Powerful selling lessons from ordinary people

It was year 1990. I was new in the city of Mumbai, was travelling in a 3 wheeler Auto Rikshaw with my fiance’. The rikshaw stopped at the busy junction and all of a sudden, popped in a dark face from the open side, with coarse voice and typical sound of clap and hand in from of my face. I was terrified but realised what was happening. The street eunuch was asking for or rather demanding money. Sitting with your fiance, in a Auto Rikshaw, which is not moving now, you are faced with intimidation of big, huge eunuch, you have no option but to give the money to buy peace of mind and time with your beloved.

This is a common scene for all the those living in Mumbai or visiting Mumbi often. Over a period of time I learnt the art of not giving in to these tactics and also learnt to communicate with these eunuch as normal person.

But I learnt 2 important lessons for my sales profession.

1. Prospecting : Usually the time windows available to beg / get money is 30 to 60 seconds, depending upon the traffic jam and traffic signal. If you observe carefully they don’t waste time with those whom they find are “hardened” Mumbaikar. They know what to look for in the prospect. They scan you in quick 5 seconds and decide to pursue the matter or move to next one. They are usally right about selection of the prospects and don’t waste time with others. This is how they improve their closure rate (so to say in sales language). From my observation the key characteristics they look for in the prospects are : Unmarried couple, just married couples, visitor in Mumbai from other part of India, religious oriented man, single lady, foreigners.

2. Delivering elevator pitch and closing the deal : In next 25 seconds are so they need to deliver the message that would fetch them money (close the deal). Depending upon type of prospect, they chose the right language ( give blessings or put a fear of curse) and straight away ask for money. Even here, they specify the amount which means helping the prospect to take decision quickly.

No one has given them sales skills training, it is the hardship of life that forces them learn quickly or they would starve.

At Ashnik, we help you equip yourself with the right skills, processes and methodologies to be successful in your sales career and help companies to grow their business. We are an exclusive partner of Adventace, a global sales change-management firm specializing in helping sales operations Create the High Performance Sales Environment® (HPSE) through an integrated, metric-driven set of products and services, in ASEAN and India region

Adopting open source for the enterprises – Your guide in ASEAN and India

Question is not “should we adopt open source software”, question today in Singapore is “how should we go about adopting”. “What are the best practices, what are the learnings from the global enterprises, where to start from, how to select vendors” etc.

It is important to prepare for these questions, before you embark upon your journey of exploration.

Let me tell you from my own experience of selling open source solution for over 9 years, this journey is quite exciting. It unfolds many more benefits than what you would have anticipated, it debunks many myths that you would have heard from market, it also is a revelation of different software development practices that you would not have seen, but are immensely useful. This journey also lets you understand the limitations and practical usage of open source solutions. Getting to know the services providers is very interesting. You realise the talent and expertise available with the local vendors.

When you want to embark upon such a journey, you need a trusted advisor, who could work with you keeping your interest in mind.

Ashnik, the company that we started, aims to be your such guide. Ashnik provides these consulting services and brings you a network of partners to provide best solutions and services. Ashnik tied up with Xebia recently to bring services around Enterprise Collaboration solutions through Enterprise Java and Web 2.0 technologies to Singapore market. This business model itself is based on the collaboration principal. It aims to put your business on fast track by helping you adopt open source solutions.

Why should I care if it is Android or Symbian or….

When a common man wants to buy a mobile phone does he look for its operating system or its functions, applications and aspiration value (if there is any). I guess in most cases its the later. Then why all of a sudden there is so much noise about Android.

These are few viewpoints.

When you buy iPhone, most of the time users don’t know and don’t care about what operating system it is running. In fact operating system has never been a consideration for common man to buy the mobile phone. It was always functionality and applications it was running and in case of handsets like iPhone it was about hype, curiosity, aspirational value in addition to above things.

So the question is, is Google trying to change the dynamics of marketing and messaging? Is it trying to make “Android” a brand that consumers would understand? So that it would create differentiation in the market over iPhone? If Google wants to create a brand in the mobile phone industry, then why not Google itself as a brand? “gPhone”? “GooglePhone”?.

Google is very smart about not just marketing but also about creating communities and embracing collaboration to grow the business. Google understands that “Google” Vs “iPhone” is a long drawn battle with outcome hard to predict. Also it may divert Google’s attention from its core business. And mobile phone per se is not its end objective. It wants to control the platform through which consumers are connecting to internet. Android is such platform. Phones and smart devices are increasingly going to be the important modes of connecting to internet. Hence it is collaborating with players like LG and Motorola to bring Android based phones and you can call them smart devices as well. It is encouraging more players to use Android platform so that the combined effect is much more powerful than just Google’s efforts.

