GV – Never take NO for an Answer

GV will be leaving shortly to UK on work (I will miss all the wonderful informative sessions with him). Since we were busy with work we didn't realize it was 2:00 PM already. The lunch in office is served only till 2:00 PM, so as a caring boss GV offered to take me out for lunch (I wish we get late for lunch every dayJ). During our lunch we spoke many interesting stuff, one of them was "Never Take NO for an Answer (NTNA)" (I guess this is going to be the title of my second bookJ).

What is NTNA?

Most of the times we tend to accept the defeat even before waging the war (ohh forget about waging the war, even before planning for it). Okay, let me simplify this. GV quoted a wonderful example "Let us say we go to a PUB (Bangalore is known for awesome PUBSJ, suitable example). I see a beautiful girl and wish to dance with her, now the probability of the girl saying Yes is 50% and probability of she saying NO is 50%. Most of the times we assume that she would say NO and would not dare to ask her…resulting in loss of prospect/opportunity. We completely forget the probability of her accepting it and saying Yes to it. We forget completely that both Yes and No have equal probability in this situation. If you can convert 50% of NO to 100% why can't we do it for YES? We don't lose our life by giving a try. All you have to do is ask her, if she says no then keep trying till you get a Yes. Never Take NO for an Answer."

This is such an awesome theory. I feel this is a perfect formula to be a good sales executive. During my previous employment we participated in a government bid, we lost the tender/order. Since I had worked really hard on the tender I wasn't willing to give-up the sale. The deal was won by HCL Technologies – if I had accepted the NO it was a dead sale, instead I approached HCL to check if they want to outsource it to us – the answer was clear NO. I mean come on why HCL would outsource it to a small company like ours. I then approached the VP to check if they need any resources for the project (I guess since I had been following-up for a long time, he agreed to meet us and discuss). After presenting him the strategy he finally agreed to engage 20% of our resources into the project on contract. (After this I left the organization, so not sure what happened). I was really happy that we could get a small piece of the project outsourced to us in spite of losing the tender.

Action Item: "Never Take NO for an Answer (NTNA)" and A deal/sale is lost only when you give-up.

 

I love adidas logo

I always wanted to post this logo on my blog. I had an adidas store on my way to work in hyderabad (panjagutta), this store had a huge poster that said "Impossible is Nothing", it was very inspiring quote. I used to start my day looking at that motivational quote.

Wear heart on the sleeve – redefined

I always wondered why we live so much for the society, neighbors, relatives and friends. Why don't we live the life the way we want? No matter how many movies you see (3 idiots, tare zameen par) we still feel engineering and medicines are the only freaking professions on this earth. Why don't we encourage innovation and out of box thinking? Have you ever seen (I am talking about things 20 years ago) someone telling their kids to become a wild life photographer or actor or beautician in India, no ways.

Now the best part is things are changing in India and I feel great about it. I have been visiting various pre-schools and day care centers in Bangalore (exploring them to get admission for my daughter Yukta). I have been talking to so many kids between the age of 3 to 6 years and I was startled to listen to these bright kids talk. What are their plans for life? (I thought it's too early and immature question for these kids). Here are few things that these younger generations are aspiring for: Astronaut, Writer, Photographer, commercial pilot, police and there was one girl who said she wants to be a doctor (obviously her mom and dad are doctors). The strange things, in fact the good thing was there was not even 1 kid who said he/she wants to be an engineerJ.

I always loved interacting with people, travelling, speaking (I am a chatter box), I had this fantasy to wear suit to work every day – not anymore though (mostly influenced by Hollywood movies) and making money. After my engineering I chose to be in sales and customer facing jobs. Initially I had too many NO's and DONT's from everyone I knew. Now I enjoy being a sales guy and being successful in what I do J.

Okay, here are few outstanding examples of what you call Wear heart on the sleeve. Vaibhav Gupta (B. Tech in Chem Engg from IIT Bombay and PGDCM from IIM Calcutta) resigned his full time job to start a Tea stall, do not believe it check out the website. It is a chain of tea shops across different malls in the country. They offer 30 different varieties of tea.

Prabhkiran Singh of IIT Mumbai runs a lassi shop after college hours. Here is a brief extract about the shop: "The 20-year-old from Punjab who came to IIT-Bombay three years ago, didn't find a decent lassi joint in the city, and hence would rely on his mother's recipe every time he craved one. That marked the birth of Khadke Glassi — now a stall set up on a computer trolley, operating after classes at IIT close. The Rs 10,000-venture now has a fan following of close to 500 on Facebook and apart from IIT students, alumni and faculty, residents of Powai, crowd around this little corner every evening". Here is the link to the complete story.

I am hoping we will soon see a paradigm shift in India when it comes to choosing the right job/career.