Passion makes sales job interesting

Let me take you through the different phases of the sales person world

A subject matter expert:

In my experience, this is the toughest and important phase of any sales person’s life. No matter what, to every customer, a sales person is “The subject matter expert”, so without invitation he is forced to learn the complete dynamics of the organization and this includes the product knowledge, process knowledge, operating knowledge, profit and loss, market trend, competition and sometimes even the history of technology, world and earth. In short he is expected to be up-to-date. Most of the times sales person are left with the least two options 1) he talks the subject where he is a master 2) he masters to pretend as a subject matter expert for unfamiliar subjects. This cycle will follow him in every organization he is employed. Now you know why most sales person are talkative

A meticulous workaholic:

This is the frightening phase of any sales person career. Every organization expects a sales person to be the most organized and the most punctual person. Organized in maintaining the follow-ups and punctual in meeting the customers because these two qualities decide the profit and loss of most company’s balance sheet. And this is a really a haunting phase of any sales person because nothing could fear them like missing a meeting. A missed meeting is a missed business.

A Dramatic Hero:

It does not matter, if an organization is giving a due respect to this brand ambassador or not, he needs to dream himself always as a hero or an achiever. This hope and passion is what keeps him running successful throughout the life. This is exactly what makes him presentable, well read, well informed, up-to-date and finally a meticulous workaholic.

In short, he needs to be well connected from the production team till customers, keen to learn technology, process, operations and much more, focused to achieve targets while being chased by pressure. Throughout his life, he needs to stay connected with all his contacts personally and professionally because this becomes the only proof for his experience and success.

After every successful sale, he refreshes himself to be prepared for another sale. Like every movie, every customer is different and their story is different.

Basic rules for successful entrepreneurship

The reason that inspired you to start a business may be anything like ambition, passion, freedom, innovation, customer demand and sometimes it could be a simple reason that you are a subject matter expert. What so ever may be the reason; the following rules will help you to build a great company and a successful entrepreneurship.

Rule 1: Understand your business well

A business is like a river; they flow, they find their own path as they go. The responsibility left with most entrepreneurs is to identify the starting point, name it and closely watch the flow. If they flow right then it becomes the sign of prosperity and if they flow wrong then it is becomes a disaster. In short the starting point of any business is very important; the rest of the most will be guided by business itself. The critical role for any businessman is to have a clear understanding about his business in the market.  Then second most important role is to develop the ability to convey others about the business.

You will be forced to clear two tests while you do this 1) Justify yourself 2) Justify others. The first step will make you confident and the second step will help you understand others perspective. Be open-minded to accept lot of critics, advice, feedbacks, recommendation and sometimes help. Here is where the river flow will come into the picture, you will be forced to consider and de-consider your ideas but do not worry the flow is towards the prosperity.

Rule 2: Create your own business model

Business and Business model are totally different. Do not confuse the both as same. It does not matter whether your business will compete or compliment your neighbor. It only matters what your selling point is. For example, in hospitality sector (boarding lodges), the business is always a competition to the neighbor but they engage in business in such a way where the business model is different from one to other. Some sell luxury stay, some sell economy stay, some sell heritage stay and some sell modern stay. So if you closely watch, the business is no different but the business model is different. So in most cases, the business model becomes the selling point for business.

Rule 3: Identify your customer

In my opinion, customers are everywhere; even beggars who don’t sell anything have customers and sometimes a regular customer. In my opinion, identifying customer is no big difficult task, if you have a clear understanding towards your business and your business model. The following example will help you understand how to identify your customers. CRM is a product that will address the requirement of multiple industries but the customization is the key. You cannot be “know it all” when you are a start-up. So pick one industry, where your expert skills are. In that industry you see your customers.

This blog is an outcome of my experience and my understanding by working with great sales team and great successful companies.

