Culture & Leadership Series · Episode 2 January 2018 5 min read

Three Things I Learnt About Leadership... Episode 2

Three things that I learnt at my very first job and from the same person, which shaped the way I think of leadership.

My first job was information security sales and consulting and way back in 2004, people were not too exposed to the need of information security. As a result of which, my job in sales was becoming difficult as no-one was willing to even listen to the fact that they may be vulnerable.

The word security was only synonymous to the guards at the gate. To my disbelief, a lot of guards did not let me in when I told them that I wanted to meet the IT head for Information Security. Somehow, they thought that I was from another security agency and if I got in, there are chances that he may get fired. Anyways, that was my struggle each day.

One final day, I got an order for a high end firewall from a company; and I was on top of the world. The first thing that I did was to call up my boss and tell him that finally I was able to make a sale.

I was a 22 year old kid who had made his first sale, so I went on an on for almost 10 minutes describing how difficult was it to get this sale done; and how many meetings I had to do.

My boss listened to me all this while with complete patience, and when I was done. He congratulated me, and said that I had done a great job as not too many people are able to make their first sale so fast (which I must confess I had taken more than 6 months to do).

A senior Indian manager with index finger raised making a serious point across a desk to a young employee who is writing in a notepad... a CRT monitor between them, a busy office in the background... the moment of the hard question — 'Do you really think this company needs such a high end and sophisticated firewall?' The question that changed how I think about selling forever.

Then he paused for a couple of seconds and asked me, 'Do you really think this company needs such a high end and sophisticated firewall'? I was amazed at the question, as I did to expect my boss to ask me this. I also took a couple of seconds and said 'As far as I understand, they do NOT need it'. His next question was, so if you thought they do not need it, did you tell them? I said NO.

The exchange... verbatim

Boss Do you really think this company needs such a high end and sophisticated firewall?

Me As far as I understand, they do NOT need it.

Boss So if you thought they do not need it, did you tell them?

Me NO.

The next few sentences from him were jewels

✦ When you are making a sale (whether a service or a product), you are not selling the product of service. No where across the world, you sell products or services, you always sell relationships.

✦ When a person places an order with you, he trusts you for not just guiding him in the beginning with the sale, but subsequently in deployment, after sale service and a lot more.

✦ You also have to act in a manner that you gain trust of the person sitting in front of you. Never look for the short term sale, but remember that every person whom you meet has the potential of giving you a million dollar deal in his lifetime.

When we say, that you should be Customer Centric, this is what customer centricity is.

In these days, when sales are just numbers, not too many bosses will probably give such an option to their teams, and I am thankful that I was in an environment that I learnt such a valuable lesson.

← Previous Episode 1 The chairman who sat on the broken footpath Coming next → Episode 3 Empathy