Sales is a game of mindsets. It involves thinking with vision to get ahead and sell your product. I’m Umraz Mohd Gous Shaikh. I work as a Sales Manager at Butterfly Innovations and this piece is about what I feel about my profession and the company. I strongly believe that sales is the tact to gracefully persuade rather than about manipulating a person across the table. It can be termed to be a precursor for definite success and an ever important source of revenue. Are old methods and ideas regarding sales still at play? I think so. The crux is still to build and nourish strong customer relationships, done by understanding what the customer needs and what the seller can offer. The vital trick here rests in selling promises more than the product itself. I think opening a relationship and maintaining mutual trust is important to close a sale. A salesman must rely on some core values to be successful apart from trustworthiness and perseverance. A positive self-belief is essential, but what takes the cut is an in-depth knowledge of what the product is. Such knowledge spurs confidence and in turn advocates passion about the product in itself. The biggest enemies to the idea of this profession are trust breaches and fake promises, again pointing towards credibility. At present, we are reliant on the use of services over products more than ever. Since services can’t always be tried or taken on trial, trust becomes an indispensable virtue.

Something important to ponder about though is the weight you provide as a salesman or sales manager to suspects and prospects. I think smartness lies in investing your effort in identifying and closing one prospect rather than pursuing ten suspects. This smartness comes from experience, because there are enough imposters in every market who show interest but don’t follow up. After having more than a year’s experience of working sales in the education sector, I’ve had experiences of senior level sales targets who show definite interest and yet don’t walk the talk eventually. So, investment of time with a concrete vision for the future and on the right people is of astute importance.

Our workplace shows perfectly how sales is vital for any startup. The focus laid on building a strong company network (which I personally advocate) and brand, interacting and taking valuable advice from people of diverse professional backgrounds, equal authority and responsibility vested in every employee and a golden opportunity to personally grind ahead one’s learning curve; is something that I cherish. Every employee is a salesman at one phase or the other, who thinks about the selling point of the product i.e. CollPoll. As a product, CollPoll is new and is focusing on a niche market. To be involved with a startup where I get to learn several things at once from scratch even about sales, the vibrant and positive work culture and finding a common passion in every colleague’s eye – to succeed; is something that is very exciting to me. My aim of working with Butterfly Innovations for CollPoll is to drive the company to a competitive level where we are able to pull or attract customers more than getting involved in pushing or convincing them. I believe that with purpose and diligence shown by the team, we will get there with time.