Low-ball-game

Sales people sometimes offer their products and services at the lowest possible price (even below cost at times) and then hope that they can make up their lost margins on possible additional or recurring sales. Nothing wrong with the strategy if overall you can still cover up your cost and make a healthy profit. But at times vendors go overboard on this, leading to poor after-sales-support (not enough money left for support)
and huge losses  (resulting even in a shutdown).  Hope you have your checks and balances in place to avoid low-ball-failures.

Passenger’s Trust Deficit Syndrome

If you have travelled in suburban trains in India, you know that they stop for about 30 seconds in every station, and getting in and out of them is hassle at times, because there is congestion near the gate (even people who are not getting down are standing near the gate). This congestion is partly due to what I call the Passenger’s trust deficit syndrome, passenger don't trust that every other passenger would step near the gate only a few seconds before their stop, since no one is trusting the other, they all clog the gate making the entry and exit difficult. This is the same syndrome we experience with flights, moment taxiing is done everybody gets up so fast (clogging the entire aisle, even though they know it would take about 4 to 5 minutes for the gates to open) from their seat because partially they are afraid that someone from behind will pass ahead of their row. Some amount of mutual trust and discipline among passengers can help avoid congestion to some extent.

Engaging is hard in sales

Why engaging with a prospect is difficult? Because it needs a lot of hard work which most of the sales guys are not willing to put. If you have to engage then you have to


1. Do proper pre-call analysis about the prospect and their company (background, product, services)

2. Read few stuff related to the contact person, their industry, their business model, their competition etc

3. Listen...Listen...Listen, if you are more worried about putting across your point or your presentation, then you will lose when it comes to engaging with the prospect, because every word coming out of prospect's mouth can give you cues on how you can engage with them.... use it productively

4. If you feel your prospect is good at something.... don't lose the chance to appreciate them (sales guys sometimes are obsessed about completing their presentation and they don’t see how good the prospect is at something.... and fail to pass on a compliment... too bad)

5. Engaging means you have to constantly improve on being more creative, amusing and sharply attentive!! Because these are the 3 attributes which can help you engage with anybody much better.

6. Prospects are pre-occupied with their priorities at times, and you may need to grab their attention if you need to engage. Try this, it may work ”If you can provide me 10 minutes of your full attention, I can show you something which may turn be very important for you and you can then decide to continue or not”, and then don’t try to rush through, that will only lead to completing your ten minutes with no results. Try to engage.... in most cases prospect will end up spending more time with you.

7. Don’t be transactional in your approach, which is desperately trying to seek the answers for the questions you have in your mind...start friendly, engage and then incrementally seek answers to your questions, works better.

Number one

If something (product or service) is number one, it is easier to buy because

- There is a lot of social proof around (testimonials)
- Doesn't need a world of buying analysis (there is no competition for number one)
- Pretty easy to justify your decision to your boss (after all you bought the number one product or service)
- People around you readily accept that you have made the right choice
- And in the event something goes wrong with what you bought you still get the benefit of doubt

This doesn’t just hold good for products or services, it holds good for you as well.
So are you striving to be number one? And helping your employer buy YOU?

Got No Mentor

Don't have a mentor who can help out? Who can guide you? Who can help you in your career growth? Well there is an alternate available (may not be perfect but it works), retrospect and read relevant books (related to your job). Frequently retrospect on what you are doing? How good are you doing in your job / business? What went wrong and right? Your perspective on things? Etc when you read relevant books, at time you will get answers to your problems, situations or questions, which are lingering in your mind from your retrospects. Try out!!!

Flights = Cheapest fare

Cheapest fare, is this the only value-add flights can provide? and when everybody is providing lowest possible fare, it is no more a value add..... it has just become a norm in the airline industry.... you search for flights in travel search engine, and by default it sorts by lowest price first. Why can't I have 5 more sort options based on value-added services? Put flights in google and this is what you get? cheap cheap cheap

Is there a way that I can charge few 100 bucks extra and still make consumers buy tickets from me? give me your options? what are those value-adds / service differentiations which can help me charge more and still beat the competition? put your wild ideas here

Collect a lot of money and give back a portion of it

Collecting a lot of money in small transactions from a large set of people and then giving a portion of that money back to few individuals in large transaction, and in the process earning a hefty profit. Well I am talking about the transaction cycle around KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati).

Products companies sell their products to common man (small transactions with large set of people), to increase their sales, they advertise further in KBC, KBC gets a portion of what the product companies earned from common man, KBC then invites common man to their show and pay winners a portion of what they earned from product companies (large transaction with few individuals, in other words winners).

You are right this is the way most transaction cycle work around advertising / TV shows, but I never got it this clear until I started thinking about it while watching KBC…. and in case of KBC it is slightly different, it starts with majority common man shelling out money to minority common man receiving a part of the same money back (while in case of other TV shows you only get entertainment)