5 Things I Learnt as a Sales Man

I had a great experience yesterday.

We (our company) normally work for overseas clients – mainly from UK, USA and Australia. And thus we do not have an active sales and marketing team here in Kolkata. (My job responsibilities are content development, on-page optimization, online marketing strategy development and implementation etc…).

But day before yesterday, the big boss called me up and asked me if I could visit a prospective client and more importantly if I could manage some time away from my cube. (This is the beauty of working with small companies (employee strength 50-100) – you can move between different departments).

WOW – I was so excited – I don’t want to spend my whole life in a cube… lol.

I just jumped up to it (as I always do to any odd job) and my boss gave me a brief about the client.

Yesterday I visited the client and spent around 2 exciting hours in their board room to understand their needs and to prepare a customized solution for them. Cool (this was my first face to face client interaction)…

I would again visit them on Tuesday to finalize the deal (fingers crossed).

People used to shut the door on our faces and we used to talk to our souls that the next door is a new one and we may find some good luck there.

I am not a hardcore sales man but I started my career as a sales man for a newly launched newspaper in Kolkata. At the moment I just appeared for my 12th exam and had nothing to do for three months (awaiting results).

That was an awesome job – we started early in the morning (6 AM to 9AM - Working Hours) – used to visit one door to another and asked people if they would like to try our newspaper (hey I was not a newspaper hawker anyways :)).

The biggest challenge for us was the fact that we were actually asking someone to change his or her habit. We did not offer free newspapers or any special discounts. The only motivation for change was the change itself.

People don’t need your product – they need a solution to their problem.

In the initial days I could not understand what I was asking the person to do. And no one taught us what to do after someone opened the door – we never knew what to say or how to start. But we managed somehow in the initial days and later we found that we developed an imaginary communication script.

Gradually I understood a few things (real life experience… lol):

1. Newspaper is a habit – you know what is there in your newspaper; you know where is the sports section and where is the editorial (It would be terrible if newspapers changed page element arrangements everyday). You know which supplement is there and who is going to write the sub-editorial today (do you really read the sub editorial!!). 
2. More importantly the reader is accustomed with the language and writing style and voice of a newspaper. (would you like to decode hieroglyphics early in the morning)
3. A newspaper is read by each member of a family for different reasons. You can’t close the sale by answering to the decision maker’s questions alone. You will have to solve the problems of each and every reader of the family. Sometimes I found families who had been reading their newspaper for last 30 years. (Isn’t it tough to instigate a sustainable change in a 30 years old habit?)
4. Don’t start unless you have understood their need and don’t take too much time to understand what they need. 
5. People don’t need your product – they need a solution to their problem. 

People used to shut their doors on our faces (who would like to talk to a sales man so early in the morning – this is insane). And we used to talk to our spirited souls that the next door is a new one and we may find some good luck.

BTW, that was a commission based job and we were paid only for the successful subscription. And those few months changed my outlook, my attitude to works...
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