Year 2013-2017 was the phase of my entrepreneurial stint. When I decided to embark on this journey after leaving a well-paid corporate job, it was not easy. Apart from the fear of financial instability, the big question was – “How will a Candid SME like me, having an academic perspective will be able to sell?”
My well- wishers were worried. They knew that I am a straight-forward individual who calls a spade-a-spade, does not naturally enjoying conversing with people/building relationships and cannot do small talk. For them, these were the worst traits for a salesperson to have. Hence, they all decided to solve the problem by giving me lessons on how to be diplomatic and tactful, and they barely succeeded. Deep within, I wanted to test – “how bad being candid in the sales process be?”. To my utter surprise, it wasn’t that bad.
Among all the projects that we bagged in the first year (and eventually subsequent years), not even one was a function of me operating against my natural communication style. None were bagged using diplomatic and tactful conversation. If a client wanted a solution that was not our area of expertise, they were referred to fellows in the fraternity. Incase, a client wanted an assessment which will will not solve their problem, we used to politely warn them against the assessment and provide them a solution which will address their problem statement more accurately. There was never a question of force-fitting a solution to do business. Scenarios where clients used to be skeptical about us, we used to proactively offer them to do a pilot with us (paid of course, nothing comes for free!), evaluate our work and then decide whether or not they would like to partner with us on a larger scope. More often than not, these approaches worked in our favor. Our in-depth knowledge, competence and quality of output/work helped us to gain clients’ confidence from project to project and work started pouring-in.
However, there were many projects that we lost too. Projects where clients only wanted to hear what supports their perspective decided not to partner with us, and we respected their decision. We had to make a choice -either give-in to their confirmation bias or stick to what we think is an accurate and valid solution. We chose the latter. Agreed, it was not the most appropriate way of doing business and as per the worldly definition it was not even a successful venture.
But, at a personal level, it was a successful venture. In those five years, there was not a single complaint about the validity of the solution and quality of work. This helped us to leverage on the word-of-mouth marketing. Our clients recommended us to other companies for our knowledge, competence and quality. This served as a testament for success for us and continued to boost my confidence. Those five years taught me that a Candid SME can sell purely based on one’s own knowledge, competence and quality of work. Rest all is secondary 🙂
Note to the Reader: It is a straight-from-the-heart note and let me be candid here, I am no sales expert. This article describes a personal experience. It is not intended to refute other effective sales strategy that are out there. To each its own 🙂