Your Right Hand should not know what your Left Hand is doing

Nathan has slowly but surely gotten into the groove of business development. He started learning the nuances. Over the next few months, he learnt and practised the art of cold calling, arranging meetings, preparing engaging & interesting presentations. With the progress, ABC was much impressed and asked him to think of how we can get going further.

Nathan came up with the idea of email campaigns and went to ABC to discuss more on that. ABC advised Nathan on the idea and asked him to prepare a sample email message. Over the next few days, Nathan worked on the email message and after a few iterations with Patrick, finally showcase the best 2 to ABC. ABC approved one and gave Nathan a go ahead along with the Marketing team to start the email campaign and track the responses and effectiveness of it.

Next 2 weeks went in the campaign and generating responses and finally speaking / emailing them to meet them in person. With this campaign, Nathan was able to get enough responses and meetings for ABC to allow him to travel and call it a success.

However, ABC did tell him that actual success will depend on how much we are able to covert this initial traction into deals and dollar values. He told that a sales guy, we have to focus only on numbers and somehow strive to achieve them. Patrick also advised that Sales guy is as good as a deal. Once a deal is closed, you just have a few days to take a sigh of relief. You have to move onto the next one and the just closed one is forgotten in a whiff.

More Nathan started getting responses and moving ahead in the sales cycle, more he was looked upon to make a closure and get a deal. More he was being analysed and asked for updates on a regular basis. On one hand, he was working hard to get going in this hateful and thankless sales world, moving ahead as well, however, on the other hand, he was getting stuck as things started to hit a wall after a while.

After initial 2-3 discussions with each of the prospects, there was not much to show for. There was nothing much happening and Nathan started learning the hard and harsh ways of sales. He realised, this is where the extra effort and smartness is required, to take the final step and close it.

He spent some with ABC and Patrick to discuss how best he should move ahead and try for a closure. There was nothing much important that came out and Nathan was a bit dejected. Meanwhile, ABC suggested arranging a meeting with the senior management and him. This would help set the context at the senior level and give them the relationship comfort. He advised, this might push our case further.

Over the next few weeks, ABC and Nathan met up with the senior management at the key prospects, however, nothing much came out. The status quo remained. This made Nathan all the more dejected.

Some time had passed since those meetings, that one day ABC called Nathan as told him that there is a product implementation for my product to start in next 2 weeks at an existing customer.  And as this is the same country you are looking after, it would be good if you start concentrating on this project as the Account Manager, while the implementation team works on the project. Meanwhile, you can continue working on the sales as well in parallel.

After a bit of thought, Nathan accepted being the Account Manager for this new project. He thought, it would be good to get an exposure on Account Management and in parallel he will continue his focus on his core role of sales.

Over the next few months, Nathan took complete control of the project, driving the implementation team at the customer location and the backend team as well to deliver the project on time. He started interacting with the customer on the project and got involved completely. Though, he took a bit of time to understand the nuances of the project, however, once he did, he was in complete control. This gave ABC much satisfaction and raised Nathan confidence.

As the requirements gathering phase was over, Nathan returned to Exactechpur to be called in by ABC to give him an update. ABC liked what he heard and Congratulate Nathan for the good work done so far.

Nathan came back to his seat and after a while met with an unexpected visitor to his desk. Mr CEO, with whom Nathan had never interacted, was at his place. At first, Nathan couldn’t believe his eyes, was it the same CEO, whose thoughts were, people like Nathan don’t have any stature to talk to me...I can’t talk to him and hence would never talk to him.

As much as Nathan was surprised, he was equally confused to see Mr CEO wanting to talk to him. He thought, what he had done to see him there, as he would talk to employees, only to chastise them.

Mr CEO started with taking updates on implementation project Nathan was handling. As Nathan gave him updates, he could see Mr CEO’s eyes rolling up and down on him, looking for something. Meanwhile, a thought still evaded Nathan’s mind – whatever I say, you will still question everything, so its better, I stop and you talk J

As if God had listed to Nathan J The moment he told Mr CEO that the project will move towards SIT & UAT in 2 months, Mr CEO started. You should get some UAT scripts from the users. You should befriend them and try and get some of those scripts. Try them on your system and get the problems fixed. This way, we can deliver the project smoothly and on time. And we can get our payments on time.

Quickly Mr CEO’s tone changed. He asked Nathan if all the previous milestone payments done by the customer. What is the total amount invoiced and what is pending? He said, you should try and get all the money before everything. You should always be chasing them for money, so that finally they give you something. And then came best part – I am paying you with this money only. So for your salary, you should get the project money.

