Robotic Process Automation can be defined as logic-driven robots execute pre-programmed functions on data in a process. The bots can be used to automate simple tasks as responding to emails to managing  complex processes using other bots RPA, helps businesses automate repetitive tasks to increase efficiency and decrease costs – that’s the typical outlook of RPA, perhaps a hangover from the other automation concept BPM The true potential of RPA is how it has the power to affect customer experience, and this has nothing to do with the technology in itself Customer Experience is not the responsib ..read more

“The entire company will be working to ensure the success of your project – that is from the CEO to the junior most employee” – It’s not uncommon for startups & small companies to make the pitch and to list the handphone numbers of the CXOs in the proposal.  Subsequently, having gained business from the customer,  the entire organization strives to ensure that their counterparts (at individual levels) are happy. Everybody works like their next meal depends on it & quite often, that is the case.  As organizations grow, it appears they lose that Customer Experience edge At this point, it ..read more

SaaS (normally called as a Software as a Service) not to be confused with Saas Bahu TV shows(sic) are cloud-based services which can be utilized by anyone from anywhere in the world using any device. SaaS (or Cloud services) has been a great equalizer with the large enterprises, to SMBs to mom & pop shops all getting access to similar level of services. So why has SaaS made the life of a salesperson more challenging, let’s understand better. Upto around 5 years back Enterprise software (especially the global multinational multi-billion dollar software companies) was sold to the CIO org. On ..read more

“The unspoken, but overall goal [of Sales Operations], is to reduce or eliminate selling thieves. Any process that takes the salesperson out of the field, or off the phone, or away from selling, is a sales thief” – As Jeffrey J. Fox, Founder of management consulting firm Fox and Company Note: Using Sales Operations (Sales Ops) and Revenu  Operations (Revenue Ops) as synonyms What may have begun was activities to eliminate sales thief has over a period of time developed into a critical function in sales Sales Ops is  Strategic Structure Policy Process Technology Number things Other Things Stra ..read more

Typical high value sales is based an RFP process. The buyer or customer decides the eventual outcome based on some kind of scoring system. The RFP process prevents the seller from challenging or enhancing the buyer’s Basis of Decision and in the modern context of the buyer having traversed 70% of  the process before inviting a vendor..there is no room for any “Aha moments” or “paradigm shift” :)) This means applying a method that enables engaging and winning customers in advance of completing (or even creating) ina commodity-style procurement contest (RFP). It is about creating your own new V ..read more

Design Thinking (DT) hails back to the mid-1950s with the introduction of the subject, Design Science, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Design Thinking is defined in different ways by various academics, industry leaders but all believe in keeping the customer at the core while designing a new product/ service or improving an existing product/service DT has been through phases, a few listed below Design Council, a British organisation, in 2005 created a process model called Double Diamond. Fig 1 Stanford d.school talks about the phases of Design Thinking and it shows a linear ..read more

Sales manager’s typical response to sales persons not meeting sales targets is more activity – that is, more emails, more calls, and more meetings. The premise is that, more activity would lead to more customer actions /response which could result in increased sales closures The strategy of more activity may have worked well in the past and perhaps works for some even now but the % of success would continue to decline. This is because the buying process has changed dramatically in the last few years Open ended questions the typical tactic of “solution selling” where the sales person is on an e ..read more

In this article, Vinil Ramdev talks about the power of personal branding for sales professionals. He shares his story of how he initially attracted clients for his business. Back in 2009, I exited my retail business and became a consultant. When I was in retail, I spent most of my time either selling or training salespeople. After I exited retail, it was only natural for me to become a sales trainer. During the initial days, I advertised my services on Google AdWords and JustDial. Most of my leads came from these two sources. However, I had fewer conversions than I liked. At the same time, I ..read more

Before explaining what cold calling 2.0 is, it is important to define what it is not. As ironical as it sounds, Cold calling 2.0 does not involve cold calling. Cold calling 2.0 means prospecting into cold accounts to generate new business WITHOUT using cold call as the first step. Here the prospect is first contacted via cold email and then it is followed by cold calling in the next step. Cold calling 2.0 also involves processing and placing a system which leads to predictability. In other words, an organization would be able to predict how much output can it expect by putting in a certain amo ..read more

Do you end up hearing bad news at the end of your POCs and wonder if you should have not bothered in the first place? Do your prospects keep asking for quotes but never end up buying? If you are building the right business cases and your funnel is well designed, you might need to start firing your prospects. As controversial as the statement sounds, you only have x amount of hours in a day and only so many days in a month. Your quota is not going to fix itself, so you need to fix your pipeline. Fixing your pipeline starts with choosing the right opportunities to go after. POC or not, as a sale ..read more