Author: Mukesh Gupta

Entrepreneurship, Sales

Goals setting – 2011

It is the time of the year when we sit back, relax, take stock of the year gone-by and plan for the year ahead. I read a blog by Kelley Robertson on goal setting and really loved it. You can read the blog @ http://www.fearless-selling.ca/blog/stretch-yourself/. Kelly talks about setting 2 goals: One that you think you have about 85% chance to achieve One that is way beyond the above goal and what you really want – Your stretch goal This is what my first boss also taught me. The only difference was that he also asked me to also decide […]

Entrepreneurship

What did you ship in 2010?

Inspired by Seth Godin’s blog #YearInReview What did you ship in 2010?, I decided to do a little retrospection and list down all that I “shipped” in 2010. The list that I could come up with is the following: Achieved all the goals set for the year at work Started blogging in 2010 and I have 38 new blog posts this year Helped 3 start-ups decide their business model Somehow, I get the feeling that this is just a small peck of what I shipped in 2010 and that there were much more that I did but could not remember. […]

Sales

Overcoming the 5 basic obstacles in every sales transaction

As Zig Ziglar said, every sale has 5 basic obstacles that need to be overcome: No need No desire No hurry No money No trust I consider the most important of all the objections is the trust. Everything else will fail if there is no trust established between the sales person and the buyer. One of the best ways to build trust is to listen to the prospect; understand his business, challenges and competition. Show them that you understand their world. Be honest about what your product/service can or cannot do for them. If required, even introduce someone who can […]

Strategy

Fueling growth from existing customers

It is a well known fact that it is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than retaining an existing customer. But as they say, common sense is not so common. We find that businesses are going out of their way to attract new customers by offering them great deals. I do not think there is anything wrong in this, but when you exclude the offer to your existing customers, you are inviting trouble.  This is a very important reason for customer loyalty to become so rare. There does not seem any  benefit for customers to remain loyal anymore as […]