Stirring Sales to Perfection! Date:   Wednesday , July 06, 2011 In today’s highly competitive marketplace and challenging economic times, successfully growing sales revenues can be extremely difficult, sometimes frustrating and, of course, very rewarding. Sales are tough to come by especially when buyers see every product and service as a commodity. Sales people must learn to outsell their competition by selling differently. SiliconIndia organized the ‘Strategic Sales Summit’ on May 21st in Delhi which was flocked by 400 sales professionals. ‘Sales refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesperson relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way,” said Chetan Kohli , VP Sales APAC from GlobalLogic who was present to officially inaugurate the Sales Summit . Where Chetan had set the ball rolling for the forth coming sessions, Essential Selling Skills delivered by Amajit Gupta, Vice President Sales from Alcatel-Lucent had the professionals relook at their plans and re-plan their selling strategies. Puneet Singhvi, Vice President Digital Sales from Times Internet who preceded Amajit spoke about Increasing Sales Pipeline Visibility. He went on to educate the assembly about the traditional sales model and how the new sales and marketing model differs from it and also emphasized on the importance of aligning the sales and marketing goals. Kapil Mittal, Head-Indirect Sales, Ericsson spoke about the edge the ‘smart sellers’ have over the others in today’s competitive world “Smart Selling in Competitive edge is all about the Wow factor that differentiates the winner from the rest. Innovative business models and Collaboration is the way forward,” said Kapil. The succeeding session on Relationship Selling Skills by Praveen Malhotra, Senior VP Sales from Big FM where she presented different facets of relationship selling skills and also shed light on issues that concern nurturing businesses and in investment to honing the relationship selling skills Smart Selling in Competitive edge, a panel discussion led by Kapil Mittal, Head- Indirect Sales from Ericsson India and Chetan Kohli, VP - Sales APAC from GlobalLogic, brain stormed the audience with market dynamics. They expressed concerns about the ever changing customer trends and the competition from different sectors to deliver the same. V.P. Sajeevan, Director of Canon India chalked out the ground rules, sales manager should focus on coaching his/her team and stressed on engagement being the key factor and role of sales manager which are very vital for engaging the team. He also added that mutual trust between manager and team member which makes both stronger. “There must be a good product, pricing and promotionn for maximizing the sales performance. But the role of sales manager is very important and he should act like a leader” Sajeevan concluded. The concluding session of Sales Summit was addressed by Anirban, the Director of Sales & Marketing of Pullman Hotels on ‘Changing Dynamics of Customer Life’ in our age, where he said today’s customer lives and speaks in the virtual world and is more exposed and in various medium. Engaging the customer is not only 360 but 361 – consistent, constantly and cohesive. The conference attracted assorted audience from diverse sales fields who were forced to put on their thinking caps and learn from sales experts from leading companies. Fundoodata.com, Sales Babu CRM, MELSS CRM and Mc GrawHill partnered in organizing this exciting summit.