Mastering Sales Symposium A Platform to Learn How to Sell Date:   Thursday , June 03, 2010 The process of sales can be compared with the snake and ladder game as there is a great deal of probability and luck involved in both. There are ladders that can easily help the sales team to reach their target, but there are also downs like snakes that can simply bring them down. “As it is a game of chance, the sales force has to prepare well before a call or meeting with the client,” according to Anuj Vahid, General Manager, Wipro Infotech. The sales team should make the maximum use of the available resources if they want to be efficient in sales, opined Vahid while sharing his views at SiliconIndia’s ‘Mastering Sales Symposium’, which was a platform for sales professionals to learn about various aspects of sales management. Successful sales strategies are only created by people who possess a combination of two important qualities, critical thinking and expert-based, sales process experience. Gopalakrishnan Kannatath Palakkil, Senior Vice President, Head (India - Sales), MindTree, describes selling as creating demand and fulfilling those demands. According to him, a sales person should know his competition thoroughly. But there are very few people who try to do it. He cited that only five percent of people whom he interviewed spent time to read newspapers. Customer knowledge and customer intimacy are integral parts of sales. A sales person definitely needs to communicate with the customer. They should clearly communicate what the product or service can provide and cannot provide. As without the better knowledge of the product and the customers, it will be difficult to build up the trust, a vital component that ensures the success in buying and selling. A long lasting relationship is possible only when the customer gains his trust either on the seller or the product. So the relationship is really important. “The less we try to make the sale, the more we make them trust the sale and more success can come to us as sellers,” says Shajy Koshy, Head Sales – South and East Region, Mphasis. He opined that all buying decisions are based on emotions and justified with logic. A proper knowledge of the sales environment also helps one to place practical goals in terms of a pipeline. Pipeline visibility helps the sales force to view the opportunities available in the market. A lack of visibility into the sales pipeline may cause loss of sales opportunities and it may end up in making poor decisions. Inaccurate sales forecasts will result in unachieved corporate goals. So improvement of pipeline visibility is very much essential as it helps to diagnose and rectify the hurdles that exist on the way long before they actually begin to be felt. It also helps the users to view the pipeline at any level of details. According to Sachit Murthy, Director of Manthan Systems, a sales organization has to be more alert in order to attain goals. “Sales people always end up in guessing and being optimistic, if they are well organized and everything done properly, chances are less for guess work. The sales team will be able to get good results,” says Murthy. According to him a pipeline is ‘wishful’ and forecast is ‘realistic'. The pipeline helps the users to improve customer relationship and thereby increasing the sales opportunities. The different analyses will help them to view the weakness or strength and defects in the pipeline and thereby managing the business process much effectively. The pipeline visibility report gives organizations a clear view about what they have in the pipeline. Thus, pipeline visibility will help to manage the different pipelines much effectively. Sales people are the entity that is responsible for what is happening in the market. They are the ones who decide the success or failure of an organization. A dazzling sales team that can generate tremendous sales for any product or service is the backbone of every company. When an amazing sales team generates tremendous sales for an average product or service, a clumsy sales team might not be able to do much with even a matchless offering. Successfully growing sales revenues can be extremely difficult and frustrating at times. There are three major factors that play a major role in creating good sales result - senior management, sales management, and sales people. According to Abhishek Sahay, Director, Business Development, Strategic Alliances, sales results cannot be managed. “If the sales force manages the leading indicators impacting sales results, the result will take care of itself. If they manage the milestones on the sales path, the end result shall take care of itself,” says Sahay. According to him, pipeline management and number of opportunities are the indicators for sales people. Pipeline management will help the sales people to view the opportunities in the market. They can measure deal velocity - time to input and time to out put - and conversion ratio. In order to gain the highest achievement through his team, a sales manager has to organize all the functions properly. Statistics show that due to a lack of proper sales technique, 80 percent of all sales started wrongly. Mastering Sales Symposium provided a platform to help sales professionals to get an insight on how to sell in the present market scenario which is highly competitive. It also helped startups and growing companies to understand various aspects of sales management. Around 300 participants like sales leaders, business development professionals, senior sales executives, and sales professionals who are currently directly responsible for managing their sales plans were part of the event. The participants walked away with improved strategies, tactics, and an arsenal of ideas focused on dramatically improving their companies’ sales effectiveness.