Leadership, Sales

3 qualities of a great sales manager

The three things that makes great sales manager are ability to Coach Absorb pressure Build a team I got this insight when I ran into an old friend late last evening. He currently works for a sales organization and was completely stressed out. When i asked for the reason for his stress, he indicated that the sales pressure being exerted on him by his manager is actually freaking him out. When I dug deep, he indicated that their organization follows the Jan – Dec sales cycle, which meant that they are in the last fortnight of the year and there is […]

Customer Engagement

Customer engagement vs customer centricity

As an employee responsible for customer advocacy at a software vendor, I often receive requests from colleagues in the development teams requesting me to help them connect to our customers and seek feedback on our existing products or solutions and validate new product ideas. Having been in this scenario so many times, I realise that there is a big difference between customer engagement and customer centricity. In one, you work with the customer, together to achieve common objectives (which is so rare). This activity can only succeed if both the customer and the supplier have deep skin in the game. […]

Sales

Best product demo ever

I chanced upon this demo of Sony Xperia Acro smart phone today. This is the best demo of a product that I have seen in a long long time… In my opinion, the following aspects makes this the best demo ever: It is contextual & experiential (with all the aura of the legendary James Bond, complete with the Bond music). It surprises! Not just the one’s who won the phone, but the entire audience.. This is the stuff that the people in the audience will talk about for sometime to come. And most important, this makes the point which is […]

Customer Engagement

Selling is not about selling anymore….

Though everyone around us have been telling us that the we are going through a techtonic shift in how people buy, one does not realize the magnitude of the change until it hits us. So, today, I was talking to one of my friends who sells enterprise software for a living. He was complaining on how difficult life is becoming, with ever increasing quotas and ever demanding customers and prospects. If you feel the same, i believe that you are now affected by this giant shift in the buying patterns of your customers. Now, the question is what does this […]

Leadership, Sales

Role of culture in a sales team.

Culture is what transforms any team to greatness or failure! Sales teams are no exceptions to this. There is a specific culture in each and every sales team, doesn’t matter if someone has carefully instilled it there or it just got there by accident. So, what is the culture like in your team and why is it so important? I met a sales manager recently. He indicated that he wanted to have a high performance culture in his team. When I prodded him to explain what he meant by high performance, he said that he wants everyone in his team […]