Want a successful Sales career --- Go & Develop Right Attitude.

I am a firm believer that people remember only stories and not management jargons when it comes to real life. During one of my recent interactions with a couple of brand & social influencers, I realized that how important Story-telling is for upcoming entrepreneurs or budding professionals.

So keeping this narrative in the background let me try to share few tips on how to be a great salesman. (As most of us would be doing our sales budgeting or forecasting for 2018).

Story:

Our parents play an important role in carving out our personality, our character, our ethos by guiding us throughout our childhood.

In our story there exists one such family comprising of our main protagonist (son) and His father. Our main protagonist /hero lived with his family among his other 5 siblings. His father worked as Electric plant supervisor, and his mother worked at a bank. His father taught him to work hard and not to be tempted by street life.

Like any other kids of his age, our main protagonist (son) also used to ask his father to buy him new toys, gifts etc; And on one such occasion his father called him and asked his son to sell his old T-shirt which he had worn only once.

Father: How much do you think this T-shirt would cost now?

Son: $1/-

Father: Good, you must go and sell it for $2.

Here comes the first tip:

a)    Conceive & believe that you can do whatever tasks come your way.

Son: Ok father. I shall do it.

The little boy then took his sparingly used t-shirt and washed it with fragrant softeners, steam ironed it (made it look like new) and took it to neighborhood community market and started showing to his friends & local market customers and finally managed to sell it for $2 after 6 hours of hard work.

Son: Father, here you go. And he hands over $2 to his father.

Father goes to the cupboard and brings out brand new white shirt.

Father: Good Son, now you take this new white shirt and sell it for $200/-.

Son readily accepts the task & nods in confirmation

Son kept wondering as to why his father is doing this to him, which idiot would pay $200 for a $10 shirt, he kept exploring various possibilities, meeting local merchants but never gave up. He stumbled upon a friend who was going for a soccer match and mentioned that their favorite soccer team is playing county match.

As they say, luck favors those who strive for success with their hard work, the hero of my story (little boy) gets an idea and he requests his friend to take him along with him.

On reaching football ground, little boy somehow managed to get close to football players who were very popular. He requested those football players to autograph on his shirt.

He then took this shirt to a community market and puts the shirt on auction and to his surprise, the crowd got really interested in owning autographed shirt & that shirt was bought within 30 mins from the time it was put on auction and guess the price ….. It got whopping $2000/-.

Son (goes to his father): father take $2000/- I have accomplished the task.

Father (with tears in his eyes): Congrats son, my prayers are with you, you shall be a successful man in life one day.

Learnings from this story:

a)      Conceive: Never refuse or reject any task or project. Conceive it as done. Have faith in yourself and if required, learn or acquire skills to do that task or collaborate to build teams in case of startups ventures.

So whatever the targets/budgets are assigned to you by your company, never look at the big figure rather try to conceive ways as to HOW it can be achieved rather than stating, it’s not possible.

Focus on HOW it can be achieved and not on WHY it cannot be done.

b)     Believe in Yourself: If there is anyone who could do that task, is YOU only.

c)      Action: Never ever Give up & Try hard every time you hit a roadblock.

Life from time to time throws challenges at us and we should face it head-on rather than giving in to those challenges.

Remember “For those who dare to dream, there is the whole new world to win”.

                             

Hope my attempt at developing a correct sales attitude with storytelling narration would help my readers & followers in setting their targets for 2018 & same principle could also be implemented in setting our Life goals.

I wish all my readers a very happy & prosperous New Year 2018.

And do you know who this little boy was when he grew up…? He grew to become legendary Michael Jordan- the best basketball player world has ever seen.

Tips for Running Business in era of Millennials

As the world is changing very rapidly so is the consumer’s buying behavior which is continuously going through a transformation. One such example is our kids, you all will agree that they spend more time watching YouTube videos, engaging in apps like snapchat, Instagram, engaging with their Xbox, PlayStation rather than spending quality time playing outdoors or spending time with their friends.

 This very change in kid’s time-spent behavior as made brands like Toys R Us file for bankruptcy & restructuring of debts.

So the valid question is as to How to do business in the era of Millennials?

I am listing down few parameters which would help SMEs or upcoming Retail entrepreneurs to tackle their brand while marketing or selling to millennials.

A)     Go lean – World of business is changing.

In previous decade we never heard about brands like Uber, Facebook, Youtube etc.

·         Uber is the world’s biggest transport provider without owning a single vehicle

·         Facebook & YouTube are the world’s biggest media houses without even producing or owning a single content from their side.

