Sales Life : A simple way to succeed

Success is not a destination, but a continuous process!! The day you decide you are successful, you can become complacent. With every moment of success, you start getting a grip of your sales career and you become more confident and the journey towards success starts.

I have seen many successful sales and marketing professionals rise and fall from a very good position at the beginning of their peak. These are the ones who are following success but success never follows them. Some good achievements make them supermen and they live in these fantasies and become junk within no time. They too have defining and glorious moments in their early stages however, the problem starts when they rate themselves too big and fall prey too quickly on offers that are mainly meant for using them. Result is that these so called self-successful people have limited life in their new ventures and most often exposed on their limitations. Their career ends too early and are known to only those who experienced their success in those early days.

Look around and you will find many such good professionals whom you had rated very high but are lost somewhere in the No Mans world. Success is an addiction for some and things start becoming ugly when they self rate themselves higher than their current profile.

Their is no harm in aspiring for bigger positions or bigger packages in your early stages. Rather, one should have such ambitions that motivates him to perform and grow. As a professional myself, I would suggest the following key points that can lead to a stable an successful career at the very beginning of your sales career;

• Right Field : Choose the right field. It means the right products, right company irrelevant of what is offered. If you are good, you will get more than what you expected in a very short time.
• Be Present : Make sure you are visible. By visible, I mean in every sense. Make sure you report every move you take in the interest of your company. Try to put forth some new ideas which you think are new and do not ignore such inner qualities within yourself thinking that the company must have already tried such things. Make sure you speak out. Let the message get passed that you are the new contributor to ideas. 
• Clear your Basics : Maybe you have the best technical brain or maybe you had a good academic career still in the sales front, before you apply yourself on the field, make sure your basic queries are cleared. Do not hesitate to ask any silly question to your superior or colleague or even your friend who is working in similar fields. The better your basics, the best is your chance to make a mark on your customer. In the end, you have to sell yourself first to sell your product, although not literally.In other words, a customer will buy your product  only when he trusts you. 
• Have a vision : Make sure you have a vision for your professional life. A vision is a light house in your professional career and guides you at your target every time you loose your focus. Without a vision, you will make mistakes and loose important time.
• Job Changes : Never compare yourself with your friends, colleagues, neighbors or relatives when it comes to your job. You are precious and you know this better than anyone in this entire world. But for that you have to have patience. Just because someone else grows with a change in job, it doesn't make you small in front of them. You should grow at your pace. Change the job if you are having problems that cannot be solved. Most of the time, problems are self created and the solution also lies with ourselves. In my view, change the job if you are not being recognized, or if the company has no vision, or you are uncomfortable with the solutions or products offered or your growth is very less. Salary is important but should never be the deciding factor in changing the job. If you feel you are the best and doing a great job, be sure, the company has the same view, and they will ensure maximum that you are always comfortable. If they don't, they are sure that they will loose you. Also, make sure your needs are proportionate to the company's growth. A growing company will always give a stable income growth than a stable or saturated company which offers high income added with extra stress ;) Even if you are successful, if your company and you yourself have a definite vision, the combination can do wonders.
• Team Player : Even if you have played an anchor innings in the successful deal or project order, make sure you share the achievements. Nothing can be achieved solo in this career. Its all a team game. Be on ground always and make sure you praise everyone who are involved in your achievements. It will make a good character of you and you will always be a man which every team will need. 

In short, in the fast paced sales career, make sure you make it simple and successful. In the long run, those who went faster in front of you, will never even scale heights that you reach with this. Be a role model and a guide to all those who might get lost mid way in their early stages of professional sales life!!!

Sales Talk : Competition Story

Fighting Competition!!!

Recently in one of my half yearly review meetings, I came across one of my team members that they are being disturbed unnecessarily by a competitor in most of the major enquiries they come across for the company we work for. The major issue here was that more than half of  employees working with this competitor are our ex-employees, and they have similar product with around 75 percent similar advantages like our products. The company, they work for, is not bad, although the activities on marketing needs a lot of questions.