Nathan was completely bewildered at these thoughts. With much courage, he asked Mr CEO – Boss, how can we get the payments without milestone deliveries?

This question put Mr CEO into another mode all together. He got shouting – don’t be a fool Nathan. You will always have to push our implementation team to deliver and our customer to make the payments. Always get the payments beforehand and sit easy. And then came the dialogue of the century for Nathan, as Mr CEO said – “Remember, your Right Hand should not know what your Left Hand is doing”.

He repeated the dialogue again, this time, showing this with the movement of his hands. Nathan remained silent and amazed at the thoughts. And Mr CEO went away with Nathan completely lost at his new learning J

Nathan fights off in the corporate world

Nathan is back from his first sales meeting. Shanty chases him for updates; as if, there is a sale in the first meeting itself and he can quickly and easily claim it J Nathan replied saying ABC is asking for an update too (he tried his luck, though ABC haven’t asked anything by then), he will share everything ASAP. Shanty had nothing to say, except okay sure. Nathan smiled at himself and thought for a while, is he also getting succumbed to the fancies of ASAP? J Then he thought, whatever, it worked J and he took it easy.

Nathan sent the updates and seeing the promise of further meetings and some demo requests, ABC was impressed and offered a cup of coffee to Nathan. Nathan obliged and followed ABC downstairs to a coffee house. Nathan was so happy with just the both of them and Patrick joining for a hot cuppa. No sign of Shanty just elated him so much.

The discussion over coffee went off well. With both ABC and Patrick asking some details at each of the prospects Nathan visited. Nathan was so happy to give them details that he went on and on and told them everything, even the poor reactions from the prospects. They both advised Nathan of how to tackle them in future and what else he could have done.

After the discussion, Nathan felt so much at ease and was so happy to be working with both ABC and Patrick. He suddenly started liking this work and the place. The same place, which for the past few months had become so unfriendly, suddenly looked so nice and enjoyable.

Nathan’s moments of happiness were short lived as they reached office. Shanty was waiting in the wings demanding explanation on why wasn’t he informed about his meeting with ABC. It seemed to Nathan as if, he was his bonded labourer and he had to say and do what his master would say. For a moment, Nathan thought, he had had enough of this. He thought of requesting ABC for a change of reporting manager. He couldn’t bear the dealings of Shanty anymore and just couldn’t manage his antics. After pondering over this for a while, he decided against it, thinking, it is just working out for him and ABC seemed happy at his progress. It would be good if he does something more and then requests. That way, he would give no chance for ABC to reject his request.

It turned out to be good for Nathan, as over the next few weeks, he could arrange a few more meetings with key prospects and prepare well for the next presentations / demos for the previous ones. His product knowledge over the weeks, had improved a lot too and it was put to test with Shanty once fine day, asking for a product presentation to him.

This presentation went off really well and Nathan could answer most of the questions put forth by Shanty. Meanwhile, ABC came in between to check what was going on, and requested Shanty for updates, right in front of Nathan. This time, Shanty has no choice but to say the truth and answer in the affirmative for Nathan. ABC patted on Nathan’s back and went off.

Nathan continued the hard work and travelled frequently for meetings. On one hand, this gave immense satisfaction to Nathan and also to ABC that his selection is proving to be right. However, this seemed to make Shanty a bit insecure. It seemed that the thought of a junior taking the limelight from him, made him uneasy. He started keeping a very strong and strict vigil on Nathan’s work and travels. He questioned each and every small bit that Nathan felt being micro-managed and not being given the freedom to work.

The way ABC and Patrick used to discuss things with Nathan was completely opposite of the way Shanty was working with Nathan. ABC was very easy and gave him the ease and confidence of working and deal closure. While, Shanty would demean him at every step and question as if he was lying or doing something wrong. This continued for some time.

One weekend, Shanty was away travelling and called Nathan to come to office and showcase the solution over the web to him. Nathan requested to work from home, as he had everything on his office laptop and he could very well manage from home. Shanty refused and even got one more guy to accompany Nathan to office to make sure he visits office over the weekend. This really irked him. During the demo to Shanty, Nathan had to stop a few times, due to some problem with the system. Shanty said “You seem to have a problem, every time. It seems, you are not interested to work. Its better, you give everything to me, I will handle it.”

That was it, this time; Nathan had had enough of Shanty and his ways of working. He decided, he will finish things off well today and next day, speak to ABC and get his reporting manager changed.

Next day, as soon as ABC was in, Nathan went to see him. He spoke to ABC at length and discussed his challenge and problems. And finally managed to get ABC become his reporting manager. He came out of ABC’s room and felt so relieved. He suddenly felt victorious.