Qualities, a sales person should possess

Passion is the only fuel that makes every sales person run and thrive for success. The responsibility of every organization is to trigger this passion in the right spirit and this could be one reason why most companies include profit percentage in sales person salary package

By meeting hundreds of successful sales personalities who sold products from consumer till enterprises, I understood the following two are the most important qualities that any sales person should possess

            1)      Self Esteem

            2)      Brand Esteem

Self Esteem:

Every sales person is the brand ambassador of his own company. It does not matter which celebrity comes on TV channel to promote the product but at the end of the day, it is the sales person who meets the customer and without doubt he should be treated as the brand ambassador. First by himself and then by the organization. It is not the quality or the quantity of the product that makes sales successful but the promises and the word of mouth from a sales person, which adds confidence to the customer’s decision. Self-esteem is achieved only when he is 100% sure that he is working and selling the right brand

Brand Esteem:

I have seen numerous sales people working for start-ups taking real pride and talking much about their product and organization and this is exactly what I mean brand esteem. It need not be multi-billion dollar organization to create brand esteem. Brand esteem is a feeling that you create in the mind of sales person that he is working for a great organization and selling a great product. Any organization that fail to create this brand esteem to their own sales people will never be able create the same outside

In simple example, you need not go to Microsoft or Google to find a sales guy with this quality. You can simply find him on the road selling dolls and fruits

Management in any organization has a huge responsibility in creating the both. And this could be the only reason in most organization; you will find sales team working very closely with the management team. Unless the vision and mission are properly transformed, the success is never easy.

Customer Specialist Sales Doctors

I would like to argue the term “Sales executive / Sales Representative” is very much out dated and I would like to propose to call them as “Customer Specialist Sales Doctors”

When you deeply investigate the business lifecycle, you will clearly understand the whole cycle starts and ends with the customer. Each company is investing huge money on Research and Development to understand the needs of the customer and to come up with products and services that will exactly meet the demands of the customer. This paves the way for evolution of technology, invention and innovation. So in short the above three cannot stop as far as the customer exists.

After spending so much on R&D, the manufacturer develops a product that will exactly meet the requirement of a customer; even then he finds it difficult to sell his solution in the market. So now the question is what can stop a customer from buying? And if the solution is so compelling, why would a manufacturer need a sales person to sell? And should he be really called a sales person?

If the concept about selling is to create a need, educate a customer and finally convince the customer to buy, then it is completely outdated. In today’s online and Google world, the knowledge available on anything in the internet is surplus. So if you carefully watch the evolution of buying lifecycle, the customer has moved from illiterate customer to a confused customer. Thanks to the competition and the Internet

Because of competition, the benefit that customers get from one product is multiple. In simple terms, more than what he wanted. This puts him in a confused situation on what his requirements are? Rather to focus on his requirement, he is now forced to expand his requirement to avail the multiple benefits that he gets out of one product. He loses focus and he goes to the internet to find best product at better price. The internet over educates him with surplus of information. He is now completely confused. If he chooses quality, he spends more on price and if he chooses price, he lose quality. He is completely perplexed and today, this is the 

situation of most customers

This changes the responsibility of a sales person. More than sales person he needs to act as a doctor. Today’s customers are well-educated on the products and also on the benefits they get out of a product but the problem is they are very much confused on what to choose. The responsibility of a doctor is to diagnose to the root cause of the disease (Understanding the customer’s core requirement). Based on which he should suggests a product that will solve his exact problem and only then he should suggest the other benefits that may suit his need and this is why I argue the sales person should be called as Customer Specialist Sales Doctors.

Availability Makes a Good Manager, a Great Leader

A famous Quote says “A Leader is someone who inspires others to follow”. So in my opinion Leadership is not about getting things done, it is about your actions that make others to inspire and follow.

Let me come to the topic why I mentioned Leader under the topic Manager. Dad is my first leader I saw at home, a good teacher is the second leader I saw at school, a good professor is the third leader I saw during my college and after my college; a good manager is the only leader I spend most time with. After your college, the only person who educates us is our Manager. Knowingly or unknowingly the managers become the turning pages for most books. They become the reason for success and failures of many.

I see most successful students always name their teacher for the success; it is so real in corporate world also. In simple words, Managers are like aroma that comes out of the perfume, they cannot be measured by the quantity and the color. It is always the quality that matters

If I think of myself as a person and I can easily observe my character and behavior went through lot of changes and today I can proudly say, my leaders are responsible for all my good and I blame myself for all my bad.

In my opinion, the first and foremost important characteristic for any leader is “Availability”. A manager need not be smart, a manager need not be a solution for all problems, or a manager need not be successful but needs to be available. Availability solves most problems.