Instead of merits on their products, the competition here was promoting products as " Similar to our Products" and using every negative marketing strategy you could think of. Most of the time, they work on the enquiries generated for our products and throw prices to somehow spoil or grab our orders. Result was always discouraging to our team members as they would loose out on margins on orders. To some extent, a couple of orders have also gone where the purchase guys had no option but to place an order on the low pricing.

Our team members even tried to help customers in understanding the features and prompting them on benefits when the competition had counter offered. However, some of these steps were fruitful and some were not.

As I knew many of our employees, rather our ex-employees, I decided to check how they respond to enquiries when they get. The ex-engineer in question here in this region, who is a regional Manager with this competitor, knew me as the others and I decided to check on their strategy. Since my team member had this ex-engineers mobile number, i decided to make a surprise call to him. ( He didnt had my number so could not have known that it was me)

Following conversation took place between us; ( Here I will mention him as a EX  and for the record.. he still uses the same number for this competitor when he was working with us)

Call got connected...

Me : Hello!!  Is it Ex?
Ex : Yes, who is it? ( Obviously he didnt recognise me)
Me :  I need a Hensel ( My company) Junction Box. Can you please help me?
Ex :  Yes sir, but I am not working with Hensel ( I was relieved to hear that he was truthful). I can give similar product from another German company.
Me : No, but I like Hensel and I need only that product.
Ex : Sir, my product is better than Hensel. It is also Polycarbonate ( Generally, we stress on the material properties and he used the same here with the competiton)
Me : No, But the temperature range is better with Hensel. I know your company doesnt has such a good rating. ( I wanted to test him on some features of our products)
Ex : No sir, We offer a range that can sustain upto 80 degrees Celcius.
Me : But Hensel is better, it is upto 120 degrees.
Ex : ( Confused) No sir. we offer Ambient temperature upto 80 deg. We have 130 degrees fire retardant.
Me : ( Trying to show as if Iam not convinced) What? What are you talking about? What is the temperature resistance? Iam asking temperature resistance and you are talking on flame retardant features..
Ex :  ( Confused again ) Sir, Ambient is 80 deg and glow wire test 130 deg
Me : ( Angry on him as Iam more technically sound as a customer) How can you say this? If you dont know correctly, you should say, I dont know sir and I will let you know. Do you know the meaning of Ambient?
Ex : ( This time he is more angry on me.. and remember Iam actually a customer to him ) Sir who gave you my number???
Me : Why? I have your name card with me? Iam new in this company but it seems when you were working in Hensel, you had visited us and given your visiting card. Why are you getting angry? In fact I need to now speak to someone superior in your company? ( I was a bit harsh this time)
Ex : Iam not angry but you are not understanding. ( Confused, and angry tone)
Me : Do you know what standard is referred for Flame / Fire retardant?  You dont know what is Ambient? How can you suggest me such a product when iam asking for something which i know and iam aware of.?         ( Loud Voice and Angry tone )
Ex : ( Angry again) I told you 130 degrees. you only called me and now why are you shouting.
Me : GIVE ME YOUR SUPERIORS NAME!! ( Real good angry tone this time)
Ex : Why should I give. Iam keeping the phone. If you dont want, you can hang up. ( He was about to disconnect the call this time)

The next instant, I introduced myself to him and told him to calm down. I told him who he was actually speaking to. Also laughed about this entire episode loudly so that he takes it in a lighter vein. But he was totally shaken.I told him how can he forget my voice. He replied that he really could not recognise me. I apologised him and told him that I got his number and remembered him as I came to know that he is able to take away some of our orders. He tried to tell me that he doesnt but confirmed that he tries quite hard. I jovially scolded him as an ex boss that he forgot everything that we trained him on. Simple features, he was not able to explain. After clearing a couple of doubts for him, I hung up.

All my team members were laughing on the entire telephonic conversation and they all took one point very nicely from this episode. They have concluded that next time, if they find such competitors ( Mainly followers of our success ),they will simply ask the customers to call them face to face and ask any technical questions on the product to both, us and them. They are confident that they can definitely have an upper edge always.

With due apologies to my ex-sales engineer and ex-managers, doing favors to competition, the above experience for me was quite entertaining and hence thought of sharing it here. I could only take one more important lesson, that if your roots are strong, ethics are in place, you need not worry about fighting competition. Leaders will always lead... others will follow!!