I have been in sales for over past 5 years now. One thing atypical of a sales guy is the art of presenting logic and argument for any situation. If the boss quizzes you on the low number delivery there are a set of standard answers.
1) The industry has reached saturation, demand is weak
2) Competition is very aggressive in a particular price bracket where we are absent.
3) Competition schemes are more lucrative than ours
4) Our visibility is taking a hit because of marketing budget cuts.
5) XYZ was in constraint; else we would have choked the competition
6) etc …. etc ….
It is good to have such arsenal in one’s repertoire but the bottom line is that you have a boss who has given the same crap to his boss a good decade earlier. While such intellectual bullshit might help you sail the tide on more than one occasion, but there is one sales mantra one should not try to circumvent; “Know thy numbers”.
There is an interesting case to reflect the same.
I was having a sales review in one of the companies that I worked for. These reviews under the aegis of a “Business Monthly Review” aka BMR were no less than a gang bang. The entire leadership team would be present at such reviews and would sequentially rip apart the presenters. Throwing such intellectual jargons in such reviews could seriously jeopardies one’s employment.
It is really beneficial if you have your presentation in such reviews immediately after lunch. A lethargic boss after a heavy lunch is one less thing to care for.
Now I managed to scrape past through one such review, though the really colorful graphs were of no avail, the negative slope on the trend lines further added to my woes. After much criticism and jotting down the “feedback” from the bosses, I sat back on my chair, a relieved man ready to draw sadistic pleasure from the goof ups of my peers. I seriously feel that the “Theory of Relativity” should have been proposed by a sales guy; actually we live through it each day of your life. If your relative performance is better than your peers than you chill out and have a dig at others. If your boss’s relative performance is better than his peers you can expect a smooth closing. On the other hand if your performance is below par than you can expect your blood pressure to go up a few notches up on the sphygmomanometer on the closing day.
Anyhow I was still there, shaken but not stirred, ready to enjoy the Monday matinee show.
Next in line was a colleague of mine, Anurag (name changed for obvious reasons). As usual the review started with the previous month’s performance. Questions were asked, logics were given, counter-logics were thrown and tempers soared. Somehow, Anurag managed to weather the first few slides, vigorously taking notes and soaking in the deluge of gyaan coming his way.
Now there was a slide dedicated to the attach ratio of a complementing product line. Now an attach ratio is a simple percentage of the complementing product line to the main product line. For most of us the figure stood at 4-5%, which though not desirable conformed to the theory of relativity. For Anurag, the figure surprisingly stood at 8%, an achievement by any standards. The same was as much a surprise to Anurag as to us.
Now let me be very candid about it; sales guys have made working under pressure their second nature. A review presentation is given the final touches seconds before the presentation starts. The presenter is as alien to the data on the slides as the presentee. For Anurag, he could sense a silver lining in the dark clouds. Latching on to the moment, Anurag started giving the reasons for his stellar performance;
Anurag had finally found his redemption and an opportunity to score those brownie points over his peers.
Boss: “ Anurag, the attach ratio of X in your territory is really high, that’s really commendable”
Anurag: “Thanks boss”
Boss: “Can you illustrate for the benefit of the larger team, what is it that you have done differently ? ” Anurag: “Sure boss, I and my team had identified X as having good potential in my territory. I had discussed the same with the distributor and we decided to take a X specified drive in my territory. We had kept Monday, no, Tuesday every week as a specific day to drive only product X. The entire team was given daily targets for X, which were tracked by me on a daily basis, we had rolled out incentives for the salesmen for the same. Apart from that I had undertaken a canopy activity in the key market clusters to drive the product and had deployed some demo units at key retail points.”
Boss: “Really good work, Anurag. Guys please replicate this model elsewhere in your territories as well” Anurag: “Thanks boss” (Chest swells a couple of inches)
A wry smile hung on Anurag’s face, a battle had been won, the foundation of the next appraisal discussion had been laid. As Anurag stood there basking in his newfound glory, he paused a bit too long on his present slide. No sooner did he move to the next slide than somebody interjected and asked him to move back to the previous slide. The moment was lost; Anurag had committed the classic mistake of holding on to his glory moments for too long. To make the matters worse, the person who had interjected was the GM, boss’s boss.
“Anurag, can you re-check your numbers. I see some calculation mistake” The GM quipped.
“Errrrr, yes sir, the number are all correct” said Anurag.
GM: “Are you sure, your overall sales stood at 35 million and X sales is roughly 9 lacs, that takes your attach ratio to somewhere around 2.5%.”
” Let me re-check, boss”, said Anurag, as he furiously punched some numbers on excel.
The room was full of murmurs now; there were some suppressed giggles as well. The GM had narrowed down his eyebrows in anger and Anurag, the poor chap was shaking like a leaf. Now, I seriously believe that the heart does not support one during such time of crisis. Instead of pumping blood to the brain it pumps all the blood to your ears and face. Anurag’s ears and face had turned red. He furiously punched another set of number on excel but to no avail, he had goofed up with his numbers.
“Yes sir, I had a made a mistake, the attach ratio is at 2.5%” said Anurag. The room was in pin drop silence, the matinee show had reached its climax. The GM stood up from his chair and silently strolled up to the dais. All eyes were now on Anurag, who probably felt like a lamb amidst a pack of wolves. And then it happened; all hell broke loose.
Anurag, I guess was too stupefied to react as a barrage of questions ranging from what drives he undertook, what activities he undertook and what incentives he had rolled out bounced off him.
Oh, I had never seen somebody getting ripped apart so very badly, my presentation earlier in the day now seemed to be like a walk in the park.
The bosses called for an unscheduled break, as we huddled around Anurag offering him a smoke and some tea to calm his nerves. Anurag was meanwhile cussing the MIS executive who had compiled the data for his presentation. The rest of the day went relatively peaceful as we had already hit the trough; thanks to the heroics of Anurag the rest of us had a relatively peaceful review. I had learnt one of the most important sales mantra that day; “Know thy numbers”.
