Reputation Risk – How critical is it today?

Reputation Risk, protecting your brand and the fear of loosing ones credibility is one of the most important aspect of today's business. With the advent of technology, Internet, and the so called information age has opened the doors for information to flow freely. In a way, it brings in transparency, with the business fraternity in terms accurate news and information on the other, it brings with itself the Risk of letting out too much. 

Information Security, Data Privacy, Corporate Governance, Risk Management are today not mere line items in a compliance check list, these are today a necessary process & tools to safeguard your business from vulnerabilities which are mostly overlooked or done to keep the regulators and auditors in the good books. 

What took Satyam to loose its credibility in eyes of its share holder? What took it to be black listed by World Bank, which gave them approximately $100 million a year? The reasons may be many, but imagine being the 4th largest software company in India, hence forth will be viewed without confidence & trust by people from the business fraternity across the globe. This is the biggest price a credible company like Satyam pays today because of bad governance and for a few wrong people.

What is the reason?  I would sum it up as " Lack of corporate governance & effective awareness" 

Today we talk about Satyam, cos we know it, they are exposed, but if we dig we shall find many. There have been cases outside India, when companies have been picked be it Nike for its Child Labor, Enron for its accounting mis management, Walmart for its discrimination or be it a ostrich mentality of Barring Bank or Soc Gen. We have been given so many of such stories, but are we sensitive to it? Or are we still playing the Ostrich Mentality.  We bury our head, in hope and pray that such things do not happen with us.

I being from a Governance Risk & Compliance background, have had the privilege to interact with decision makers and business executives on these issues, though risk management in the country is picking up, with most of the companies in their initial days of risk assessment, employee awareness still has low priority on their agenda and plan for risk mitigation.  It was amazing to know a multi billion dollar company executive when asked about budget for his information security awareness for 20 thousand people came up with a mere $2500, but admitted that it is one of the top priority for the company this year. 

People here are not concerned with the outcome, they are concerned with their job at hand, and that reflects on the annual budgets for compliance trainings , tools and process. We need to look at Outcomes when it comes to compliance and not the Cost associated. 

E&Y came up with a survey on Information Security Survey and the essential questions they asked were:

• How do you convince your customers, trading partners & investors of your commitment to information security?
  
• How do you build confidence in your ability to protect their information? 
  
• How do your reputation & brand in an environment of escalating threats? 

The survey brought out some exciting outcomes, where some are encouraging and positive, but as I made my point, so much emphasis is given to technology, that the "people" component of information security is always overlooked. 

People still remains the weakest link. Organizations must view their people to be as critical as  any other information security component - so they can help prevent & properly respond to information security incidents in an effective and timely manner.  I recently experienced this, where the board turned down an effective spent on awareness training citing reasons of economic slow down. But I would like to ask, in such tough times,  is this not the right time to stand up and be counted?

People tend to forget the intangible benefits of such initiatives. These initiative enhance a brand, helps you to answer the questions posed earlier effectively and in turn build a credible brand, recognised as a trusted partner, and reap the competitive advantage. 

"Managing Risk is not Expensive, Not managing Risk is Expensive" ; I hope India Inc and its executives understands the real meaning of this statement. 

A B C of Sales !!

Stepping into my 8^th year of Sales, I have not had too many privileges of attending Sales Training, but yes I have attended a few, but good ones. Honestly, for any sales professional training is just a way of reinstating ones beliefs in the way one thinks or approaches sales. Its either you Got it in you, or Can never make it. Training or formal education in sales helps to refine thought and gives you a direction of thinking on approaching an account or product. Sales is a passion, an addiction, like smoking cigarettes, you can never explain a non smoker, what you achieve from those dreaded puffs.

In this space, I would bring out few tips of Sales which I have gathered and learnt over a period of time. This shall be a collection of such thoughts which are not originally mine and but been presented in an original compilation.

