My introduction to Sales..

When I was a student in school in India, I was an avid reader of comics. There was a publication called "Indrajal Comics"( http://www.indrajal-comics.blogspot.com) . They had great titles for characters like "Phantom-The Ghost Who Walks", "Mandrake the magician", Garth, Flash Gordon etc. The new copies would be quite expensive. However, during our weekend trips to the town, I would scavenge some of the old book shops accompanied by my dad or mom, and pick up some copies. One day during a trip to the local deli called "Variety Stores", I managed to locate a huge bunch of Indrajal comics. Each was priced at about probably 200% lower price. My dad bought the whole bunch for me. I was ecstatic. During the course of the next few months, I had finished reading through all of these. I realized that there were more publications on the shop that I could now pickup. I started selling the older copies to students and friends in school. This helped me make some money for new ones. I was also pretty good at art. I started making some greeting cards and sell it to my friends. This was my first rendezvous with the wonderful experience of selling.

To me, Selling is a very intimate process of building trust and investing in a relationship that will identify the risks and opportunities thrown open by change and building systems that will deliver the promise of those opportunities.

The end result of a deal, which from my standpoint is not the greatest achievement. Although a rational assessment digitally would place a win as the ultimate qualifier . I am a student of sales and want to use this forum to essentially share my experiences that this wonderful profession provides me with. During the course of my job, which is predominantly focused on information technology services I meet a wide spectrum of clients, vendors and team members. From each of these stake holders, I gain insights into the sales process, which I hope to manifest into intelligence and over a period of time distill it into wisdom.

During school there were a lot more such instances when I indulged in opportunities where I could exercise my interest in selling. However, the turning point in sales was when I was in Engineering. During my engineering school days, I had a lot of friends who were from a business community. I used to hang around with them and an evening cup of tea at their place, would expose me to raw business acumen. These sessions would be end of the day discussions in a family, where the men would discuss complex areas like pricing, relationship management, risk management in the simplest possible way. One of my mentors, who had a profound impact on me was an entrepreneur, who built is success in starting as a accountant and ending up as the owner of a publicly traded paper industry. During my next series of write-ups, I will discuss more about the impact his methodology of thinking had on me. However, one key learning from his association was in decision making. He told me that "when you are at a point of making decisions where you are making a choice in the short term that impacts the long term picture, steer clear of this decision". Over a period of time, when I have put my decisions through this filter, I have realized the profound impact of this advice.

With support from my mentor, me and a very close friend of mine started a venture in Engg. School. Considering the cultural background that I belong to, it was not appropriate for students to focus on any other activity other than studies. Needless to mention that my friends shared the constructive rebel that was driving us. At that point of time, the idea that was driving up against the wall was a silver bullet to handle the menace of plastic pollution. We decided to set up a unit that would manufacture paper bags much similar to the ones that you see in retail stores today.

The market we were operating in was central India, and I tell you this was a venture in which I donned the hat of the Sales guy and my friend was the technical master behind the design and manufacture of the product. It was an amazing journey. I have innumerable memories of this, but my greatest lesson in this process was mainly, understanding the value of perseverance, hard work and the fine line between skilled sale and unethical sales practices.

I would like to share with you this story on sales ethics. During the manufacturing of the paper bags, we would order a huge roll of paper from the mill owned by our mentor. Mind you the only advantage we were given was access to the mill, other than that he treated us as pure business customers to ensure that we learned our lessons right. Once we received the roll, the requirement was to get this roll sheeted into the desired size. Once it happened that we were required to sheet this paper and the regular place where we got this done was closed. There was another mill close by which could do this job for us. However, the day being a Thursday, the place was closed for regular business. I knew the guy who owned the place. Let me re-phrase, I knew the name of the guy who owned the place. I also knew that he had a younger brother, who was about our age and was in the same city we were living in. We also happened to know some common friends. I went into the factory along with my friend and introduced myself to the Super who was in-charge. I introduced myself as the friend of the owner and told him that we needed to get the paper sheeted. I also told him that this being an off-day, not to bother with disturbing the owner. The kind of confidence and control, I and my friend exuded, was that of total conviction. The Super himself loaded the paper, got the sheeting done, called for a pickup truck and escorted out. This was the biggest con I had ever pulled off. I was ecstatic. My friend was also amazed at our luck. You could call this the start-up die hard spirit or categorize it was juvenile short sightedness. However over a period of time, guilt caught-up with us. We were also worried for the innocent Super who believed us. After about a couple of months, me and my friend visited the place again, and this time we met the guy who owned the place. It was a great meeting. Not only did we become good friends, but he thanked us for exposing a vulnerability in his enterprise.

However, the lesson for me was clear. In sales, "A quick sale is a great temptation. However, the right sale is what differentiates the Men from the boys....."
Till next time, happy selling....