So my advice to entrepreneurs is Go leaner. “Don’t invest in creating big Infrastructure”.

A Company which is very dear to me has made this mistake of creating big infrastructure in terms of supply chain, manufacturing, inventory, in return, they face huge pressure on their Gross margins in order to accommodate overheads and hence current economic scenario of decline in consumer's spending has posed a severe threat to their operations. 

If you are in the manufacturing sector, look for outsourcing your complete manufacturing, get rid of your depreciating assets like plants & machinery. Bring efficiencies in your supply chain by correct forecasting and avoid warehousing costs for storing Inventories which is an important cost in P&L statement.

B)      Find your Unique strength :

Conduct competitive advantage analysis for your company vs its competitors, analyze as to what are your strengths and weaknesses. I am sure every organization has one key strength or one key Hero product which can drive the whole turnaround strategy for the organization. The task is to identify this core Hero product/service or strength.

I would like to quote an example here of Nestlé’s Maggi brand, The brand core strength is its “ 2-minute” promise. All these years, this promise has created entry barriers for several brands who tried to copy Maggi. Brands like Nippon & our very own Indian home-grown brand Patanjali tried to copy Maggi noodles but failed.

Nestle, in order to reinforce its category leadership, launched Maggi oats which were never tried & unheard in any market and today this variant owns 90% of the market share in healthy Oats foods category.

C)      The speed of transactions:

Increase your number of transactions/ sales/ increasing your customer base.

Entrepreneurs and business in order to achieve growth, they avail working capital loans, collateral loans & goes into debt. This debt puts a lot of pressure on Cash flows. The ratio of debt vs inflow tends to fall apart and this move could be suicidal for the organization.

Entrepreneurs tend to focus on their business model more and ignore the importance of cash flows. 

Focus on account receivables and its aging. It is not only a function of finance dept but the owners as well need to focus on this aspect of the business.

SMEs should focus on Organic scalability rather than debt infused scalability. I know various retail organizations in the Middle East who uses bank’s easy collateral loans to drive the expansion of their businesses compromising on debt vs inflow ratio. This is one reason that most retail companies worldwide are struggling to survive the decline in consumer’s purchasing power.

D)     There is no such thing as “ First Mover advantage”, it has changed to “ Fast mover advantage”

Gone are the days wherein First mover advantage was your core strategic competitiveness, now in current era while catering to most demanding, highly knowledgeable customer segment of millennials, we need to be a fast mover.

What happened to Nokia & Motorola?  

They were all having first mover advantage but they were not fast in adapting to rapidly changing customer’s requirements which demanded more engaging operating systems and smartphone.

Apple falls under “fast mover” category and is ruling this segment.

Well, I can write a thesis on Retail and Management topics, but I am sure these 4 points listed above would force each of my readers to introspect, use their creative juices and come up with innovative solutions to sail the current economic turbulent times.

Happy Retailing Folks

Love

Ritesh Mohan

Management lesson learned from a Sipahi (Indian Army soldier)

There is a saying that “There is no better teacher than Travel” and I witnessed the truth of this statement last month when I visited India for my Diwali vacations and took time off to mix this pleasure trip with some spiritual visit and decided to visit Jammu & Kashmir.

I boarded a J&K transport bus and my co-seat passenger was a Sipahi of Indian Army, who was travelling on his duty, fully armoured as a part of his duty protocol; since the seat was not spacious and weather was cold I was wearing my winter gear and I requested my co-passenger “Sir, why don’t you keep your automatic rifle on floor so that we both could sit comfortably”.

The reply from soldier was prompt- mixed with pride and humbleness, “Saab Ji, I am on duty and for us, ambush can occur anytime, and God forbids, if ambush situation arises, I should be ready for action and not waste even a second in reaching out for my rifle”

He continued “Saab Ji, its one split second that decides whether we stay alive or we die”.

I smiled on hearing this and turned towards the bus window watching the scenic beauty outside but kept thinking about one big management lesson that I learned from this soldier.

“Always remain Prepared, You may never know when opportunity struck and you need to give your best shot in order to grab opportunity”.

With so much pain in outside world due to current economic challenges, so many job losses, entrepreneurs looking for venture capital, we all can learn from this soldier i.e. Be Prepared with your Pitch presentation/ business proposals or with your enhanced skill set so when Life offers you an opportunity, You are ready to Grab it with both hands.

Love what you do, make it your passion and Never ever Give up.

Post reaching my destination, I shook hands with this soldier and gave him a hug to convey my thanks for his teachings and we bid Goodbye to each other.