An old saying “You have two ears and one mouth, use them in proportion”, and how true. Listen More and Talk Less is the first step of being a good sales guy. Always allow the customer to speak. Forget fast talking and the gift of the gab – they might help build a relationship but they won’t get someone to buy from you, without some other skills thrown in!

The second step is to provide Accessibility; you should be 100% for your customer and only your customer while in a meeting. Avoid building barriers, like laptops, answering phones, keeping your arms closed, avoid sitting opposite to your client, and try taking a place as same side or round the corner. Your accessibility, attention and body language should be to prove that you have all your customers’ attention. Another interpretation of accessibility is to give the flexibility to the customer to contact you, be it email, phone, sms, fax etc. Be Available.

An early indication to a successful sale is to know the answer to an important question “Will they Buy?” To elevate a prospect to a customer and qualify the engagement, one should have answers to 3 things, a Need, a Desire and the Mean to buy the product or services. If yes, you have a qualified prospect!!! If No, better Move On, you cannot close this one!!

Look for Triggers, to purchase. Greed Guilt Fear Desire Necessity or Image may be a few triggers which can act as a catalyst to pace up the sales cycle. Focusing on the Key Trigger shall help you to touch the emotional hot spot.

Look for opportunities to Open Questions. There are “six wise souls” of questioning, “Who What Why Where When How”. In a sales situation, use the wise souls carefully to encourage your prospect to talk by asking open questions that demand more than one word in answer, such as:

“How are you preparing for the next round of reporting?” “What are the three things that worry you most, and why?”

Avoid closed questions that are easy to brush-off with one word answers such as:

“Would you like…?” “Are you happy with your current arrangements?”

AIDA – Attention Interest Desire Actions, these are the four logical steps which must happen in a buying process.

Assume you are walking through the shopping mall and see a poster in the shop window advertising a jeans sale – it grabs your attention. You wander into the shop and see they sell your favorite brand – interest. Then you try on a pair in your size, they fit perfectly, you want (desire) them, and you pull out your credit card – action.

A lot of time Sales person, often confuse between Features and Benefits. That’s the next tip, for any sales person to understand properly and use them while speaking to prospect. For eg: 250 gigabyte hard disk is a feature on a computer – the benefit is being able to store huge files and databases without worrying about space.

Thus a sales guy should be prepared and confident on their product or services knowledge and its feature and benefits. Use them in sales situations to your advantage. You may use the AIDA model to use to generate attention to action.

Keep your eyes open, because “What you see is What you say?” Observe what is your customer like, stylish, his interest, his office, what kind of a person he is, traditional, hedonist, a family value person, sporty, rational, tech savvy. This shall help you in having a better “meeting mind” cos you always don’t sell in all your meetings; you also make an impression!!!

Along with impression, you also need to earn “Respect”, if you are consultative selling you provide solutions, use your experience to provide optimum solutions, be a consultant to your customer, allow the customer to buy, and do not push everything. It is good to look at the big ticket sales, but then if you need to win respect, you can attempt to look for easy and small sales, earn respect and then use it back to your advantage for multiple orders. Never look at a customer and think, he is one off and let’s make most of it!!

An Agreement Staircase; a logical step by step approach to convert a prospect to a customer. We shall take an Umbrella seller to demonstrate this through this figure. (click to enlarge)

Getting several “YES” responses can be so powerful!

Getting a “NO” is a barrier, and there isn’t much use in turning into a one-way street unless that’s where you wanted to stop!

Design questions which result in a “YES” and watch the results flow! Don’t forget to wait for the “YES” or the nod after each question!

If you follow martial arts, you may know what I mean by Harnessing Momentum. In martial art one of the great skills is to balance yourself, whilst allowing your ‘opponent’ to gain momentum, and then to move aside to let them use that momentum for your benefit (the throw). Similar is with sales, when you probe and ask the right question.

Some magic questions may be

What, in your business, are you most proud of?
What would you do or change, next, if you could?
What is stopping you doing that now?