Nathan gets his first sales meeting...

Soon Nathan was learning the ways of life as a BDM. He was yearning to live it all by himself. Meanwhile, his working equation with Shanty was going bad day by day. It went bad to worse, when once day ABC called him along with Shanty and asked Shanty about Nathan’s performance so far. And Shanty started as if the volcano was about to burst. It continued for a few minutes and came to Nathan to answer all the allegations of not working enough. 

Poor Nathan had nothing to say to claim back upon. Poor guy hadn’t noted down anything about his work thinking the managers save your skin, if you work hard and keep them in loop. However, he didn’t know, he was in a completely different environment, where, animal eats animal was the mantra. Shanty had whitewashed so well that whatever Nathan said, was falling on deaf ears. He had no choice but to meekly accept this, knowing the fact that at that moment, he needed a job more than anything else. 

Nathan did work hard and eventually started speaking to ABC more and discussing with him more. He was given a portfolio of products to sell and a market closer home. Though a new market for Nathan, however, the prospect of working and opening a new market for those products egged him to accept the challenge.

He started diligently preparing a database of his targets and relevant stakeholders there. He would cold call them all, one by one and continued doing so for a week, when eventually, he understood the nuances of cold calling and fine tuned his script to a level that made so much sense that he felt elated at the final result. However, as they say, proof of the pudding is in the eating – he wanted to test his latest script and was longing for success. He finally succeeded and was able to get 3 appointments out of the 10 targets. 

He was so happy that he quickly went to ABC and informed him of the meetings arranged next week. He wanted to travel and requested for the same. Immediately, his travel was approved and ABC guided him through the travel process in the company. 

Meanwhile, Shanty sounded a bit jealous of Nathan’s ability to cold call and get through meetings. He tried stalling his travel, asking Nathan to postpone the meetings, as he would to accompany him for the meetings and he couldn’t travel on the said dates. Nathan knew nothing of the sort, he told that after such long trials, after calling for weeks, he had got those meetings arranged, it would be difficult to postpone them and arrange them again. He explained this to ABC and ABC finally agreed to allow Nathan to travel alone. He advised Nathan to take Shaun from our local office there along with him. He called up Shaun to apprise him of the same. 

Nathan spent the next few days with ABC and Patrick preparing presentations for the meetings next week. He would spend hours together with Patirck fine tuning them and finally agreed for a deck which he would use for all the presentations with colour combination changed to respective prospects’ corporate colours. This would give them a personal and known feeling during the presentation. Patrick and ABC seemed impressed and happy at Nathan’s hard work.

Nathan was so busy and excited for his first sales meeting and presentation that he didn’t have time to get anxious and think otherwise. With lot of positivity and hope, he set out for his new destination.

Tricks of the trade

Nathan would go with Jack for lunch and come back within 1 hour. However, over the next few weeks, he noticed, other than them and a few others, most of other colleagues would go down, bring breakfast and lunch to desk and eat there itself. This included the senior managers as well. This was very weird to him. He couldn’t understand what forced these people do go out for lunch, even then when they have a designated 1 hour for lunch. So much so he disliked this, he was slowly becoming used to this office culture.

A few weeks have gone by; Nathan was being trained on banking domain and the banking solutions from his company. He liked the work and the way his colleagues and office seniors would discuss sales process and dealings. However, as he had nothing much except to read about the solution and APAC markets, he would read newspapers online, blogs of interest and other emails as well.

One day, after coming to office, as usual, Nathan was reading online news papers. Shanty, sitting behind him, got up and commented with a satire – These days, you have started reading too much of news papers. It seems you are quite free. Nathan took it easy, thinking its just a one off comment. Let it be and went off for lunch.

Nathan was then summoned by ABC into this office. ABC started, “So your jet lag is over or not? Have you been able to come to terms with Exactechpur?” Nathan just nodded saying, Yes, everything is fine. ABC continued, “So what is your biggest fear with sales? Now that you have spent some time here, you should know”. Nathan replied “Nothing really big, just that I don’t booze and don’t want to too. It seems, you kind of have to booze to succeed in sales”. There was a broad smile on ABC’s face, as soon as he hears this. It seemed, he expected this and knew how to address this.

ABC said – it’s easy. First of all, alcohol is not a required always. Yes, it makes things easy, as people spend some good time over booze and eases them. This helps in making a good rapport and a sale. However, having said this, it’s not mandatory. Instead, you can try learning about alcohol, varieties of booze, places of their production and things like that. This way you can still engage your customers and possibly recommend a few. If you still think you need to drink then drink wine. Its a classy drink, most people enjoy it and it’s not that hard as others. Look at me, I also drink just wine. Nathan thought for a moment, as if, from your face, I can make out you drink just wine J And then he thought, you are saying this now, however, if it comes to a situation, where I don’t drink alcohol, even though, it may be required, you will blame me for everything.

