An Interesting Quote from Jack Welch - Great Sales People

I have always faced challenge with hiring good sales team members. I have been following a simple rule of thumb, if a sales team member uses "Strategy", "Corporate Strategy" more than 15 times in internview. I do not hire the guy. I believe that sales all about focus and execution. There is executive management who is paid and measured on corporate strategy.

This week's business week, Jack Welch also asserted the same philosophy, thought you might find it interesting.

Revenue growth is at the top of my to-do list. What should I look for in hiring great sales professionals? -- John Cioffi, Westfield, N.J.

Good news. You're halfway there, because you realize that great salespeople are different from you, us, and most everyone. Which is not to say that salespeople shouldn't have the qualities you look for in every hire: integrity, intelligence, positive energy, decisiveness, and the ability to execute. It's just that they need other qualities, too.

Four to be exact.

The first is enormous empathy. Great salespeople feel for their customers. They understand their needs and pressures; they get the challenges of their business. They see every deal through the customer's eyes. Yes, they represent the company, and yes, they want to make it profitable. But they are geniuses at balancing the interests of the company and the interests of the customer so that, even at the end of difficult negotiations, both sides would describe the process as more than fair.

Not surprisingly, then, the second quality of great salespeople is trustworthiness. Their handshake means something. They see every sale as part of a long-term relationship, and customers usually respond in kind.

Third, great salespeople have a powerful mixture of drive, courage, and self-confidence. No one likes cold calls. But the best salespeople are so eager for business that they make them relentlessly and have the inner strength not to take inevitable rejections personally.

Finally, the best salespeople hate the "postman model." No offense to letter carriers, but the best salespeople love to get off their set route in search of product and customer opportunities. In that way, then, they are just like you. Revenue growth is at the top of their to-do list. But unlike you, or any other boss for that matter, it's also at the middle and bottom. That's what makes great salespeople so special.

Hope you can use this for your next great sales hire,

Enjoy !

Trust - In Client Management

We all hear that "Trust" necessary in successful client management. I have been always intrigued by how customers percieve trust?

Few years ago, I was introduced to David Maister. David wrote a classic book - The Trusted Advisor. I thought this month, I should share few of his key ideas and my interpretations of those ideas.

THE COMPONENTS OF TRUST in a business relationship setting.

Credibility - Are you telling truth? Are you honest? Are you telling client when you don't know?

Reliability - Are you meeting your commitments? Are you managing Client Expectations? Are you meeting agreed goals not delivering as per specifications?

Intimacy - Do you understand customer situation? Do you know psychological and business aspects of the situation? Are you genunienly interested?

(A low level of) Self-orientation - Are you focused on yourself? Do you quickly jump to conclusion before listening/understanding client? Are you 'pompus'? Are you perceived to be arrogant?

TRUST = (C + R + I) /S

Once we understand the components of Trust. We can follow a structured process to gain and maintain trust in every situation.

The process goes as follows:

• Engage: Use language of interest and concern “I’ve been thinking about your competitors, and…” “Your people have been telling me about..”
• Listen: Uses language of understanding and empathy “Tell me more...” “What’s behind that?” “Gosh, that must feel...”
• Frame: Uses language of perspective and candor “I see three key themes emerging here...” “You know, what’s tough to do here is..”
• Jointly envision: Uses language of possibility “Wouldn’t it be great if...”
• Commit: Uses language of joint exploration “What would it take, for each of us, to……..”

I found the most difficult problem be a good listener. We are always trained to speak for ourselves. To make matters worse popular media programs like "The Apperntice" or the movie "The Wallstreet" create wrong perceptions and wrong concepts about what it takes to move forward. I will writing about Movies and Leaderships soon, but wait till then.

Another interesting challenge in Global Delivery world is ensure that your team follows the same process and has same value about gaining customer trust. Most of the young people I engage from India has misperceived notions about business development and it is very difficult to correct the damage when your team is focused on transation than relationship.

I have been attempting the skills David taught me through the books, I have been fairly successful (at a smaller scale), I hope, I am practice this even with my India team some day.

Enjoy !

BTW All material referred in this article is copywrighted as follows
Source: Maister, Green, Galford, The Trusted Advisor, Free Press, 2000.

My Ipod and Me!

My music enjoyment experience has changed dramatically since getting the Cognizant ipod 2 months ago.

It was easy to convert to ipod since all my music was on home server and laptop, but the accessability is tremendous. Last 2 days, I have been listening to Kishore Kumar - the great Indian singer, on random, with identified 5 Star songs. I would have never listened to all 480 Kishore kumar songs, in that order, ever. Other fun is the put it on random and listen to English, Hindi, Marathi, all kinds of music in random order. The real fun is that you jump from a devotional music straight to What a girl wants ;), it has been real fun. I feel like the experimenting teenager again.

All stressful, critical emails, documents, I write with ipod to my ear. Last week, one important email, I was stressed out. Started with Alanis Morrisette - Hand over feet, by that time, I finished a Jagged Little Pill, I had finished entire proposal, 15 pages, from zero to finish. It was an amazing experience, the concentration was phenomenol, plus, I was destressed very quickly.

The blues collection, it is great to listen in CAR, the Steve Ray Vaughn Guitar, loud, on freeway. Its fun. :-)

Moreover, I am looking forward to my random station in Car - iTrip fm transmission. I am enjoying it in every trip. I am sometimes in car, waiting for favorite songs to finish, in parking lot. LOL

The iPod has been the greatest thing happened to me after the first walkman, I bought in Singapore, in 1994. Thanks to Steve Jobs. Go Steve !