The point of the first question is to get the prospect chatting, make them feel comfortable, and particularly make them feel on top of the situation. Once they start talking, you’ll have them relaxed, with momentum, and ready to go to…

…question 2, which encourage them to state an objective – something they would like to do well, and be proud of, and (hopefully) something that you can help them achieve. Once they have done this, keep up the momentum, let them visualize the situation, then…

…question 3 simply allows them to prove, to themselves, that they have a need. If you can help with that need, you have turned the situation to one where they need to tell you “why not”, rather than you tell them “why” – their momentum should enable you to make the “throw”

One of my old sales managers jokingly use to say catch the customer by their b***s or they will catch yours, and that turned to be so true in crunch sales situation, whether you want to close or negotiating during a sales process. At times arrogance pays, when you can sense, a customer is just negotiating although he has the budget approved. Never forget to draw the line, cos in an arrogance you do not want to hurt the customer’s ego.

Once a rookie sat with his sensei and complained that his prospects kept giving him reasons why they wouldn’t buy. The sensei quickly explained that, at the traffic signal of life, an objection is a green arrow, pointing out which way you can go and when to go, not a red stop light in the sales process.

When you get an objection, the chances are that it will be about price (affordability/value), product (features), need (need something else), ability to make a decision, or relationship. A good salesperson can take any one of these and find advantage. Thus Welcome Objection and preempt them and then lead a sales discussion towards an objection you want to the customer to ask. But whatever you do, make sure that you smile to yourself when you hear an objection – it is a clear indication of where you need to go to finish your journey!

Be Honest and to do so Analyze what gets results. Always understand the hard truth is: a company admires activities but pay for results!!

Some of the things you know, but would like to measure…

Do you measure? Number of calls, sales per call Number of products held per custome Number of referrals Which products return maximum value to you based on $ versus effort The value of each customer to you Your closing ratio (compared to previous results) How your prebooked (renewal) income is growing (or shrinking) If you take a good look at these, you can find out which ones to focus on to achieve maximum boost to your business.

Do you also measure? Time spent traveling, browsing Time spent correcting mistakes or doing someone else’s administration Customers that leave you, and why The ratio of time ‘with customers’ to ‘time doing something less productive’ Time wasted with people that aren’t decision makers Time spent on calls that didn’t result in a sale These lots are some of the prime inhibitors of your business. You need to cut through them aggressively, with a sharp knife.

At end of a day, just ask yourself “Am I at peak productivity, or just wasting my time being busy?”

Finally, the best tip to sales is having the Right Attitude. One of my manager always emphasised the respect for No. 1, He said in a 100m sprint, people always remember who come first, and even the second person is fraction of a second slow, people do not recall him. Thus you should always aim of being Number 1. This is how true!!!

The sales message is simple:

If you think you can, then try it, do something, learn from it, improve you performance - WIN
If you think you can’t, then you won’t, and you will LOSE
If you are a Sales Manager and your sales people come to you with reasons why they can’t, you know what to do. Winners simply don’t make excuses for lack of action, lack of effort or lack of results

These are good tips, and handy ones, use them to your discretion based on what kind of sales cycle you are in. It may not be true to all sales process, but good to go for most of them. Bottom line of ABC of sales is Always Be Closing.

Happy Selling!!

The content is an original compilation of thoughts and selling tips gathered over my tenure, I would also take this opportunity to thank all my sales managers in all organizations I have worked to provide me with Sales Training and the sales experience which motivate me to share through my blog. Your contributions are always cherished.

Advertisement: Kal Aaj aur Kal !!

With a buyers market, and customer being the king, today marketers are looking at new avenues to sell and promote their products. Gone are the days when consumer use to wait for years to get their hand on to their scooters from Bajaj, or wait in que, tolerate the wims & fancies of the babu’s to withdraw their hard earned money.

I may be few fortunate or unfortunate ones born just before the so called “Gen Y” and “Youngistan” to experience this and thus today may be able to take you through “Kal Aaj Aur Kal” of advertisement!!

