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These are some reasons why you should not buy my solution? What would be your prospective customer’s reaction if your introductory slide were to have the above message? Most of the managers feel that the above is nothing short of a Harakiri! In Originals – How Non-Conformists Rule the World,  Adam Grant, an American Psychologist at Wharton has turned the conventional logic on its head. Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman  were appalled by false advertising and bad advice about parenting and started an online magazine and blog network called Babble. They wanted to challenge the clichés about parenting. In 2009 when they approached investors they made presentation before their investors with a typical sales pitch. In two rounds they realized that their unbridled enthusiasm was perceived with scepticism as salesmanship with a hidden agenda. Remembering the adage, ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ they de...

Winning a Jackpot: How do you decide? Situation : Imagine you are participating in a game show and after going through qualifying and elimination rounds, you have reached the finals.  The game-show host presents you three options A, B & C and you have to select one of the options which are the respective doors. One of the doors leads to a jackpot (say a Mercedes) and the other doors to an insignificant prize, say a tennis ball through each door. Now let us say you have selected option A. You are curious and excited to see if you have hit the jackpot. The host asks you to be patient, opens the door C and what you see is a tennis ball. Now he asks you whether you would still stick with option A or switch to option B? What would you choose and why? When this question was put on different platforms like linkedin, what’sapp it was observed that 95% of the respondents voted for A. Now read on: Analysis:  Generally people tend to stick to option A, the reason be...

Soumyajeet Mohanty ran  Edu Solutions,   an educational consultancy service in Bhubaneswar Odisha. Initially he started  Sunrise Coaching Solutions providing tuition to engineering students. As the venture did not yield much returns, he ‘moved up the value chain’ by providing  ( fake) admissions to students wishing to get into medical colleges.  Most of these students  either had poor scores in NEET ( National Eligibility cum Entrance Test is an entrance examination in India for admission to medical and dental graduate courses) or  who were repeaters. Mohanty and his team of six were able to notch up a revenue of Rs. 8-10 crores  within 2 years. The admissions were fake, the seals bogus.  Mohanty’s team was able to extract Rs. 10 – 50 lakhs from parents  for each seat  Now what is common between Mohanty’s modus operandi and the management principles? Focus on Results : The moment he realized he was not getting re...

What does it to take succeed in a competitive market? A good product is necessary but not a sufficient condition. You also need to find the right segment where the product needs to be positioned. To achieve this goal, organizations spend considerable time in strategic planning ,  coupled with vision,  mission and  goal statements. Quite often such statements look great ONLY ON WALLS is beside the point! In 1959 Honda Motorcycle Company from Japan decided to enter the US market with its new brand of motorcycles. The strategic planning and the marketing team did a careful market research and came to the conclusion that premium-end motorbikes are appropriate for the US market. Being a highly developed automobile market, the motorcycles were used as fun vehicles where speed , power and long-distance drive on highways were the critical customer preferences. A new design team was put in place for this project, prototypes tested, developed and the bikes were launched. ...

It is assumed that the value perception of a product lies in the product features, workmanship etc. which is proved otherwise in this example. Recently I was conducting training programs for the Pan-India Sales Team of  Bharat Fritz Werner (BFW). The topic was  Effective Value Selling of Capital Equipments . BFW is a renowned manufacturer of Machining Centres, Special Purpose Machines, Turning Cenres, Lathes etc. Murali, one of the Sales Engineers who is an expert in lathes for the last 15 years; narrated an interesting example. While working for Batliboi, his previous company, he used to approach a company called Priyanka Enterprises in Coimbatore. Mr. Ulaganathan who used to make automobile components had upgraded from a normal lathe to a CNC lathe so as to cope with the increased volumes. A sales engineer from a CNC Turninng Company convinced him to go for one. By his misfortune, the  new machine failed to deliver as per his expectations and Ulaganathan wa...

Who is the Managing Director? Suresh, narrated this interesting episode when he was the Sales-cum-Service engineer working for a  Special Purpose Machine (SPM) manufacturing company in Bangalore. There was an important proposal submitted to a client in Delhi. The vendor from Bangalore did not have any market presence in North India and consequently no sales setup. The customer called the vendor for price negotiations. Suresh was sent to Delhi to close the order. He landed at the factory and enquired for the concerned Purchase Officer at the reception. It was around 9.30 AM. He was asked to wait in the conference room. Ten minutes later, a man in his early fifties dropped in the cabin. After exchanging pleasantries, he said, "Tell me, what is the best discount you can offer?" Suresh: "Sir, the best I can offer is 5%." Man: " Ok, I will talk to my MD and come back to you. He is a busy man. You may have to wait." After 2 hours, at a...

In the early 90s Airbus and Boeing, the two major players in commercial aircrafts decided to come together to manufacture Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT). Later on both the competitors parted ways as their business strategy could not synergize. Ultimately in 1994 Airbus decided to go solo on this venture and the project was codenamed A3XX. And thus the first flight of A380, the largest commercial aircraft happened in 2007 which is a double-deck, wide body 4-engine aircraft with 6000 square feet of usable space, 40% more space than its nearest rival product Boeing B747-8. A380 could accommodate 500 seats in 3-class capacity (Economy, Business and First Class) or 850 in an all-economy class. With several delays the project cost escalated from the initial 9 billion to 13 billion Euros. Product Pricing and Positioning : The A380 had a seating capacity which was 5 times the Airbus A320 Neo but the price point was 4X . The List price of A 380 was $430 Mi...

Ratan was working in  Marriott  Chennai and received the information that Vice President of  OfficeTiger  USA was put up in Hotel Park, his competitor. The VP was staying with his wife and 4-year old daughter and was to stay in that hotel for six months. Apart from him, there was a possibility of a number of his executives from US visiting India. How did Ratan managed to move the customer from  The Park  to the  Marriott ? One day Ratan brought a cute soft-toy for the kid and got it delivered through the front-desk. He also managed to get the birthday details of the kid. Ratan approached his management and asked whether it is alright to host a small party for the kid staying with her parents in a competitor’s hotel. After receiving the approval, he arranged the party and also invited some of his in-house guests in Marriott. What would happen to a mother if she receives a message that a birthday party has been organized for her daughter (w...

Contextual Selling – A New Sales Paradigm for the 21st Century , a Sales Book authored by  Rajan Parulekar  is written for sales professionals who are into sales of B2B , High-Value Industrial/Projects/IT/Services. It is also recommended for entrepreneurs from SMEs, start-ups who wish to develop a Winning Sales Strategy . The Sales Book covers the entire value-selling process starting from Prospecting, Objection Handling , Negotiation , Key Account Management to Order Closing . Financial acumen essential in achieving the desired Top-Line ( Revenue) and Bottom-Line ( Profitability) makes the book practical . Written in a simple and easy-to-understand style, it is for those who feel their top-end products and services deserve a premium!  What do buyers say about the book! The 313 pages Sales Book is available in print version ( Company Website ,  Amazon  and  Flipkart ) and  e-book  format (  Amazon ).  Read more fo...