Then why Nexus? Is it competing against its own partners? Its not about selling phone, it is about putting Google’s might directly behind Android, create more awareness. Consumes are likely to take note of Android because Google is behind “Nexus”. As this brand (Android) establishes, it helps all the players, it helps them to sell more phones. Google may or may not remain in handset game for ever. It may sell its brand “Nexus” to HTC and make good money. It would go back to strengthening the platforms for the devices for internet access. And it would continue to embrace collaboration as its growth engine.

Dad, you too ?

My son

After coming from school my son was telling me about his day in the school. He was in excited state (as usual) and he said, “I will tell you a joke”
“Ok”, I said.
” There was one boy and he always used to tell lies”, he continued, without waiting for my ok, “One day his father bought a robot, who would slap anyone every time a person told a lie. So when the boy came home, his father asked him, where had he gone”.
” I had gone to school”, the boy said, and the robot slapped him.
” No.. no.. i had gone…. umm….mmm”, the robot slapped the boy few more times
“Finally the boy told the truth, that he had gone to movie”
The father was very angry and sad.
He said, ” in our days, I was very obedient and truthful boy, not like you”.
And the robot slapped the father very hard. !!!

My son started laughing and went away. I also had a hearty laugh.
But then I became serious.

I thought about this joke and realised it has a potential power both ways – to destroy the little boys’ faith in their parents and also to bring him to the reality.

It is a fact that we are no saints. We have had our share of mistakes and are not perfect. But the little kids think of their parents as the world of paradise. As they grow up they start realising the chinks in the parents’ world. It is better that they come to know about the realities of the world.

Not sure how soon their world of wonderland should be busted.

Show Me the Money

A great deal of activity is happening around opensource – not just in the software but through overall forces of – collaboration, openness, sharing and networking. These principles are not new to the mankind. They have been used in the context of social development, education and research in many ways.

But the key difference this time is that these principles are being leveraged for businesses. Whole new businesses have come up and entirely new concepts of doing businesses are shaping the industry. eg. Wikipedia, social networking, Innovation Exchange, Red Hat etc…

Right in the middle of our own businesses in IT industry, open source software such as Linux, JBoss, KVM, Alfresco, SugarCRM are making impact on the our customer businesses. These software offer great value to the customers at the same time pricing, packaging, promotion are significantly different from what they are used to be with proprietary software.

While on one hand open source software is a growing trend and becoming all pervasive in customer’s infrastructure, it throws up interesting questions for the resellers and solution providers as to how to leverage this opportunity – given that open source is considered free or low cost. Can it increase the % margin, can it help get net new customers, does it need more investments, what kind of skill sets required, are the promoters of these software companies – RH, Novell, IBM doing enough to support the partner eco system. What kind of changes do we have to bring about in our business practices to leverage these trends.

While some questions would require to be dealt in the context of specific software and promoters, the common areas through which partners can leverage open source software are :

Acquire new customers

Acquiring new customers is the most difficult part of the business, more so in the proprietary software space. In the growing market of open source software and solutions there is a great demand for the suppliers. There is a tremendous pull from the market. Grab this opportunity to grow your business. It is relatively low cost way.

Gain customer mindshare :

If you don’t talk about open source software and solutions, some one else is going to. Apart from this, open source software is on customer’s mind. So you better be the first one to acknowledge it and garner customer’s mindshare which leads to garnering wallet share.

Additional opportunities

When customers try one set of open source software (eg. Linux) they are ready to adopt other software also. Partners should proactively tap into these opportunities and get grow its business.

Annuity business

Most commercial open source software are sold on annual subscription basis. It is important to keep in mind that these subscription are not the AMC of proprietary software. The subscription renewal business is a good opportunity in terms of $$ value as well for forging better relationship with the customer.

Uplift your profile

Every partner has an aspiration to move to next step of value chain from box pushers to solutions vendors. You can leverage open source software opportunity to bring about that transformation as the cost of acquiring technology is very low and number of customers are embarking upon the adoption cycle are still growing at a healthy rate.

Tap into services opportunities

Depending upon your plans, tap into the services business opportunity that open source software offers. This is equally true for existing hardware partners as well as software partners. There are many areas of services that each partner can tap into. For example – Hardware provider can get into infrastructure / implementation services of OS, the packaged software provider can get into customisation and implementation of software solutions. But these areas need to be based on individual partner’s plans.

