Sales is all about attitude……..

Any business, whether established or start-up has only one goal: to increase sales and that too at a faster pace. Business establishments invest quite a large amount of money every year in hiring and training the sales teams. Few team members shine and others fade away. 

Though there are excellent sales training, coaching sessions and books available, still it is not enough for some one to become a top notch sales professional. 

Sales starts with leads and larger the pipeline, better is the opportunity for qualifying a suspect as a prospect. Here the key lies with qualification. More insight the sales person has on the market, customers’ needs as to why they should buy and how they should buy and who are the decision makers; more equipped he/she is to qualify the leads.

In today’s connected and digital world, prospects are always better informed about the products and services. That demands the sales person to be equipped with more knowledge on the products and services, future roadmap and competitors. The sales person, who strives to stay ahead through gaining more and more knowledge, deserves prospect’s trust and respect. At the end of the day, people buy from the people whom they trust and respect.

And the last one is to be responsive in following up till closure. Responsive sales person always has a fast mover advantage, thus gaining prospect’s mind-share.

Top-notch sales persons have a common denominator: they have an attitude to excel through self-motivation and they steal those extra hours from their own time schedule investing in self-improvement. And that is the winning attitude.

3Ps that set the Winning Team apart …

There is no team that does not want to win and the one who wins consistently is termed as the ‘Winning Team’. When one looks at the characteristics of a winning team, one finds that it rests on 3 pillars-  Purpose, People and Priorities.

The bottom line is that a team is a bunch of people with individual emotions coupled with their own strengths and weaknesses. As a leader, one should understand this aspect and manage the team accordingly. If the leader can set a purpose that each team member accepts as the peak he or she needs to achieve as a personal achievement, then the leader is assured of the highest productivity from the team. Purpose is the glue that brings and binds the team together and the winning team’s adrenaline is pumped up with a common purpose. 

A good leader knows that he can go the distance that the team takes him and spends considerable time in understanding each team member. Knowing the people in the team is as important as setting the goal for the team. It helps in assessing the ones who bring in energy, who drains it and who pulls it sideways; who is a natural leader, who is self motivated, who needs that extra hand and who may drop the ball when moment comes. These insights help the leader in refining his treatment to the people, in allocating roles, in defining empowerment, identifying need for mentoring, vesting responsibility and marginalizing. 

Every day is a new day and the winning team sets the priorities to focus and sets the measures to review the results. This is to validate whether they are indicators of winning as the ultimate aim is to win every day so that team is assured of the direction of reaching their goalpost. Without priorities, teams go adrift. While the goalpost is constant, priorities are not. Priorities are dynamic and the winning team knows how to adjust and reprioritize on a quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily basis. 

The DNA of a winning team rests on these three pillars and they are part of the execution style of any good leader who leads a winning team. 

Don’t wait but initiate ……

Heard somewhere that if you want to move then better start packing. True. Often we ponder over choices, dawdle upon yes and no, procrastinate. Do anything but start taking the first step, the first action and be the initiator.  You may do mistakes, still don't fret but act.

Once the action is taken there will be hundreds who may say that it is wrong and thousands will be out there who may say that there is a better way to start. It does not matter as they did not initiate the action and hence their opinion does not count. And more so there will be always silent spectators and more vociferous sideline commentators, but that should not deter us from taking the action, doing the things, making mistakes, correcting and continuing.

As Theodore Roosevelt said “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” Hence be bold enough to take the step and make something.

Sharpening the thoughts through writing them down….

In the midst of tablets and smartphones, there is still merit to write things down instead of typing on virtual keypads. When the fingers feel a little pressure holding the pen and writing the letters on a piece of paper, a pulse reaches the brain that chisels the thoughts making them clear and sharper. It gives immediate feedback questioning the thought process and defines the contours of the raw idea held within.

I love writing. And where one needs to capture the thoughts like snapshots for future reference or where one needs to share the idea with others for their point of view, writing down comes handy. Thinking through does not happen unless you think far, think wide and think deep and writing things down enhances the process of thinking through. 

It definitely helps everyone, especially those who are always in a rush like startup entrepreneurs whose mind is running at a pace with ideas and questions on products, marketing plan, business plan, content strategy, funding so on and so forth. And in this rush one tends to miss thinking through. It is better to take a pause, rest a little bit and put the thoughts down on paper to avoid ambiguity and something to refer to at a later time. In fact, it saves a lot of time.

‘Empowerment’ may be a cuss without a framework….

The best way to motivate the employees in any workplace is allowing them to have their say thus giving them a sense of achievement. In that respect delegating authority, participative decision-making, freedom to operate, all those practices with good intentions, merge into much laudable jargon in the modern management science – “Empowerment”.  There is no doubt that empowerment is a great motivating tool with the possibility of increased morale, productivity, job-satisfaction and maybe creativity, innovation; as it provides an entrepreneurial platform for the employees enterprising enough to take risks to achieve the results.

At the same time, if not implemented in a thoughtful manner, it can create chaos and even sometime may turn into an indelible blunder. The principle behind empowerment is to achieve the business goals through ownership thus allowing better and faster decision-making. That principle may be violated if the decisions taken by the empowered individual are not aligned to the organization goal and still worst, if they are only meant to satisfy individual ego or individual goals. Empowerment may bring in arrogance and its associated evils resulting in employees refusing to share information, more over refusing to report to, feeling insecure thus inhibiting any creativity or innovation. Instead of bringing in efficiency in decision-making, organization may be working now in remedial measures and risk containment.

‘Empowerment’ sounds good where it is implemented within a framework of four tenets- Personality, Culture, Communication and Reviews. Let us not assume that every individual in any organization has the same traits for taking ownership. We got to have a deeper understanding of the individual on his/her background, experience, emotional maturity, entrepreneurial mindset and more over alignment to organization vision and mission; before we select the candidature for empowerment. Delegation of authority does not depend upon the organization size, shape or spread; rather it very much depends on the culture of the organization – risk taking, tolerating failures, learning from each other and promoting merit. Culture of the organization also hinges upon the style of communication - how open is the communication among employees across hierarchies, how transparent is the business decisions and how well business goals are articulated to create synergy among all. And a check and balance through structured review mechanism ensures that empowerment is really a catalyst creating leaders to put the organization in top gear and not otherwise.