Sales Experiences - Part 1

Lead Generation

The best part about a sales or a business development role is that you are constantly thinking about how to increase business. Where can you get the next lead? Who will give you the money for your business? You start looking at people like they are wads of cash. ;)

This business centrist behaviour leads to a good pipeline for lead generation as you will scout for new leads all the time.
I am listing an example below of one such lead generation:

I had once read about some tender in a newspaper and had gone to met the client which turned out to be a fake one but then over there I found someone who was working in a different industry but knew about new projects. Since, I was in IT products sales I had to pitch to all companies which were setting up new businesses in India. So this friend of mine was a valuable asset and used to pass on leads to me about new projects which are coming up and I used to reciprocate him with the same.
A win-win situation for both :D

There are so many ways in which one can get leads. From vendors, friends, family, clients, etc.

You can get to know by sometimes just sitting in offices of vendors or competitors!!

The key is to keep an eye and ear ready for some info and once that info is in just pounce on it and make best utilization of it. The problems with leads is that the faster you action on them, the better result you'll get.

More experiences to follow!!

Restart Refresh Re - I don't have another word here

So I was just sitting in my room in Mumbai and was thinking about writing something.
Wait!!
It wasn't me thinking. It was a book by Mark Levy called "Accidental Genius" which made me think that I need to write a my blog and lo and behold the aaloochaat is back and fresher than before!!

Then I got reading my old articles and I thought that these were edited so much while writing. Hence I thought that  the next blogs will be free written and then edited and I will not look up at the screen while typing and will type fast. So fast that the keys catch fire.
OK, now that was an exaggeration. That happens only in cartoons.
Anyway, this post is just to restart the blogging experience.!!

Happy reading.!

Favour the new Flavour?

Mr Patel was sitting at the Dwarka Port in Western Gujarat with a copy of The Economic Times in his hand and was pondering over the headline “Pakistan Okays MFN status for India”. He was thinking what implications this would have on an exporter like him. Just then his good friend and economist with the local university Mr Shah came and started discussing with him the implications of this.
Pakistan just granted India the long due Most Favoured nation (MFN) status which India had already given to Pakistan way back in 1996. The MFN status, which means that Pakistan will give trade treatment to India at par with its other partners, is likely to boost the bilateral economic ties. India had granted the MFN status to Pakistan way back in 1996. According to WTO the definition goes “Most-favoured-nation (MFN): treating other people equally      Under the WTO agreements, countries cannot normally discriminate between their trading partners. Grant someone a special favour (such as a lower customs duty rate for one of their products) and you have to do the same for all other WTO members.” This has a lot of implications on the trade between the two countries which are listed below:

1. Trade re-routing: Even without the MFN status there is a large amount of trade happening between India and Pakistan. This trade is routed through entrepot centres like Dubai. This MFN declaration would facilitate the direct trade between India and Pakistan thereby eliminating the need for trading via Dubai. Future trade data will show a reduction in India’s exports to the UAE and an increase in exports to Pakistan. 
2. Shipping boom: There will be a boom in the shipping, communication and trade serving directly to Pakistan. The Gujarati ports which don’t have much business will see a boom.
3. Middlemen: These above facts would appear to just be superficial and not affect the business in the economics sense but there will be removal of a lot of costs. For example, the shipping costs would reduce by at least 2x (even though this cost is small, it will have a huge impact). Another dimension is the cost of middlemen in Dubai. The reduction in the number of intermediaries would directly affect the business thus increasing margins.
4. Competition: Indian goods will compete with Pakistani goods which will lead to overall cost reductions.
5. Relationships: More Indian companies will look for opportunities to grow in Pakistan and the same will happen for Pakistani companies. This will lead to companies spread across the border. A large fraction of the global trade is intra firm trade so when big companies from either side establish centres on the other side of the border, this will lead to a growth in the bilateral trade.
6. Benefits for the states: States on the border which have been susceptible during times of conflicts will be the ones which are benefitted the most from this; especially Gujarat with its long coastline nearest to the Pakistani ports. 
7. Benefits for companies: Companies which have set up production centres in states which are bordering Pakistan would be affected in a positive manner as new markets will be approachable cheaply. For example, companies like Tata can look forward to ship their low cost car Nano to Pakistan via the ports in Gujarat. 
8. People: Looking at trade in isolation would be improper as this movement of goods and services will lead to movement of people. Thus, this will hopefully ease the visa restrictions imposed by the two countries on each other. 
9. Finance: It is said in history that finance follows trade. So where trade in goods and services leads, finance follows. MFN would lead to trade financing, cross border banking, payments, purchases of information, FDI, FII flow, INR /PKR currency risk management and investment flows, etc.

Listening to the above mentioned points had a jaw dropping reaction from Mr Patel who started working his Gujarati mind and looked for opportunities to make money from this announcement as it opened a whole new world for him to make more money!


Originally published on : Finertia - GIM's Finance portal

A small world is still a distant dream

As the saying goes “It’s a small world”. I beg to differ with that. With the rapid technological developments we are in fact shortening the world in the sense that a person in one place can interact with another in a different part of the world. But the real question here is that “How many people actually make use of these technologies?” The internet penetration in the world is just 28.7% of the overall population and most of this penetration takes place in the developed countries which represent just a fraction of the world’s population. The places where there is more number of people (eg Africa, India, China, etc.) the penetration of Internet is quite low. Though it is growing at a good rate but the fact remains that it will take many decades to achieve a good level of penetration. By good level I mean penetration worthwhile of saying “a small world”. Moreover, the phrase “small world” also implies people can easily interact and cooperate and work with people from other places constructively. This is being made possible by virtual offices and web/video conferencing but these methods can never replicate the level of understanding and the level of completion conventional methods can achieve. These conventional methods mean meeting and interacting personally which is not easily possible as the world itself is a HUGE place. Moreover, there are still parts which are unexplored by humans in the world. Places where it isn’t easy to survive, reach and where there are species we don’t know about even after being in existence for so long. This fact itself adds to my personal belief that a small world is still a distant dream.