One area to be mindful of :

Expectations about margins :

I have seen many partners take up to selling opensource software just because the margins on selling traditional software are falling. If you look at the $ value of margins on open source software, very often it turns out to be lower. So one must be clear about the expectations of why it is getting into this business. As mentioned above, the advantages are many, one needs right alignment of the business.

Managers and Leaders

“Our leaders have to be admired for their thought leadership and not just competence.”
This is the quote from Mr. Subroto Bagchi’s interview in Economic Times (Nov 30, 2007)

This resonates so well with what Amita and me often discuss about.

Both of us have seen Indian and Global managers at very senior positions.
These are not the celebrity leaders, but these are the managers who are responsible for growing businesses and leading people. These managers, especially in large organisation have to be good leaders. It is not easy for people to join and connect with faceless organisation. For people, their managers are the face of the organisation and most of the time people join or leave their managers. In such cases managers carry enormous responsibility to provide not just the business competency but good people leadership.

This is where the leadership style and approach differ.

I have seen many competent professionals. They are good at their function and their job. But when it comes to leading people (there is a difference between managing and leading people), they fall awfully short.

I have personally worked with entrepreneurs, professional managers and good leaders. I have worked in corporate sector, have worked in social sector. I have seen different type of people. I have seen the difference between leaders and manager. The ability to inspire, create vision and walk on the chosen path – is the the most important aspect to be successful in being a leader – be it in corporate life or in social sector.

To be a successful leader one needs to have both the capabilities – competency and inspiring people. Just the competency can not take you too far. I have seen some entrepreneurs who had vision (later on I realised that they had only dreams), ability to inspire people but did not have competency in business areas. They simply couldn’t succeed. Some entrepreneurs I have seen who were competent in business areas but did not have the vision. Their businesses did not grow beyond a point. Good professionals did not like to stick around such people for long and hence business did not grow.

When it comes to professional managers leading the people, most manager think that managing people is good enough. They focus on giving right job description, right work to the people under them. They give pep talks so that people can deliver the numbers. The most professional managers follow M-B-O (management by objectives) process to get work done. They think by setting up the objectives people deliver the desired results. It is true to some extent. But it is not the entire truth.
People mostly look up to their managers for direction and inspiration. People like to work for such leaders. The inspired and motivated people tend to give much more than set objectives. They help create more vibrancy in the group. They help create happy and creative atmosphere. In this age of Knowledge economy, the dependency is on people than just the processes.

The good leaders provide this important ingredient – inspiration and vision (thought leadership) – which is so vital for growth than just the straight jacketed MBO or task oriented process.

(Reproduced from my old blog (2007) on different blog site)

Partnering for Success

Why do upstart / small/ medium ISVs find it difficult to establish partnership in new regions ….

ISVs find it difficult to get mindshare of resellers or SI partners specially when they want to expand beyond their geographical region. When you think more deeply you would find few reasons.

When the ISV is entering into new region, a lot of work is needed to be done for the market development. Someone has to do this work – either ISV or the local partner. If partner decides to go ahead with the market development, question is how to get returns on the investments. The traditional partnership model in IT industry works on commission basis. If that is the only form of return the considerations for investment are driven by many factors :

• Cost of the ISV solution and the % margin,
• The absolute value of the margin
• Volume of sales per month
• Potential total gross profit in a given period.

Most of the time the Potential margin itself is not justifiable to make any significant investment. When it is a decent amount, the time frame may take much longer to get the returns.

Such scenario is not new to ISV vendors and hence ISV sticks to selling directly to the customers till the time it reaches certain threshold. When ISV is looking to grow beyond its geographical region (in new territories), setting up office or appointing a sales person is too costly a proposition. And given the above considerations it is difficult to excite the partner to work on purely commission basis and earn decent returns.

What is the alternative ?

Well, ISV can try some age old method of paying the retainer-ship fee to one of the partners in the new region for initial period. I am aware of the question as to how would it work for the ISVs. Well, by paying retainer-ship fee, ISV can insist on performing the tasks of :

• Reaching out to key customers,
• Creating awareness of its products and solution
• Getting the feedback from the customers
• Getting the market feedback (about competition, pricing, solution providers, influencers etc).
• Participate in local relevant events (by paying the participation fees of the event)

It is possible to measure the efforts through weekly activity reports and reviews. The key here is to treat the partner as your extended sales team. You are hiring a sales person on time sharing basis.

The cost of this retainer-ship would vary from 20% to 50% of the cost of one local sales person / local small office. To begin with, this activity can be done only short period 3 to 6 months.

