The first meeting with a customer often carries a long way in your being able to build a strong relationship. Here are some things I would do, in preparation for the first meeting with a customer: Research the customer – If the customer has a website, read their product/service offerings. When you visit the customer, instead of saying “Tell us what you do” – rephrase it as, “Based on what I researched, your company is involved in X,Y and Z. I would be keen to hear your perspective on where the company is headed”. You would be surprised how many sales people I know who walk into a customer meeting with absolutely no idea what they do. Treat Research as ‘input’ not ‘output’ – As an extension to the above, do not conclude on what a customer does, simply by research. It is important to ask the customer about their perspective, since it is often more detailed (and sometimes, rather different) than a web report. Doing research is showing respect to the customer – that you want to know their business. But don’t use it to put words in your customer’s mouth. Research their competition- I remember walking into a

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Whoever said sales is done better by folks who wear versace suits ? It’s all about passion. If you believe in it, you make others believe in it. If you try to hard-sell, you put off most people. Enjoy this bit of passionate humor. Click on Play below (around 6 mins.)   Technology, VoIP, SIP, IMS, Marketing, Corporate Management

One of the things that always amazes me is how ill-informed employees are of their ‘total cost to the company’, often referred to as ‘loaded costs’. Simply put, the pre-tax salary that is in your offer letter is only a part of what your employer pays for you. I find it pretty silly that an employee leaves one company for a 5% pay hike in his base salary without calcuating what other ‘hidden’ costs may not be paid by the new employer. To give you an idea, here is a sample break down of what constitues your ‘loaded cost’ to your employer, assuming your salary is $100,000 (easy number for computations). There are some approximations made, but for the most part, this will give you a good idea of the costs involved. This also gives employers an idea of how much they are really spending per employee. Many senior employees who are involved in budgeting and planning are often clueless about their real costs and take only ‘paper salary’ as their total cost, which is way off the mark. Assumptions: # of employees = 40 2 VPs, 4 Directors, 3 sales (typically this is more, but let us take this

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A good friend of mine made this hilarous statement: (he was referring to his corporate climb, where he recently (8 months ago) progressed from being a key architect to a ‘upper strata persona’. ….I mean, I am wearing blue shirts and black pants to work for the past !@#$ing 8 months and all that people talk to me about is c++ !! I guess it is time to get Un-geekified ! When is your un-geekification process complete ? When you can spend an entire day at office doing nothing but hitting ‘refresh’ in your inbox every 5 minutes When you can successfully attend every meeting and summarize your key action as “As I understand it, I will ensure that my people will talk to your people” When instead of saying “No, my product does not do this feature”, your natural reaction leads you to say “Based on my current understanding, which I will run by my core team, I believe this feature is part of an enhacement package for which we can positively work with you for a mutually exciting roadmap as part of our professional services initiative, assuming that this feature introduction is benefitial to both parties in a

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