Why zen and the art of sales are intertwined in Singapore

Anthony was given the task of doubling the sales target of his region again this year.  He has been doubling his team's sales targets consecutively for the past 3 years, that everyone thought he is a Superman. 

Everyone, except Anthony himself.

3 years ago, the company Anthony had just launched a winning product that had a huge demand in the market.  Prior to this, the company had very little sales, and was still struggling.

With the launch of the new product, sales shot up like a rocket.  Anthony was part of the action too.  After all, it's not enough to just have a winning product.  Someone has to sell it too.

Anthony worked hard to educate the market.  Soon enough, he had to build a sales team to get the product out to as many customers as possible in a short time.  Hence, sales has been doubling for the last 3 years.

However, when Anthony received news that he had to double sales again in the 4^th year, he's beginning to have doubts.  He had built such a sizable market now, and to double that is going to be a lot more harder.  Furthermore, competitors had also come in to his market with new competing products.  It's not like 3 years ago where he had the definitive winning product without any competitor.

One thing is clear in Anthony's mind.  If he merely repeated his tried-and-proven sales strategies, he won't be hitting a 100% growth.  He might not even maintain the same level of sales results as well, and competition is fierce.  He had to do something different, and unlike most sales people, Anthony decided to think and observe first, before taking action.

If You are Not Awake, You are Asleep

It is common knowledge amongst many sales people that the first couple of years in the sales job are the toughest.  You start out without much customer contacts, and you don't have a customer base.

When you start making sales, you will also get more customers who could be repeat buyers, and this forms your customer base.  The good thing about having a customer base is that you can have some peace of mind knowing that a certain percentage of your sales targets will be provided by your existing customer base.  In some cases, some sales people have as high as 80% or even 100% of their sales targets contributed by their existing customer base.

However, the downside of your customer base is that it may give you a false sense of security, so much so that you may over-rely on your customer base, and not working hard enough to develop new leads and get new customers.

More importantly, if you feel too comfortable, you may not be awake enough to notice subtle changes that are taking place within your customers, or in the marketplace such as:

• Customers could be completely satisfied with you, but due to changes in their emerging purchasing strategies or policies, they may reduce their purchase from you;
• Customers could be making a change in their purchasing criteria, and you may not be best positioned to meet their new needs;
• Competitors could have crept in and have been slowly stealing your customer without you noticing;
• There are new customers out there in the market that could have provided you with new sales opportunities that you are not aware of;
• Your current sales and marketing strategy may have been outdated, and is not generating your expected levels of business results;

Hence, if you are not being wide awake in keeping your eyes open to your customers, your competitors, the market place and other factors that could affect you, you are in fact sleeping.  And if you are asleep for too long, your customers will just simply switch and buy from someone else.

Whenever you feel comfortable about achieving your sales targets, you may just want to help yourself stay awake by asking yourself:

• If there's a change in the customers' management, will there be a reason for them to buy from someone else, and not from us?
• If you are your competitor, how would you want to steal this customer away?  What are some ways of preventing or reducing the likelihood that this could happen?
• Are there changes in the market that will make it less desirable for the customer to buy from you?  What can you do to make yourself more appealing to your existing and potential customers?

You can Observe a Lot by Just Watching

Being awake allows you to keep your eyes open to potential opportunities and threats.  You still need to figure out how you can capitalise on certain opportunities, and resolve the threats you face.

One way of finding out what you could do next by watching and observing what goes around you.  You can choose to observe:

• What are the best practices of your competitors, given thatthe most famous quote from Sun Tzu's Art of War is "To know yourself, and your adversary";
• What are the positive and negative feedback from your customers about yourself, or your competitors; OR
• Things that are not necessarily relevant to what you are doing

The success of Taobao.com in China comes at the expense of eBay in China.  Essentially, Taobao.com was able to win over a lot of eBay China's online merchants, thus making itself the bigger platform with more choices available for end users.  It was successful in getting a majority market share from eBay China within the first 3 years of its launch, from 2002 to 2005.

Taobao.com started as an imitation of eBay.  However, it had been keenly observing how their merchant and end users interact with eBay and itself, and was able to customised its user interface and services to enhance the user experience such as:

• Shifting from auctions to fixed-price-selling, since most of its online merchants are small business owners, NOT individuals auctioning of some used items;
• Providing an escrow payment facility, so that if end customers need a refund, their rights will be protected;
• Allowing end users to choose the desired size, or colour, or other preferences with just a few clicks, etc.  In this instance, Taobao.com probably had gotten the inspiration from other online shopping sites, beyond just looking at eBay.

Legend has it that the home button of iPhones, iPads and by extension most smartphones and tablets got the inspiration from something unrelated.

According to the legend, the engineer who was tasked to design the first iPhone with no more than one button on the phone got his inspiration from the toilet.  Apparently, he was finishing his business in the toilet when he flushed the toilet bowl, and then he realised that the flush was also a "one button solution" for the toilet bowl.

You could push for a half-flush, or a full-flush or even flush-and-hold.  And if one flush does not finsih the work for you, you may need to flush twice.  Hence, we get similar functions with the home button, whether we press once or twice to get us where we want to go on our smart devices.

Be an Empty Cup

While we could draw inspiration from just about anywhere, from our customers to our competitors to something that's totally unrelated, most of us either reject such observations as rubbish, or that such observations simply go unnoticed.

Some of the reasons why we don't learn from our observations could be:

• We might be overly judgmental, and could kill ideas and discourage ourselves or other to contribute new ideas;
• We may not want to take risks in trying out new ideas or new ways of doing things, since some of those new ideas WILL fail;
• We had tried something similar in the past before, and it didn't work.  However, since times have changed so whatever didn't work before could have a new application that could work out well in a different situation;
• We might have a "not invented here" mindset, whereby new ways of doing things (not to mention the competitor's way of working) are much less readily accepted in our organisation;
• We may need to communicate and gain buy-in with our internal colleagues, so that they see the value of our observations and ideas. etc.

Hence, in the case of our opening scenario, if Anthony were to make any attempts to try to grow sales by 100%, here are some suggestions on what ideas he could try out:

• Make a list of new, potential ways of prospecting customers that Anthony and his team had not thought of, or had not really put into practice;
• Make a list of the people in the current customers' organisations that could have some impact on their buying process, but the sales team hasn't really been in contact with them much;
• Make a list of other usages and applications that the products that the sales team is selling, of which could appeal to a totally different group of customers;
• Make a list of potential prospects or market segments that the sales team have not really gone into contact with;
• Make a list of the ways which the sales force handles customers' objections, price pressures and concerns, and then make another list of ways not used by the sales force before.

As the definition of insanity could to to use the same strategies over and over again and expect a better result, sometimes a touch of Zen in looking at the world differently and take some non-linear actions could produce some quantum improvements in your business results.