I’ve been in Business development domain for the past 2 years and mostly have dealt with clients with a minimum monetary business potential of a crore and more. In my limited experience I’ve met with many rejections since the field which I work in is demanding and severely capital intensive. And as fortune might have had it, my arrival in this highly skill enriched sector with no knowledge of sales was at a time when the revenues were nosediving with no proportional respite in costs to maintain the infrastructure. Anyway, that will be another story to tell but let me share my experiences that sales profile had on my persona over the past couple of years. Oh, and prior to this stint I worked in IT for over 8 years. A drift from machines to people.
Patience
Rejections and that too quite dismal is what I was dealt with when I first started off. The rejections didn’t matter much but the manner in which they were extended concerned me emotionally and that’s when I learnt the power of patience. The business deal can be never be brokered without patience. The client needs to be approached in a subtle and unhurried way and the process needs to be broken down in pieces which should be well worked out in your mind. The entire process execution must be based on the premise of patience. I do not say that you will crack the deal each time you hold your nerve but it surely will hold you in good stead. The habitualness to patience has helped me reflect the same attitude in my personal life and I’ve reaped rich benefits.
Courtesy
A very important tool in sales which I believe I already had a bit of, but enterprise sales helped me nurture this attribute further. It is very important to be courteous in your dealings with clients. It certainly helps if the prospects are not offended and if you do happen to refute their claims on matters of financial interest then it needs to be supported extensively with technical knowledge on the product or service but extremely well packaged with courtesy. Again, the power of habit reigns. Once you are genuinely habitual to the nature of courtesy, it will have a profound effect on your personal life. People around you value you more for being courteous.
Knowledge
I’ve realised that a fair bit of time needs to be invested in understanding the requirements of the clients and thereby assisting them with the suitable solution. Enabling this philosophy requires knowledge of the firm and the people you are dealing with. The ideation of the solution and the execution become simpler once the knowledge is acquired. This feature helped me in my personal life situations when I could see no more than dead walls. To walk your way through the walls or built a door around them requires a fair bit of unbiased understanding of the problem at hand and thus the eventual possession of the knowledge lead me to new light.
Positivity
In sales you cannot live without “Positivity”. Despite the many refusals and negations you still will have to put up a bright face and redo the act the next day. But how will a bright face help if the soul is not positive? I learnt to be positive every day and that helped me discover new lease of life each moment. I do not mean to say that self-doubt never crept in me. It did, many times but each time the energy of positivity helped me get out and perform better. The same is the case with life. Every day will be different. Some difficult and some generous but at all times it’s the attitude of being positive rekindles you in ways you cannot imagine.
So, these are a few positive effects that the work in sales has brought to my life. I hope you liked it and can work on it further for an enriched life.
Thanks for reading.
