do something radically different and in fact, you are rewarded to be part of the culture.
However, a subtle shift began when the world became flat so if you blend in, you will survive but would you get noticed?
That’s where the conversations around standing out began. We saw some desperate attempts for people to stand out, some of these were the so called gimmicks of our times. Like when Virgin Mobile was launched in India with Richard Branson on an elephant..he did stand out! Look around you and you will find everyone wanting to stand out, this may be by the institutes they go to, the degrees they attain, their style of dressing etc., going against the norms, innovating, doing the unexpected, just to get noticed.
Earlier as a human resource my competition was with people of my generation in my catchment area and in that limited space available everyone found something to do but today we compete across generations, genders, cultures, education backgrounds…so yes standing out makes sense. So how do we do it?
My perspective is that the best way to Stand Out just might be to Fit In! Note that I am not saying “Blend In” but “Fit In”.
I have realized that, people who have the ability to adapt to different personas and fit in often get noticed more than the one who is trying to being different. Maybe today the unexpected is the expected. Across generations and cultures we all appreciate someone who makes it easy for us to connect with them. Understand and speak to me in a simple but comprehensible language, connect with my culture or way of doing things, don’t intimidate me with who you are, get off the pedestal and be like me so that I can connect with you.
Being a woman in sales for more than two decades, standing out meant, being a bit like the men in the team, using the sales french, collaborating for some clients, competing hard for targets, going out on a drink binge, etc. Occasionally I heard my team mates comment,”Sometimes we forget you are a women!”, but this made us a cohesive group. So, that’s my very own example of Fitting In to Stand Out!
If you want to stand out, when connecting with the cross functional teams, work hard to fit into their shoes so you can experience their pain.
As a manager attempt to live the life of your team member to understand the issues they face while fulfilling their KPI’s at their maturity level.
As a parent step into the persona of your child and play it by their rules of the game.
For your friends connect with them in their own worlds and the more you fit in, you will stand out!
The idea is to have more Class -“CLASS. You either have it, or you don’t. It’s not determined by how you dress, your level of education or your social standing. It’s conveyed in how you carry yourself and treat others. Some folks go to great lengths to “prove” they make the grade. Ultimately, people with class are outstanding without trying too hard to stand out.” ― Carlos Wallace
businesssaltblog 