From traditional marketing through advertisements on hoardings, news paper, magazine, television; advertisement today have evolved as days & decades went by. I still remember a hoarding on Park Street crossing in Kolkata, which had 2 way advertisements. It was a hoarding with wooden perforated slides, which had one advertisement when it swayed to the right and another when it swayed to the left. Me as a kid was excited to see that and wanted the traffic signal to be red, so that I can read and see the ads when our car stopped. Those innocent days!!

From that day till date I have seen phenomenal changes in advertisement, not only in the way it is presented, but where and through what medium it has been presented. I remember one day seeing the Times of India having a full page advertisement on the cover page. People in their weirdest dream would not have visualized that. It was for a new portal “Indya.com”, now an internal portal for Star TV network. That was an innovation in advertisement and now we see it quite often, be it the new Audi A4 or obituary of Dhirubhai Ambani.

I remember movies, which used common things like Colgate toothpaste or a Wills cigarette, which a protagonist may be using while playing his character casually, the producer never thought that it’s a way of publicity and brands used had to pay for it. Today they pay!! If my memory serves correct I had seen such thing in a Showman Subash Ghai’s movie, where he charged a whopping sum to publicize a brand, his protagonist used. Be it a Cola or a brand of pan masala. People saw and product owners paid for those advertisements.

Television & Radio was not behind. I remembered switching on my TV at 9.10 for a 9PM serial, as we knew that it shall be advertisement which shall be shown at the beginning of the serial. With one channel, it was possible, but with television being revolutionized with private channels, the trick had to be changed to catch eyeballs. The broadcaster split the ads in 2 parts one in the beginning, and other in between a 30 min prime time. The ads worked, but then with competition, channels had to keep TRP’s high and keep the audience glued to the same channel was a challenge as Surfing of channels had caught on with the audience as they flipped to other channels to view something else while one channel broadcasted the ads!!!

Innovators came up with another idea, now they started the serial once the previous ended and plugged in all the advertisements in between. And if they had something cracking to start with, like death scene of Mihir in Kyuki, or revenge scene of Tulsi etc etc, Eureka!!, the audience was glued!!

Indian advertisement has gone through phenomenal shift, and the new age of advertisement is catching up. The foremost thought for a campaign is “target audience” and “eyeballs of target audience”. Where do we get them?

With communication being redefined, today we have millions of people on the internet; it is time for Online & Viral Marketing, the new age advertisement to be unleashed. Be it a campaign for Monstor.com (job portal), Reliance Communication or Citi Bank these virals are a sensible & cost effective way to advertisement to promote a message at the end of a spoof. You like it, you send it to your friends and then they send it to their friends and it spreads like virus, and thus the name Viral!!!

The essence of advertisement has changed in India, and changed for good, intelligent and creative. From a simple print ads of yester years, today’s campaigns are funny, thought provoking and at times with social message. Few campaigns that caught my attention are one from Durex, to be funny yet innovative. A surf excel, “Daag Acche Hai” campaign, Hutch / Vodaphone pug ads.

Social Networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, today have collective subscribers in millions, people use this platform to advertise, create a craze and sense the pulse too. You have communities for Roadies, for different movies when they launch. This is a great platform to advertise and also analyze the pulse of target audience.

With a country of 246 million plus mobile subscribers, mobile phones cannot be left behind. With the new age models coming up and requirement of people minimizing to one device for everything, mobile gaming is catching up big time. Advertiser finds a medium to advertise, Bingo, the chips manufacturer from ITC, have games where you solve puzzles to reach to the Bingo packet, is a new way of advertising, and also creating a craze amongst Yougistan to associate with a brand, and maintain loyalty too.

Advertisement through SMS is also catching up. Be it reality show, or a contest people are advertising and making revenue with their simple pull and push advertisement campaign.