                                 (Picture used for Illustration purpose only)

Somewhere back in my mind, few questions still remain.... 

What made this soldier, so dedicated towards his profession? What makes him sacrifice all the pleasurable things in life that we civilians run towards our whole life?

Let me tell you that soldier was not very well educated, yet he got trained in a manner that he could provide me with my life lesson.

I would encourage all my friends & Linkedin connections to share their one learning /lesson which they learned from their experience or from some stranger. It would be nice to learn by sharing our wisdom with each other.

Happy Retailing folks!!!

Love

Ritesh Mohan

Redefining COGS may help overcome turbulent times for Middle eastern Retailers or Is it Time for Retail 3.0 ?

Current challenges in Middle East retail sector are no longer hidden from anyone, in fact in a recently concluded retail industry meetup, most of the participants that I had met were asking each other about current turbulent times and how they have been coping up with challenges in the retail sector.

Conventionally, most retailers use metrics like Net sales i.e. (Gross sales – COGS= Gross Profit).

Traditionally they balance parameters like fixed cost and Variable costs in order to make P&L look better or in positive.

Fixed costs are mainly dominated by store Rentals, staff salaries and Variable costs are defined by Cost of goods sold, financing costs on sales, sales commissions etc which varies with sales going up or coming down.

Off lately most retailers were focusing on Rent cost and staff costs in order to reduce by bringing some kind of optimization in their efficiencies leading to store closures. They try to cut down on their expenses like marketing costs etc in order to turn around the profitability of their retail stores.

With the change in the middle eastern economy & in an era of downturn in petrodollars and drop in tourists numbers due to geopolitical conflict and drop in consumer’s spending power & tighter financing options from financial institutions has led to turbulent times for most of the retailers, who earlier depended upon opening new stores as one of the important growth metrics for gaining market share.

Future is for those who embrace reality soonest by:

a)      Re-look at fixed costs especially Rentals:

It’s time to treat malls/landlords as your team members and discuss the possibility of revising current lease agreements or rent-free period as any reduction, irrespective of how small it may be will help your brand keep floating in turbulent times.

b)      Re-look at Cost of goods sold (COGS):

The game-changer for most retailers would be in COGS, so start with listing down all the cost components of your supply chain, your freight costs, insurance costs, procurement costs, production costs (in case of manufacturers cum retailers).

Try to bring some efficiency or cost reduction in COGS; as any reduction even as low as 3%  would have a positive impact on overall P&L by min 2.5X  (since low cost of goods means better attractive pricing options for customers thus higher probability of better product sales thus increasing your top line).

c)       Stop overseeing Marketing cost as an expense:

It’s so wrong to consider marketing cost as an expense, unfortunately, Good accounting practices put marketing header into expense head but speaking from a business perspective, it is actually an investment that company makes over long period time to build its brand equity which is actually realized in dollars once the brand is acquired or sold. Marketing efforts pay in keeping the brand afloat in turbulent times.

d) Look more macroscopic rather than microscopic :

Consider overall retail division of a company from its overall P&L and not by outlet by outlet P&L as practiced by most companies using SBU concept philosophy as an excuse. From my experience, I can confidently say that out of 10 operating stores, 3 stores would fall under “superstar” category and 4-5 stores would be “potential stores or close to operating breakeven stage” and 2 stores would be loss-making stores which need to be identified and closed provided brand owners or managers have gone through above checklists or points mentioned.

e)      Adapt or Re-tweak your business model:

Downtimes provide an excellent opportunity to businesses to look at their internal strengths & weaknesses and bring some kind of product rationalization in their offerings, streamlining their cost of procurements, better more efficient supply chain may be implemented for example Just in Time or Vendor-managed Inventory systems. Explore markets outside their operating territories as it is better to spread risk to the larger region. Look at franchising as a revenue model or even licensing.

f)       Adapt technology and Omnichannel strategy:

I have written previously on Omnichannel strategy in my blogs and on my LinkedIn posts. I feel sooner we retailers accept this reality better it would be for the entire retail fraternity.

Online stores are now looking towards brick & mortar stores and converting them into smart stores.

A Recent example is Jack Ma’s Alibaba who notched USD 25 Billion sales on a single day’s sale in China much higher than black Friday sales in the United States of America. (On 11^th November 2017)

Alibaba is converting 100,000 small mom-pop & convenience stores into SMART stores by providing them with unified systems so that they can order, store goods and become distribution centers for these goods. Alibaba has launched an app called Ling Shou Tong, meaning “connect retail.” Convenience stores are given suggestions on what to procure and how to display merchandise. The goods are shipped from dedicated Alibaba warehouses, obviating middlemen. In theory, that improves their profit.

