Every sales person has an arsenal of stories. The war stories. ones with real battle scars. Some hits and many ' near hits'. After nearly 20 exciting years in field- I thought of documenting some of mine. The list is not complete and like any true blue sales person- I am sure there will be more wins in next 20 years. And being positive I know they will be so BIG that i may forget the ones below..
ok enough bragging...
My first win was in Pune and was purely accidental. It was to BT and it was a visit with my colleagues and i just showed a fpga based card- they liked the demo and i had my first sales of rs10K. During that time- my role was mixed bag. Used to sell lots of training services and lab set up sales. I evolved into a good techno-commercial sales guy. I will find which college have funding and then pitch to entire hierarchy. It was not an easy sales and it taught me the basics. I also used to help our resellers sell more by doing technical demos and doing lot of 'pre-sales'. My first big sales was in BMS college, Bangalore ( Rs-2.5Lakhs)- and implementation was really tough. I failed many times before i could make things ok. My territory was first Pune , then Mumbai-- entire stretch of colleges. so it used to be fun. I used to put all the different evaluation boards ( FPGA/ CPLD boards), software CD, cable testers, telephone testers ( CDOT approved) and used to literally go door to door. Lots of cold calling. lots of research on web ( it was new that time). Cold calling over phone... gut crushing waits at reception and travel. Travel through bus, train and famous local trains of Mumbai. This was the story from 2000 to 2001. 2002-2003- i was having a great territory- Karnataka, Kerala, Goa and Tamilnadu and also Hyderabad to support Raghu. Goa was my favourite. I used to take rental bikes.. and there was this guy called Alvin .. who will ferry me from college to college. and also in Terna industrial area. so many customers. Slowly but surely I became a known face in all DRDO & ISRO labs and also in design houses.
Thanks to my mentor Rakesh Mehta sir- I learnt real sales. the classic-'jhola sales'. One day I plan to write a book on those techniques. It may have some value for some sales guys. I always want to tell to my next generation-- it does not matter if you are not lucky, if you are hard worker and strong willed- you can achieve anything and everything.
2003- my first 10Lack Rs order- my first major order from dRDO labs. then it was no looking back..2003 was seminal year for me as a sales guy. The FPGA market was growing, Educational institues were investing and I was working like there is no tomorrow. By the time I left Bitmapper/MTE-- teh results were astounding- Grew the biz value to Rs90 lakhs from rs 10lakhs-- in 2 years.
CG-Coreel- the territory was Hyderabad and it became sales of EDA tools. i learnt very fast, scaled up evry fast and basically enjoyed closing orders. This was the time i closed my first $200K USD order. The actual value was- $231K USD. that too to CMC/ Tata group. No. of orders closure in 2003-2005 was ( i kept a count)- 82 different orders from 26 different customers. Value wise it was nearly $2.5M. I must thank John sir, Raghu sir, Aravind, sujay for teaching me.
At periphery- there were mentors like Neeraj sir. Frankly-- I was scared of Viswa. he once dragged me by hand and showed how tardily i quoted to customer ( he listed 10+ points of defect).. ohh learnings...and learnings...Basics.. nowadays who has time to teach young sales people the basics.
Ramesh Babu was quite inspirational. I will rmember my biggest loss- Anurag- DFT tools loss to cadence. self and aravind was devasted after the loss- but he perked us up.
Changed over to Avnet. ohh and it was like dropping from fast flowing river to ocean. It too me nearly 6 months of confusion to learn semiconductors sales. Here i learnt from peers and seniors. Ravi, prasanna, youvraj...
First 100k order was BEL traffic light- osram led... what fun ti was. First 500k order- manpack radio.
First 1M$ order--- ITI.
Then i shifted to marketing. My sales work continued.
2008- Biggest order-$8M- Tablet
209- another $7.8M.hpl meter.
In between- it became single orders to recurring revenue orders, segment orders. I learnt and grew. started launching products.
some other day- the story- of creating- low power RF business from scratch. The first RF meter testing in daman and mumbai.
the story to create a business from 0 to $5M.
The story of growing from another linecard from $8M to $38M...
Sales is beautiful game. It teaches more and takes a lot...
