Sales and Entrepreneurship

24 December 2020

I’ll start the post with a useless trivia first as off late I'm fascinated by these useless tidbits of information. The information is that I'm writing the post in the morning on my mobile one day before Christmas. This is important for me as I have been struggling to post blogs for quite some time now and is under extended writer's block currently. Hence this small effort to break the shackles.

Okay now to the main topic, Sales and Entrepreneurship. I'm neither in Sales nor an entrepreneur right now. So why do I want to write on this topic. My current profile can be termed as product management or application engineering or Sales engineering or Proposals or technical sales. The very fact that we have so many names for the role makes it amply clear that my job can be viewed at many different angles. To separate wheat from the chaff. I'll like to define it as a crossroad, from where one road leads to Sales and second to Machine designing. I have been always more inclined to Sales than design due to various reasons. And this job is giving me opportunity to transition into Sales gradually (at least for now). Entrepreneurship on the other hand is always a long-term solution or dream for me. Hence this post.

 

To give some insight into my current company, it started only in this infamous year of COVID 19. Is an Indian arm of newly formed group. Hence, we have very limited visibility among the target customers. We have a very lean team hence not many people in Sales right now. As part of application team, I am present in all customer meeting, attest for serious customers. In other words, the situation cannot be riper for my transition into Sales.

I'm trying to remain focused and don't try too many things at once as its always a good thing to start with basics and built a solid foundation 

Firstly. I'm mentally preparing myself to be ready to front customer and give our company's presentation at short notice (I already had an experience where I was asked to present about the company at last moment and I struggled). Obviously like everything else,  its getting better with more practice. 

Secondly, I’m reaching into my network to collect relevant information about prospective customers.

Thirdly, I’m working on improving company's corporate presentation (which I target to finish in this year). 

Fourth, I’m going to write my elevator pitch which I'd like to keep a bit longer. 

Fifth I'm going to listen to all the company's presentation for my company on YouTube etc, I understand there are not many of them plus even less in English, Hence I will look at our competitor’s presentation as well to understand how they present their company 

 

I could have done on and on and one. But I know that execution is my weak point compared to planning. Hence, I'll stop here and focus more on how to implement the steps listed above.

Now coming to the second parts. Enterpreneurship. All the points listed above on sales are relevant for an Enterpreneur too. As broadly its always better to have Sales related orientation for running any business. But its not only about sales. There are various other factors too like risk taking, reach out to team. Leading not only your peer group and sometimes your superiores as well. Building your personal brand with prospective customers and network. Gathering business intelligence. Working more on presentation. And last but not the least, self discipline and will power to finish the task even if its monotonous or something that you didn't enjoy. It starts with setting small small targets and putting max effort in achieving them 

As my current company is in a start up phase, I'm gaining the experience of various challenges involved in setting up a company.

Also I'm trying to gain some insight into the financial matters as well for which U have no prior experience.

In the nutshell, I need to have visibility about all aspects if business If I wish to fulfill my dream of entrepreneurship. I have started my journey with baby steps in that direction.