Availability gives the team a sense of ownership; the moment the availability is sensed, the manager is seen as a medicine. Medicine is always the sign of Trust and confidence than cure. Success goes with the medicine and failures go with the severity of the disease.

Once the availability is felt, each and every member of the team will start to own the manager as a possession. This possession creates an unshakable respect for the manager. The respect changes the word manager to “MY Manager”. The word “My Manager” creates a sentiment, feeling and more than life time achievement for any manager and he becomes possessive and very protective towards the team and the team becomes “My Team”.  Such chemistry is often seen only in Families, where Dad is the leader who takes care of his kids and his entire family and that is why most teams in corporate add family to their team name . Team - My Team, Manager - My Manager may sound simple but they are more sensible chemistry that succeeded many things including Freedom. I can assuredly say all the world’s greatest innovation, invention and success are born only from such “MY Team’s and My Managers”

Such a great manager is always a true inspiration and such an inspiration will always be considered as a Great Leader

This is my observation from a living example. I am proud that I worked under such a great leader and I will definitely cultivate this as my character.

Courage is what will cost to say “NO”

This article is not about saying NO but an art everyone need to build for oneself

Let us not misunderstand, I am writing in favor of people who show attitude. May be it sounds like an Attitude issue but when you deeply think Saying NO is a reflection of courage and the confidence that one built for oneself.

The most successful person of the decade Infosys Narayan Moorthy says he is so successful only because he said NO for GE project. I very well know this is not so easy in the corporate world where your growth is defined in such a way that you have to accept new things to grow.

The below are the three characteristics that is very important to say NO

Self-Positioning: The most important thing in anybody’s life is ambition (or) what you want to become? If you are really clear with your ambition, then it is about learning and adapting to new environment as you climb the ladder.

Self-Evaluation: Whenever you grow, you need to make sure you do justice to your growth. So self-evaluation is like a pit stop, one must stop to evaluate how much one has learnt. This will help you in positioning yourself.

Self-Rating: This particular exercise builds a tremendous courage and confidence in you. Most philosophies say the best person to judge you is yourself. This rating exercise will help you in evaluation and positioning

The above three clearly show who you are to yourself, if you fail, you always tend to accept things and become comfortable with what you get but if you pass, this character becomes a charisma in you. I was surprised to see people accepting this and appreciating them for being bold and confident.

IRD Bucket - Most important for Sales

Selling is always like playing a PIANO. If you don’t love selling, you will never make it. Like you see different keys in piano, you will see different departments within sales. Like every key produce a unique sound, every department within sales deal with a unique work. 

Marketing, Business Development and finally Sales they are again further sub-divided into too many departments based on the uniqueness of work. 


“Selling is all about convincing a customer to buy” has now become a Stone Age statement, after the introduction of online selling market like e-bay and search engine boxes like Google.


With increasing competition, POTENTIAL MARKET is the only strong answer for a big question where is my business? With companies like Gartner and Forrester, identifying potential market has become easier but the visibility of the same information to multiple competitors is increasing the challenge and competition. On the other side it is making the decision maker’s job tougher to weigh and decide on the right vendor


Creating awareness to the Decision Maker is where most companies waste time. Decision Makers unavailability or Inability to reach the Decision Maker are the two big challenges and they both mean a big loss to any organization.


IRD Bucket:

Here comes the importance of IRD Bucket? What is this IRD bucket?


I – Influencer; R – Recommender; D – Decision Maker

 Decision Makers decision is critical and that decision in other way can also be called as a “Sale (or) a Business”. Most of their decisions are either influenced by Influencers or recommended by Recommenders. 
So, identifying Recommenders and Influencers are as critical as identifying the Decision Makers. Now the question is, who is that Recommender and Influencer?

Influencers are somebody who can influence the Decision Maker like his Manager, Friend, Expert and etc

Recommenders are somebody who can recommend the Decision Maker like his colleagues, Team mates, sub-ordinates and etc

So in my opinion try and spend good time with Recommenders and Influencers. Try to gather more information regarding your situation and if possible take a reference to reach the Decision Maker. I hope this will help you overtake your competitors.