Hope Middle Eastern hypermarket retailers like Carrefour, Lulu are closely monitoring the transition that’s taking place as to how technology would reform the retail scenario with the advent of Machine learning algorithms and programs that are being developed.

I call this revolution as RETAIL 3.0.

Are we ready to embrace Retail 3.0 in our retail brand?

I would be more than happy to assist & discuss with all my fellow retailers to incorporate few of my learnings into their brand operations and grow in the new economy.

Check out the video on Alibaba's 11-11 historic singles day phenomenon:

Happy Retailing friends!!!

Future Of Retail

Dear Friends,

Amidst current economic scenario being witnessed by most retailers in middle-east region, a question that comes to every retailer’s mind is “What does the future of retail holds for them?”

As you all know, Middle Eastern region is facing challenging times due to slow down in consumer’s spending power due to low oil prices & sustaining retail operations with high store rentals poses a big challenge to retailers, given the fact that most of the retail operators are franchisees or franchise operators of well-known international brands.

Story is slightly better for home grown brands due to their margin structure.

Well I would be sharing few insights or my personal opinions in forecasting future of retailing and the views herein are completely mine and may differ from retailers to retailers. Overall I hope my views may provide some guiding principles for the brands to gear up better for facing challenges.

a)      Re-invent or Perish:

Well, this sounds simple but is a tough business call when the size of business runs into hundreds of stores and has huge investments committed already.

I would like to explain the same with recent examples of industry players who have successfully adapted their business models to current economic challenges... One such brand is Nordstrom local who has reinvented themselves:

-  From big box concept store to smaller formats in community centers.

-  From product seller to experience provider- store now offers customized fashion advisors, on-spot tailoring needs, and Manicure and pedicure services while you enjoy your cold beer.

-     Zero inventory store… however they provide style board (iPad to customers to check out new collections and order them in-store while taking advice from fashion advisor and the shipment gets delivered within 24 hours to stores wherein if the merchandise requires some alterations then in-store tailor does it as per customer’s requirement.

-     Implementation of BOPUS i.e. Buy online and pick up from store mechanics.

b)      Keep a track on your consumer’s preferences & their habits:

Most of the brands take their consumers for granted especially in specialty brands like kids’ wears or toys. Avoid this trap.

-    Monitor time spending habit of your consumers. You never know that your target audience might spend their time on technology products, throwing you out of the business completely.

-  Example: Toys R Us has filed for bankruptcy protection which came as a shocking news to all of us, but if you evaluate and look at their financials, they are under lots of debt and interest cost is significant and has forced them to shut down or restructure their debts or re-look at business model. They made the error of not keeping a tab on their consumer’s time spending habits vs product usage habits.

c)       Invasion from ecommerce companies:

Many retailers have started feeling the heat of competition from their online rivals and are stating consumer’s preference of shopping online as one of the reason for their poor sales performance. I strongly believe if you cannot make difference to a situation then you start blaming environment for your poor performance.

I strongly believe that brick & mortar retailers can do better business than any of online retailers, they have strong real estate backing them up hence they can quickly adapt to Omni-channel rather than online commerce sites.

Biggest advantage for Brick & mortar retailers is that they meet & greet their customers on daily basis… (They know the pulse of the market), only thing lacking is to improve the channel of getting suggestions from shop floor team to strategy making board members.

d)      Using technology to your advantage :

We all have grown up or trained in AIDA model of communication (Awareness, Interest, Decision and Action) however now marketing to millennials have changed this model to something I call

A-     Awareness

A-     Advocacy

I – Influencer

I – Interest

D – Decision

A – Action

P – Post purchase decision or service

W- Word of mouth / Brand custodians.

With technology like beacons becoming popular the future of retail becomes is more interesting and easy for retailer in terms understanding their customers.

Every task which can be automated would be automated in future retailing. Tasks which cannot be automated and would need manpower would thrive i.e. relationship building with customers, interpersonal selling, any task where human intervention is necessary would thrive.

Future retailers would master Lean management style for their retail operations. Here are few videos which would tell you about future of retailing.

                 Amazon's GO store using AI Programming:

     

                                          Virtual Fashion stylist.

                                          

                                     Jobs that wont last in future.
                                          

Friends, these are my views and opinion and may differ from other professionals. My objective of having selected this topic is to caution traditional Brick & mortar retailers about danger coming towards them from digitization and it is high time that they need to re-invent.

