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about selling is to create a need, educate a customer and finally convince the customer to buy, then it is completely outdated.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.

Solution Integration and Partnership

Today, through this blog, I am trying to address a question on why Partnership and Integration certification plays a key role for any Independent Software Product companies especially in Asia Pacific. The days when technology was a proprietary of western countries are gone, Thanks for westernization! Massive buildings, change of lifestyle, eagerness and openness to adapt to the change of culture are some of the examples of westernization. This contributed to India and China being identified as strong players and fastest growing countries, and it created an opportunity for India and China to be seen as one of the very promising countries in adapting the New Technologies into business. Asian leaders emerging as global leaders and Asian companies acquiring global companies are some of the positive signs of successful entrepreneurship. This has not only created positive vibrancy in the market but also rooted thousands of start-ups and millions of entrepreneurs.

Globalization and outsourcing not only created job opportunities but also created a necessity of integrating technology as a part of day to day life. This has given a chance for the global leaders to not only seed the technology, but also to carry the customers and reputation they earned through years. The global leaders though understand global market, they need strong local influence to understand the culture and also to capture market share. May be problem and solution around the world is same but the medium and way of communication is different. This invited global companies to integrate closely with local companies. The only solution for faster learning and strengthening is the most powerful word “PARTNER ECOSYSTEM”. The Partner Ecosystem not only plays a crucial role for Global leaders in localization but also to the local vendors to showcase their talent and to reach global by becoming Partners of these Global leaders.

Customers blindly trust these leaders because they have earned their trust and confidence by providing extraordinary services. Global leaders leave no stone unturned to win the customer satisfaction and reputation. So most of the big companies bring all the required process in place, one such process is “Certification for integration” for Partnership. They make sure through this certification that the integration is seamless and there is a hassle-free environment integrating 3^rd party solutions. So at any point of time customer simply sees this certification for integration as approval ticket that carries the trust and confidence where reputation can be shared

Home Work - most essential for Sales

I would like to share one of the real experience. I got an appointment from a CIO of a billion dollar company to sell IT outsourcing services. After understanding the size of our company, he simply avoided saying, you are too small for us but the following will show how we overcome that rejection.

Home Work:

I always use linkedin to get full information about my contact person (school, college, experience) and recommendations...when you read the recommendations you will come to know what his special skills are.... and if he is the CIO of a big company, you can easily catch him in one of the press releases... like Acquistions, Product Purchase, Deal Outsource and etc...so you can atleast know where the company is going

So my VP saw his photo and previous employment history from the homework document and asked him, did you work in this company and do you know this person??.. he said "YES" the call deviated from business to something else... you wont believe they spoke for about 20 minutes till why he left the company.... finally the result was... he said I am travelling to India next month.. Let me visit your company in India...as we have implemented a new ERP and we may need skills.. but remember you may compete with big players like Infosys and CTS...and finally I picked him for the client visit.... from Leela Palace....

People Mapping - Cold Calling

There is a technique called People Mapping..... 

1) How to get the E-mail address of the CIO and 2) People Mapping (leadership hirearchy)

Always remember an appointment with CIO is the most precious time in your life... because it will change your life...and can do many wonders as they are the decission makers...but we also should remember they are only "decission makers" and they may be responsible for multiple divisions.... so when you get a chance to talk to him and if you use that time for getting information... i think we are loosing business...this is the time for projection and create impression.... here is where people mapping plays an important role.

May be CIO is a decission maker but there are always influencers and recommenders and never forget a decission cannot come without teamwork.

Now i think you know what i am referring to .... yes IT Managers, Director of Technology, VP IT and so on and so on.... and my great assest is always linkedin and jigsaw... when i know the company i target i surf for atleast 4-5 people of the same line of business..... and i will have thier name and email address.. I will try to get the maximum informatoin from the IT managers and they will be too friendly with you....and they will tell you either a good time to contact or not.... you wont believe i got a reference from IT manager in UK to contact CIO in Sharjah and later we understood its a treasure.

and at worst case... the harder people are best people anytime... i always call the CIO assistant and will not ask her to connect me to CIO but i will ask her whom i can contact to not waste CIO's time... and you get a reference there... and most of the times it will be the IT manager....now you have an authority..and i would never mention the assistant name with IT manager. I will always say... i spoke to the CIO's office and they wanted to talk to you...so you are now lucky.. you got the best of his time...if you create an impression you can write a thank you email and you can ask IT manager to forward to the CIO copying you... only if there is an opportunity...

Email address: finding email address is all how you play magic with the operators...

1) I will always call the operator desk to reach the IT manager..... i very well know, she will transfer me to the voice mail....i will call her again and will tell her i reached voicemail or i had spoken to him earlier and i missed the email address or i wrote it wrong ..can you help me with email email address as I wanted to share some important information... 60% you will get email address if not you will be connected to the person.. (Try this, i was successfull).

2) I always surf the internet for email address... and end up getting wrong person email address but from the same company.... i map the same with the CIO and call the asst and i will confirm her the email address (I was successfull)