In this process, ISVs get crucial tasks done - market development activities, prospect database and also loyalty and interest of channel partner in the new market.

ISV can build from here. This phase helps it to take further decision about :

• Continue or discontinue this arrangement,
• Enter into the market with direct office
• Put more trust in channel partner
• Focus only on period

Tiger and The King…. New learning

The other day I was telling a story (as usual, making it on the fly) and when I ended the story, I was surprised at the way I ended it.

Once upon a time, there was a King, one day he went for hunting in the jungle. There he saw a tiger. But the tiger was lying down and not moving, his eyes were open. King looked into Tiger’s eyes. King felt that the Tiger was asking for help. So he got down from his horse and went near the Tiger. He found one arrow pierced into Tiger’s body. He went near to him and took out the arrow and cleaned the wound. Tiger started feeling better. When Tiger tried to stand on his feet, King helped him a bit. Tiger stood up, stretched his legs and felt better. King was standing there, looking down upon the tiger, feeling proud that he helped a tiger and was happy with himself. Tiger roared and before King realised jumped upon him, putting him on the ground. King was surprised.
He said ” Hey, I saved your life and now you are going to kill me?”

” Thank you for saving and I appreciate your efforts.” The Tiger said, “saving other’s life is your Dharma (your nature, your duty), you felt good about it, you felt proud about it. You got your returns. My Dharma is to kill and eat. You did you Dharma and now I am doing my Dharma, If I don’t eat you, I would starve and I would die”.
And Tiger killed the King.

Moral this story for me is that before you decide to help someone you should know his “Dharma” or nature and be prepared to face it. Helping with just good heart is not good enough, you need to know that other person/ animal does not have the same heart as yours.

Contrast this with what my grandmother or mother or even I myself would have ended this story just 5 years back. I would have ended up telling that the Tiger and the King became friends forever etc – very similar to Lion and the Mouse story I have heard since childhood.

Obama In My House

After coming home, I was finishing some work on my laptop. My eldest son was sitting next to me generally doing nothing. He was back home, after playing and was tired, hence was just browsing the book and chit chatting with me. I was responding in mono syllables without listening to him. I was actually immersed in doing some work. He said something and I did not respond. He startled me with his next sentence :
“You are doing something that you should not be doing”. I looked up from my laptop. Now I couldn’t ignore him. It was t

My Son

ime to pay attention and understand what he was trying to say.
So I said, “Yeah, I know, I should be listening to you”.
“No”, he said, “You should read what Obama says”.
“What? Oh.. yeah I saw some news about him in today’s newspaper, I must read that”,
I was desperately trying to show that I was on top of the subject and I was miserably failing.
“No”, he continued surprise me and said further, “You should read the Reader’s Digest”.
I asked him to tell me what was it.  He insisted that I should read it and brought the RD, opened the page and gave it to me.
While pointing the 4 lines that he wanted me to read he said “Actually I don’t mean so much, but you read it”.

By now I had stopped guessing and was ready to face whatever it was.
“A study in 16 countries this year found that TV and videogames are drastically reducing playtime among kids one to 12. And parents also are wired to laptops, pagers and Back Berries”

Hmm.. a big lesson for me coming from my son.

I felt guilty of myself and proud of my son.
(RD, June09 carried an article on “8 lessons from the Obamas on Raising Kids”).

Caring for the listeners – human side of Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar

Last week, I had an opportunity to attend Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar’s music program once more, this time organised by Maharashtra Mandal Singapore. Listening to him on the stage takes you way above the world of music. His explanations and providing the context of the song or poem makes you truly enjoy the whole experience. He is a gifted singer and composer. Despite remaining very selective about the songs and poems he has made the world of music rich through his 60 years of contribution. He has received many awards not just from the government but from the public, peers and Shankaracharya.

This time I discovered one more noble quality in him as a human being.

It so happened that the program was to start at 5 pm, but it started at 6.10pm. This was not enough, the microphone was found to be not working the moment Panditji started talking. It was such an embarrassment. Then the interval + the sponsor felicitation took almost 40 min and as per the rules of the auditorium Panditji had to stop the program just when it was reaching its peak. This was robbing of music lovers the joy of listening to Panditji.

What I liked in the whole process was Panditji’s attitude. He expressed his grief not just at the state of the organisers, but also the fact that listeners did not get enough value from the program. He showed the sensitivity that not many artist show these days. Mostly the artist are concerned about the fees, stay, travel etc. But caring about the music lovers and thinking from their point of view is the ultimate sign of a great performer and great human being. I salute Panditji for this.