In my small career of 8+ years, I have been instrumental in getting into roles, which I call “First Timers”, in short, to start from a clean slate. I have enjoyed every stint of the same with equal enthusiasm and valued a lot of learning. Be it a dot com start up way back in 2000, when the wave of dot com reached the pinnacle and had a free fall, or to be part of a green initiative in eLearning for a large SI, or instrumental in setting up an events & promotion cell for large private university, which had a bunch of guys who traveled like crazy to meet all college students for a mission “Catch them Young, help them Grow” for some effective niche courses and other management related stuff, or to enter a virgin and tough market like Eastern India, with software giant’s services, and go all out to sell services at crazy prices, further to manage a GRC business for a India, for an Australian MNC foreign and now to lead the SI & Services Business for a Korean electronic giant’s Consulting & Solutions group for India.
In all these first timers I had so much learning…
I started as an entrepreneur, and learnt Ideas do not sell, solutions sell, and to build it, you need money/investment. In the bargain, I understood, how solutions company work, what goes in setting up a shop, legalities, and other operational issues. Was unsuccessful as an entrepreneur but amazing learning, in terms of understanding so much thought and operational issues that goes in to be an entrepreneur. I taught myself ideas are good, but a business execution plan is better.
With my eLearning experience, it was stepping stone for me into the business world. Professional people, meetings, teleconferences, project plan, brain storming, executions, deadlines, night outs to meet deadlines and conducting oneself in an professional environment is what I learnt. Had some extremely great people to guide me and that first impression of being proactive and enthusiastic connects me with them still and I value the word “Networking” henceforth.
University experience bought out the orator in me. With presentation and travel all around tasted my first blood of sales; a passion, which is never ending and beyond explanations. I mapped courses to career path, understood that I was selling a concept, a dream, who’s chance to success is dependent on the person who buys the dream. I started getting into the minds of people, to understand their pain, their aspirations and their goals to sell them a dream through education. It made me realize how to play on your strength, and to be successful, you need to be in the right place at the right time. I was not selling a need; I was creating it and then servicing it.
These experiences help me to move to my next assignment, with a global IT product company, where I sold services at an exorbitant price. The size of this company was huge, market value even bigger, and sales was cut throat. It was a hard core sales experience under an eccentric leadership of a man who believed in taking competition by their throat. Kill it or Bill it!! I mean Buy it!!
With a virgin territory like eastern India, I started the proceedings well, a tough market, tougher deadlines and technology which can evaluate what you are doing in few clicks, made me raise up to the expectations. The biggest learning here was two fold. First, to increase revenue, you need to increase the price and set the value accordingly. Second, if you are in consultative selling, you need to make your customer respect you, so that they abide by you and give you business at the cost you demand. Lasting for 14 quarters in this organization had to bring out the best in you and it was huge learning on account management, sales experience, negotiation skills, customer satisfaction and being a detailed, process oriented sales person. Till today the numbers extracted from that virgin territory remains to be a benchmark.
My GRC experience was a completely new challenge. New products, new solutions, new market and a clean slate to start with for a country like India, which had no dearth of technology and people and that’s what we tried to cash on. I started my fact findings, used my contacts and I filled that slate with some great opportunities, numerous contacts and worked like a one man team for quite some time. We won some but lost the big ones on price.
My understanding of the market was reasonable, and I realized early that to be successful in this market you need to have some strategic partners. I felt I was back to my university days, when I was giving pep talks to industry honchos, on how to be sensitive to risk and compliance, which till then existed like a check box for statutory authorities, so that they do not kick you out of your business. In a risk management cycle, our entry was at the last, and I realized most organizations here, was not even in the first steps. They needed hand holding and thus consulting opportunities were good, but with no resources locally available, and with a delivery model to get work done in higher economies at an India price was too much on the bottom line of the business for at the time of recession. The market was immature in nature, and still believed in check box implementations rather than looking at an effectiveness of an initiative.
I ran for 13 months with a plan, but no execution support, with changing bosses and a vision, which was blurring for the top management. I learnt few things in this trip… First, if you need to be successful in India, you need leverage on contacts and partnerships. It is no point running without proper (atleast some) delivery capabilities. Second, you need to have references, if not in India, in other parts and be in the customers mind. Third, all solutions are not for all geographies, you cannot preach organized content solutions, for a country where information is free flowing or hosted delivery models for critical business functions, which are closely guarded secrets. I still feel, we had potential, but I guess year one should have been more as an investing year, in people, process, partnerships and brand recognition. Not successful, but very successful learning.