One another day, ABC asked Nathan to prepare a presentation and present it to him and Patrick, after lunch. Nathan prepared a good presentation and went inside the discussion room to present. Both ABC and Patrick looked at him like eagles looking for the right moment to catch their prey. And as luck would have it, Nathan’s moment with the eagles had come J Patrick started off questioning the veracity of the data used by Nathan and their source. Meanwhile, Nathan was answering Patrick, ABC started off with questioning Nathan’s choice of the market to sell. And this continued for the next half an hour. Finally, ABC signed off saying, “Nathan, you should come prepared next time and always believe and say Yes when a customer asks if you can do this. We may not have it, but we can surely get it done. You have only 1 chance to prove yourself and your solution, so grab it with both hands and create a wow factor. Only then, he will engage with you further.”

Fun starts at Exactechpur

Nathan reaches his new office in the morning by 9 AM. He sees the CEO at the gate, pacing around the lobby. He doesn’t understand what’s going on...thinks he might be expecting someone that’s why he looks so anxious. Then a thought comes to Nathan, why the CEO has to pace around like this and look so terribly out of place. He is the CEO; he can just sit in the comforts of his room, relax and wait.

Nathan just goes and settles himself at his desk. As his place was right at the centre of the office, near the main entrance, he can see everything easily J Its 9.15 AM in the morning and the CEO goes back to his room. Nathan thinks who came that he went inside? Who was he waiting for? Did I miss someone? He even stands up and sees, did he really miss someone J

Besides Nathan, Jack was sitting unperturbed by the happenings around him. He was seemingly at ease with Nathan’s anxiety and there was a slight smile on this face. He understood what was going on in Nathan’s mind. Probably he knew this was expected from any new joinee in the office. Seeing all this, Jack told Nathan; don’t be surprised at what you just saw. This is a usual thing here. Nathan said “What? What does that mean?” Jack replied saying; you remember the company policy on turning up late to office. Nathan replied – “Yes. One has to reach office latest by 9.10 AM or else there would be a salary cut by the minutes, for the time you are late. Then?” Jack said, “Then nothing. The CEO was pacing around to notice who all were late to office and then call them to his room for an explanation, which was more of a reprimand than anything else. This would happen regularly to earmark the term offenders”. Nathan was taken by surprise at the way things were handled in his new office. However, he just smiled and sat down.

For next 2 months, Nathan was still under training. And as days went by, he would make sure he would reach office by 9 AM and leave by 6.15 PM. As there was nothing much for him to do, except the usual trainings and internal presentations, this was easy for him.

This was really easy till one day, he was taken to task for this too. ABC would come to his desk and talk for a while and he suddenly said, “You haven’t shaved today, right?”It was visible, so Nathan couldn’t lie. ABC replied, “You Shit daily? Yes or No?” Nathan replied, “Yes”. ABC continued, “Always remember “3 S” in the morning – Shit, Shampoo & Shave. You just can’t forget them”. Nathan was like – Yes, for sure. ABC continued, “You seem like a 9-6 guy, it won’t work in sales. You have to slog in sales and only then it can happen. It seems you haven’t been able to manage the time lag b/w India and Exactechpur. The jet lag is still not over. You need to come out of this” Nathan replied, “I am into trainings and as my trainers leave, I have nothing much to do, I leave too. Once work comes in, I will put in extra efforts”. But nothing doing, ABC won’t listen to anything. He went away saying, “I don’t like this”. The old adage came running into Nathan’s mind – Boss is always right! And he decided to sit in the office till 7 PM, doing nothing, but surfing and browsing internet J [Given that the Boss is always right, you have the moral and unofficial responsibility to keep him happy too J]

As the Earth swings, Nathan starts a new journey...

So our man Nathan reaches his new sprawling office in the CBD of Exactechpur. The office looks wow, at the penthouse level of a skyscraper. He presses the door bell and gets in and waits at the reception.

The HR comes in, welcomes Nathan and zooms with him into a big board room, without anyone really noticing what was happening around them. All this looked like some covert operation, a new employee to join without anyone’s notice. Then the HR started off, briefing on the structure in the office, Nathan’s reporting manager, team, processes and the likes.

As the discussion between the HR and Nathan happened, there were some aftershocks from the last evening’s earthquake. Sitting in the board room of the pent house level of a 50 storey building, Nathan could experience the movements and could very well see the opposite skyscraper swinging. It was indeed a unique experience and he thought he would never forget this joining ever. They quickly finished the joining formalities and the HR brought Nathan out and showed him his desk and went away.