But has these campaigns today taken a toll on our lives? Have they intruded our private space? Will too many advertisements kill the essence of this productive tool? Is the product manufacturer paying too much for visibility?

Answers to these questions will be the future of advertisement in the next generation!!!

The Power of Tele$ales

I am sure you’re amongst one of those people in India, who is been approached everyday by Telemarketers to sell a Credit Card, Loans or Holiday!!! I also fall into the same league, and I ponder today on the future of Telesales, as I believe Telesales is a Great tool & technique to reach promote and aware people of any products or services.

The thought, which is in, question “Is Telesales in India for Indian consumer gaining popularity and acceptance or has it been a talk of their wrath & sense on intrusion of ones private space? Is it for handful of institutions & organizations, which misuses the power of phone and have wrong metrics to measure performance and effectiveness of tele-callers?

In India, telesales has not got the acceptance with consumer, organizations and recruiters. Primarily because anything tele is better known as “Call center job”, which is Not true. Why can I not run a Sales center where I use Telephone & Internet as a medium of sales, rather than flying and visiting customers? Its low on cost and high on revenue & margins.

Telesales in India for Indian consumer today represents Banks & Cell phone companies who keep calling without a goal / objective in mind. There has to be some basis of Tele calling. According to me these are some basics, which we need to keep in mind when we have a job on tele sales;

Telesales in India needs a BRAND to back it up.
A consumer receiving a call from any Brand will at least render their attention and you just have that minimal time to take the conversation ahead. Thus good planning in terms of what to speak, how to grab attention is very important. Use your Sales Training to plan your questions & phrases to grab the attention.

Do your homework before calling.
In India we do not have something called a Social Security Number, through which you have access to some important information about the customer, thus a customer database followed in India, which is not centralized and does not capture certain basic information about the customer. For e.g.: A Financial institution offering loans to customer should do some homework in terms of having some history of the customer picked from the database to call. If not you land up wasting time & effort as you may be selling a loan to a customer who already has a car loan & a home loan, and simple logic says its a waste to sell him another one for sometime now. If you push you land up diluting your company Brand, which is a bigger damage than just meeting a call quota for the day.

Respect the customer
This is very important. Its simpler to manage your call quota by calling a customer repetitively knowing he or she is not interested, but its a good Sales acumen to respect the customer but making a note of their choices and preferences and act accordingly. This does not only makes you a better sales person, it also helps from not tarnishing the brand you represent and have a better recall value with the customer so that he or she calls you when they need actually need it.

I have seen companies invest in Telesales, Soft skill & Customer Service training only to achieve instant objectives like increase call time, increase in reach and increase in sales which may be the basic KRA for any managers or individuals but they fail to look at the big picture like the Brand they represent, Customer Satisfaction and the end objective of Customer Repeatability.

I am a Business Development Manager in an MNC organization and previously I have sold premium services to our customers who are in India over telephone. My services were intangible and it is more of consultative selling, which I practice. When I joined, I was also very confused to the fact that how do we sell such premium services at such premium price? But then I convinced myself that all I do differently from the traditional way of field sales to telesales is that I do not meet the customer and what ever needs to be a good sales man, more is required to perform and be successful in my job when on phone.

Account Management, mapping of customer, understanding the criticality of the account, the requirement all is required to be done, to be a good account manager and this can be accomplished over phone if you yourself is convinced of the fact. The only handicap you have is that you cannot see the customer, cannot see the body language while you speak pitch or present, cannot see what kind of office he or she sits, which definitely provides a lot of information on the interest level, the acceptance and the affordability / buying power.

As an account manager, we need to qualify a lead, and all this above definitely helps in deciding faster in a Field Sales mode, than a Telesales mode, but I may disagree if you are good, you can make out of all the above through the analyzing the voice modulation in a planned call, and through response to good leading questions or what we call “high yield questions”. On the contrary, in a telesales mode, its easier and faster to reach more and more people in the same organization and collective information for them leads to better account planning mapping and qualification.