Hope this topic helps my readers and fellow industry professionals.

Caio..

Ritesh Mohan

My interpretation of learning from book " Art of War - sun tzu"

Dear friends,

As most of us are losing our habit of constantly reading books, journals in times of digital & social media invasion and an era of online streaming of movies, we all are getting too engrossed in technology which is hampering all of us to grow as human beings who were by DNA once programmed to be enterprising, innovative & hard working.

My current blog is dedicated to those who have lost their habit of reading books and it is my effort to summarize some of my learnings /key notes from famous books that I have come across. (let me be honest that I am trying to come out of social media addiction myself…)

(Disclaimer: my learnings /keynotes from particular book is completely my opinion and may differ from individual to individual).

Recently I was gifted a wonderful book called “Art of war-sun tzu”. Below are some of my key take outs which could be correlated to corporate world.

       a)  All wars consume 3 main resources i.e. Time, Money & Energy.

In corporate world we compete with our services/ products on daily basis and try to win mind space/ market share from our competitors; Professionals invest their time, money and energy in order to win consumers & sell their goods/services.

Brands should know when to communicate (timing), what to communicate (message) and how to communicate (media planning) and monitor its end result (call to action through market research).

b) Ignore choleric comments:

Sometimes competition passes comments or runs campaigns in order to irritate you or their targeted brands. (for example: Coke’s campaign in India in 1990’s official sponsor of world cup cricket vs Pepsi’s response – Nothing official about it).

                   

Always remember, ‘Wars are won by people who control their emotions’. Don’t allow your emotional quotient to overtake rational or logical behavior.

 c) Know yourself first and Opponent second.

We need to first completely understand our strengths, weaknesses prior to even enticing or acknowledging competition.

We all have seen a famous Bollywood blockbuster “ Dangal” wherein the key protagonist Aamer khan first studies weakness of his daughter and train her to overcome them prior to even attempting to compete with other wrestlers. Knowing yourself is most important.

Understand your weaknesses and overcome them to make it your strengths.

                       

d) Prepare beforehand to take your competition unprepared.

Winners prepare themselves before hand to face tough situations.

We all have heard story of Ant & grasshopper in our childhood days wherein Ant works throughout year to collect food for winter season vis a vis Grasshopper who is flamboyant and doesn’t sustain itself when weather changes.

We all brand managers, retail professionals should ensure that we work like an Ant i.e. taking care of our brand strategies in terms of its market share, inventory planning, marketing, customer service and implement continuous improvement drive in whatever we do in our professional lives.

I hope sharing of some learning will help in some way or other to my friends, upcoming entrepreneurs, budding brand managers to develop their brands in better & more successful way.

Cheers

Ritesh

#nevergiveup #believeinyourself.

Failure is nothing but SUCCESS delayed.

Dear Friends,

As I write this blog, there is an advertisement that is playing in back of my mind which says “Dirt is good” (on clothes.. used by popular detergent brand).

I feel it’s a master piece of mass communication which can be translated to the topic that I have chosen for my blog i.e. FAILURE IS GOOD.

“I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t light a bulb.” Edison once quipped.

Key take out learning from this is that one should fall forward and not backward i.e. Learn from the mistakes of others as well as your own.

I recall a statement from famous American writer, Comedian & TV star, Groucho Marx who once said    

 “ Learn from the mistakes of others, you can never live long enough to make them all yourself”.

Avoid looking back for too long. Contemplation is good but failing forward is about beginning the next project, starting it very next day.

Focus on what you could have changed in failure phase. Experiment & keep doing it. Never give up. Every discovery or invention came on back of repeated so called failures.

Most importantly you need to look at what’s working and certainly NOT at what’s not working.  

Coming from aviation background as aviation is in my genes, I recall one learning which my father had once told me i.e. Pilots are taught not to focus on what’s not working in emergency situations BUT on systems that are functioning.

I don’t mean that by doing so pilots can avoid air crashes etc but this thinking would certainly help pilots develop “Never Give up" attitude.

I would be writing a complete blog on ATTITUDE shortly but successful entrepreneurs always look away from the problem and catalog all their resources which are in their favor and utilize it to overcome any problem or issues.

I would reinforce one key learning to budding entrepreneurs or management students, “Turn your wounds into wisdom”, Learn from failure and bounce back… NEVER GIVE UP.

Wishing all my readers a very happy entrepreneurial journey!!

#NeverGiveUp

Ciao!

Ritesh Mohan