Alumni of BIT Mesra (Ranchi), and SOM (IIT-Mumbai), Chitranjan is also a Harvard Manage Mentor from Harvard Business Publishing with over 21 years of rich experience in Information Technology. Versatile in grasping the bigger picture and well experienced in partnering with CXO’s on Business Analysis and IT Strategy and play an active role in organizations. Chitranjan belongs to a highly educated family of teachers, that values education and integrity. During his 21 years of career, Chitranjan understood the importance of learning and core values in leadership roles. An abide writer, marathon runner, and winner of several awards on strategy and innovation, Chitranjan is also a deep follower of Seva, Sadhana, and Satsang.
Either way, the current situation with COVID-19 is serious, and we all need to take it that way. Sure, relaxing and distracting yourself with a little binge-watching isn’t a bad idea, especially if what is going on is making you anxious or stressed. But you can also spend this extra time at home focusing on more productive things, like Yoga, Exercise, Gardening, Book reading, cooking, etc.
In the age of Covid-19 and social distancing, many of us are renegotiating our daily interactions with other people. In a professional context, that might mean foregoing a handshake and accepted Indian Pranam, make a distance of 1 meter. How do you navigate this potentially awkward situation? First, accept that it’s going to be uncomfortable. You may worry that you are making a bad impression or sending an unfriendly message. Decide ahead of time what you are comfortable doing, so you don’t end up following the other person’s lead. You might try giving a quick wave before returning your hand to your pocket or simply putting your hand on your chest, and then saying something like.
During our recent involvement with the sales team during this lockdown, what we feel that the salespeople are now thinking like scientists, a lot has changed, when I involved myself from 2013 in sales CRM software implementation. Feels sales peoples think like a scientist. Sales peoples are no more sales peoples, they talk about technology, sell technology, and dreaming technology.
During our recent interaction with SAP and HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) team, both of the salespersons are quite conversant in technology and they are using also. They are even able to show some demo on their respective technology online. Now with the technology to back them up, the best salespeople are putting data first, details of clients, their requirement, technology availability, etc. In our business of technology, our sales team is also talking about technology. when they are selling our business, cloud, backup, etc. Even they are talking like a “data scientist”. Totally a data-driven approach.
When I joined this company, our sales team is working on some data points manually. After the implementation of some CRM tool and BI tool they are ready with their data requirement automatic and we appreciate that our sales team is doing their work on data points only. The MD of my previous company believed only on data and they created a team for data analysis, data strategy team, and believed in data points. The importance of data has never been so clear. The digital age has given birth to both opportunities and challenges, and if you are in sales, you are probably in the midst of this transformation.
The internet has transformed the world into an interconnected entity, with trade largely defying borders and politics. Somebody sitting in Delhi/London calling thru zoom, Microsoft Team for some projects, webinars, etc.
Major Benefits if you know sales technology
The gap between early adopters of sales technology and those that still haven’t fully dove in is widening fast. I am already starting to see organizations get left behind. Sales organizations that are embracing the idea that “how you sell” is as important as “what you sell” are beginning to dominate their competition.
For example, a few organizations I spoke with are still finding contact information manually, some companies have all data online and they are using their digital platform. If contact not available online, they are tracking their social media, etc. They are using a mixture of sales engagement platforms and lines of code that crawl the web and embedded screenshots into a sequence of fully automated email campaigns. Sellers are only notified when a prospect shows some intent to purchase, called full automation of leads.
Yet data still matters, particularly in Sales and Marketing. These functions are at the core of every business. The typical business concern is geared towards reaching out to new customers, generating leads, and converting them. Big data serve as the starting point in this regard. With timely access to the right kind of metrics, businesses can shape their strategies based on a careful analysis of market trends.
Digital sales channels have been gaining in prominence over the past few years. Such data allow businesses to make far-reaching strategic choices. In the example above, it is obvious that with the world moving towards the overwhelming adoption of online shopping, the internet is where all brands wishing to make it in today’s cut-throat market need to be.
In the current work from home scenario, we are doing sales campaigns digitally either through WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Facebook and as usual email campaign, and in our business, we get some business out of these campaigns. Ongoing market research in your product or service category helps to identify threats as well as opportunities to tap.
During this lockdown as almost 60 days is over, here is no doubt that the sales technology landscape is crowded. Large organizations might work with 3 to 4 different sales technology vendors all serving different functions of their sales process. For years, it has been difficult to bring data from all these systems together and make sense of it all. Despite feeling like I was walking through the future of sales, those who were quick to begin using new AI, ML, robotics and BOT, intent data, clever integrations, and focusing on the selling process to maximize efficiency are already on to the next best action.
Overall, we can say that during this lockdown, major break thru for sale peoples are technology and cloud is one of the best to adopt and bring new things to work from home environment. Also, call your family, grandparents, friends. Or your mom and dad, or anyone you know who is especially at risk of complications from this coronavirus. Check-in on elderly neighbors, while keeping your distance. If they need supplies and feel unsafe going to the store, offer to go for them. Help in these days and where you can, and disinfect everything.