I am indebted to it-- so many pain to gloss over. And you forget the pain-- when you get the order.... that $15M fpga.. that $5M gprs modem.
Failures teach you-- you can always rise again. Now i must close- lest it sounds like rambling.
ok enough bragging...
My first win was in Pune and was purely accidental. It was to BT and it was a visit with my colleagues and i just showed a fpga based card- they liked the demo and i had my first sales of rs10K. During that time- my role was mixed bag. Used to sell lots of training services and lab set up sales. I evolved into a good techno-commercial sales guy. I will find which college have funding and then pitch to entire hierarchy. It was not an easy sales and it taught me the basics. I also used to help our resellers sell more by doing technical demos and doing lot of 'pre-sales'. My first big sales was in BMS college, Bangalore ( Rs-2.5Lakhs)- and implementation was really tough. I failed many times before i could make things ok. My territory was first Pune , then Mumbai-- entire stretch of colleges. so it used to be fun. I used to put all the different evaluation boards ( FPGA/ CPLD boards), software CD, cable testers, telephone testers ( CDOT approved) and used to literally go door to door. Lots of cold calling. lots of research on web ( it was new that time). Cold calling over phone... gut crushing waits at reception and travel. Travel through bus, train and famous local trains of Mumbai. This was the story from 2000 to 2001. 2002-2003- i was having a great territory- Karnataka, Kerala, Goa and Tamilnadu and also Hyderabad to support Raghu. Goa was my favourite. I used to take rental bikes.. and there was this guy called Alvin .. who will ferry me from college to college. and also in Terna industrial area. so many customers. Slowly but surely I became a known face in all DRDO & ISRO labs and also in design houses.
Thanks to my mentor Rakesh Mehta sir- I learnt real sales. the classic-'jhola sales'. One day I plan to write a book on those techniques. It may have some value for some sales guys. I always want to tell to my next generation-- it does not matter if you are not lucky, if you are hard worker and strong willed- you can achieve anything and everything.
2003- my first 10Lack Rs order- my first major order from dRDO labs. then it was no looking back..2003 was seminal year for me as a sales guy. The FPGA market was growing, Educational institues were investing and I was working like there is no tomorrow. By the time I left Bitmapper/MTE-- teh results were astounding- Grew the biz value to Rs90 lakhs from rs 10lakhs-- in 2 years.
CG-Coreel- the territory was Hyderabad and it became sales of EDA tools. i learnt very fast, scaled up evry fast and basically enjoyed closing orders. This was the time i closed my first $200K USD order. The actual value was- $231K USD. that too to CMC/ Tata group. No. of orders closure in 2003-2005 was ( i kept a count)- 82 different orders from 26 different customers. Value wise it was nearly $2.5M. I must thank John sir, Raghu sir, Aravind, sujay for teaching me.
At periphery- there were mentors like Neeraj sir. Frankly-- I was scared of Viswa. he once dragged me by hand and showed how tardily i quoted to customer ( he listed 10+ points of defect).. ohh learnings...and learnings...Basics.. nowadays who has time to teach young sales people the basics.
Ramesh Babu was quite inspirational. I will rmember my biggest loss- Anurag- DFT tools loss to cadence. self and aravind was devasted after the loss- but he perked us up.
Changed over to Avnet. ohh and it was like dropping from fast flowing river to ocean. It too me nearly 6 months of confusion to learn semiconductors sales. Here i learnt from peers and seniors. Ravi, prasanna, youvraj...
First 100k order was BEL traffic light- osram led... what fun ti was. First 500k order- manpack radio.
First 1M$ order--- ITI.
Then i shifted to marketing. My sales work continued.
2008- Biggest order-$8M- Tablet
209- another $7.8M.hpl meter.
In between- it became single orders to recurring revenue orders, segment orders. I learnt and grew. started launching products.
some other day- the story- of creating- low power RF business from scratch. The first RF meter testing in daman and mumbai.
the story to create a business from 0 to $5M.
The story of growing from another linecard from $8M to $38M...
Sales is beautiful game. It teaches more and takes a lot...
I am indebted to it-- so many pain to gloss over. And you forget the pain-- when you get the order.... that $15M fpga.. that $5M gprs modem.
Failures teach you-- you can always rise again. Now i must close- lest it sounds like rambling.