Nathan sat idle and waited for the other formalities to happen – introductions, employee id, email id, system, etc. Nathan was so eager to meet ABC that he waited for a while and asked the HR, if he can go and see ABC. The HR was a bit taken by surprise by the ease with which Nathan asked to meet ABC. And this was easily visible to Nathan. Nathan still went ahead and kind of pushed the HR to bring him to ABC. They stood outside ABC’s room and knocked.

They both went in and ABC happily said, “Ah! So you are Nathan...good to see you here...Welcome aboard! I hope all the formalities are done...”As soon as the HR and Nathan nodded, ABC replied, okay good, let me see you later today. And Nathan’s all excitement to meet ABC and talk to him got killed.

He came out and sat at his desk, having nothing much to do, other than open web email on the system kept at his desk and may be explore the same system a bit. A gentleman called Shanty gets up from the desk behind Nathan and says “New joinee...welcome!” For a moment Nathan was completely shut, as after his graduation ragging days, he hadn’t heard this word. Not for the past 8-9 years. He thought has he joined a school? Or a professional organisation?

A lot was going in Nathan’s mind, when a guy sitting beside him, stood up and asked – have you just joined? With Nathan’s response in the affirmative, he asked Nathan to join him for lunch. Nathan just realised that the first half was already gone and it was time for lunch. They both came out and the new guy introduced himself as Jack.

Jack quickly rounded up on the ways of the office and the people there. It seemed Jack has learnt a lot for his 2 months in the organization. They both got together well and discussed a lot and learnt that they both shared passion for food J Though both are not big eaters, but they enjoy good food alike.

It was almost 1 hour since Nathan and Jack left office for lunch and Jack reminded to rush, else they might be reprimanded for being late from lunch. Nathan thought, what is this? Are we supposed to behave and work like this daily? He thought, let’s see how it goes and rushed to office.

Nathan reaches Exactechpur

The ordeal just doesn’t end here. Nathan was supposed to get a formal offer letter from the HR after the email acceptance of the email offer letter from ABC. He got the formal offer letter from the HR and sent the soft copies of the relevant documents and thought it was easy now, that his job is done. The HR has to get back to him with Visa formalities and get it going further.

Nathan waited for another week to seek HR’s confirmation on the Visa and eventually learnt that the HR has gone for a vacation and hence, the process is stuck. Nathan thought, is this so person dependent that if he is out on leave, things can’t move further. The frustration in him compounded, when he thought, if the HR knew he was going on leave, he could have initiated the process before leaving and things like that.

He tried contacting ABC and ABC promptly replied that he will check and revert. After 2 days, ABC replied saying that the HR will get back to you ASAP. Nathan thought, again ASAP? What can we do about it? Probably nothing and given that he needed this job all the more, he shouldn’t be doing anything untoward either too.

After another week, the HR did reply with the Visa formalities and got it sorted out, much to Nathan’s relief. Well after another week, with much anxiety and non-clarity on the process from the HR, he finally got the Visa. It was as if, Nathan had gotten wings to fly. He quickly imagined, how it would all be in a foreign land and how things would change for him for good (hopefully!).

The day came; he flew to Exactechpur and reached the company Guest House in the morning. A gentleman called Rocky opens the door and shows him the available room. Nathan gets into the room, relaxes a bit and falls asleep, after a tiring overnight journey.

Even though, a thousand thoughts went through his mind, as he lay in that guest house room, a sense of relaxation and accomplishment was there to be seen.  Little aware of the life that was ahead of him. A life he would hate to love and love to hate. The new job though decently paying was going to be taxing, more emotionally than physically.

In the evening Nathan went out and roamed a bit and met a couple of old friends. All the time, he just prayed that the decision he has taken proves to be good. He had decided to leave his family, his homeland and come to an alien land, on a completely new role. And then the friends talked about the role and gave him a bit of sense on the same. There were many questions which rose in Nathan’s mind; however, he had no choice but to wait and experience them to get the answers, which seemed elusive for now.

He knew he had taken a decision thinking and believing it to prove good. How it eventually pans out, is his luck and destiny. Deep down is heart he knew, even if he had to struggle, he would eventually come out stronger and a learned individual. He suddenly turned philosophical, thinking, had anyone known that the decision he is going to take will prove to be wrong, then why would one take that decision? And he calmed down and accepted that he will take the things as they come. And thanked God for helping him come thus far.

With this hope and new vigour he slept for the new journey that starts the next day.