IAC buckle up and move fast...

Indian masses have a very short vision and very short memory. We forget things at the drop of hat. The importance of things and issues change and varies very fast. In the garb of being flexible we waver easily. Even I am accused of the same. Our culture and ways of life has to be blamed on this . We have always been told to accept things and agree to them eventually. With this in mind, we need to understand the importance of the Anna Hazare movement and then India Against Corruption (IAC).

What happened to the Anti-Corruption movement and demand for Jan Lokpal and where it stands today in the so called civil society is a testimony to exactly what I mentioned above. The Anti-Corruption movement with Anna Hazare at the helm started with much fan fare and tom-tom last year. Common people in thousands and lacs turned up, took leaves from office and work and joined Anna and his anti-graft crusaders at Ramlila grounds in August last year. You speak to anyone; he or she seemed to be much swayed by this Gandhian who took to fast unto death to get his demands for Jan Lokpal listened / agreed to. I was there in Delhi at that time in August last year and it seemed, all the roads in Delhi led to the famed Ramlila grounds.

However, what happened to the movement after that? To me, it did lose steam and became a fight of a handful of gentle souls. We the common people of India couldn’t take leaves from work every now and then to support these fast campaigns. With political arm twisting, it seemed a never ending story for sure. It was very clear that the political behemoths where such laws are prepared and approved will never allow such a strong Jan Lokpal Bill to be passed. And IAC was eventually left with no choice but to roam around in these political circles.

And slowly but surely we all started forgetting the movement and began to accept all that had happened, as a flash in the pan.

Today, with IAC having decided to move towards forming a political party and participate in the Indian Democracy, the pangs of corruption started making noise once again. Over the last few weeks, IAC has come out in open and announced acts of corruption in the main government party as well as in the main opposition party.

To me, it seems IAC is more concerned with making noises only about corruption which are bound to forget very soon. Everyone knows there is corruption and we all meekly accept it too. What is needed is not just anti-corruption movement, but a movement with clear policies and their implementation for the benefit of the common man.

If IAC can come with a clear ways to address key issues lying in front of the country and their ways to implement them, I am sure, people of India will appreciate it and accept IAC’s plank of a political alternative.

IAC’s stand on corruption and their way (Jan Lokpal) to address it is well known. What is needed is their stand on other key matters like growth, foreign money (FDI), foreign policy, terrorism, internal security, especially the matter of region-hood or state-hood, etc. Key among them would surely be how growth happens and is distributed equitably. I am sure, if there is enough equitable growth, demands for state-hood will die down with time too.

Mr Kejriwal and company if you are serious in offering the Indian populace with an alternative during the next elections, you need to buck up and buck up fast and come out with clear stand and policies and their implementation and of course your party’s vision for the nation.

Mr Kejriwal, you need to be aware of the 2 very important facts – Indian masses will soon forget your valour in unravelling the corruption with damad-ji and adhyaksh-ji, if you continue treading the same path. And if you are not serious and careful of your future as a citizen, activist and politician in Indian democracy, you might get lost in the labyrinth called Indian Politics.

All the Best!!

Nathan decides to move on...but...

Nathan continued his struggles in this ruthless world. He was able to impress his prospects with the solution and its capabilities, however, that wasn’t turning into success. He maintained his calm, even though, being very young and new to sales, first success mattered most. Nathan spent a lot of time introspecting and thinking what to do, how to move ahead and get his first closure. All that he wanted was a deal, no matter what size it is. It has been almost 1 year and he wasn’t able to get anything. It was becoming difficult for him to see an eye with his bosses. He knew, sooner or later, he might be sounded an alarm to perform or perish.

He would travel and spend time outside office, so that he is not in the eyes of his superiors.  He started exploring his options outside the company and started speaking to his friends and network to get him a new role. Maybe he wasn’t made for sales. Maybe he needed a break to reconsider his options. He spent 1 week thinking on these lines and then decided to give himself 3 months. He decided to give his best shot during the next 3 months and then reconsider his choices.

During the next few weeks, he spent more time with his prospects. He learnt more about the sales process and read on how to move ahead with an opportunity. He would discuss this with his colleagues and friends to get ideas.

And as they say – There is always light at the end of the tunnel, Nathan got a life when he was called in by ABC and told that he wanted him to take over a portfolio of business being handled by Victor who is leaving the organization. Victor was the Regional Head of Services for the company, handling 3 customers with some projects at each of them.

Nathan took time to decide as this new role was a bit different than his current role. Though, he was still to sell, however, prime responsibility was to focus on managing the existing customers and making sure that they don’t leave the company with the change in guard for them. And all these projects being Services Projects made them a lot different than the way to approach Products, which was Nathan’s core focus till now.

Taking his time, Nathan discussed this role with ABC at length and finally agreed. He thought, he has already given himself 3 months and it would be good to take a dig at Services too and later on decide what works well for him.

Nathan’s challenge in the new role was to be able to manage the customers and the team alike. The teams were hired specifically for these projects and customers and any instability and luring from Victor might prove detrimental to the organization. Victor would surely try and poach these customers with him to his new employee too. This could destabilise the whole services business for the company.

He got Victor to introduce him to the customers as a part of his hand-over responsibilities and tried to meet as many team members as well, to give them the comfort of being there. In parallel, he started meeting all the customers along with Jammy, who was advised to assist him by ABC.

Jammy and Nathan met up with all the customers in person and gave them the comfort that it will be Business As Usual for them they will make sure that their teams work as is and the deliverables are met. They also took Shanks along with them to be able to leverage upon his experience as a competent sales professional. All 3 of them made sure that the customers are taken care of well. Meetings, Lunches, Dinners and Partying followed for next 2 weeks, covering all the customer personnel and attending and listening to all their concerns.

In parallel, Nathan and Jammy met up with all the team members and updated them on Nathan replacing Victor and Nathan taking care of all their concerns. They spent time with them, took them out for lunch and dinner parties, so that they get easy and gel up within the team and with Nathan too.

This in a way left Victor a bit angry at Nathan and it seemed it hit his ego that a young guy comes over and meet all this customers behind his back and doesn’t even bother to tell him so. He had all the help he needed and was doing it well too. He called up Nathan and dared him to meet any of the customers again without him, till the time he is with the organization. He challenged that within 1 month of his exit, he will take all the customers and projects to his new organization. As he would join a bigger organization, he will have the resources and might to entice the customers easily and his existing relationship would work in his favour.

Nathan took up the challenge and made sure that over next 2 months he visited each customer at least once every week. He would visit them just to say hello or to discuss the progress of the current project or to check for newer opportunities. Once every 2-3 weeks, he invited them for lunch or dinner to give them additional comfort. After 2 months, he got ABC to meet up with all the customers to make them believe in us, with words from the senior management. He also made sure he was in regular touch with his team members, he would visit them regularly and check if there is anything he could do.

All this really worked for him and over the next 3 months, not only he managed to save all the existing projects and customers that he was handed over, at the end of 3 months, he was able to get a new project from an existing customer. This was the biggest win for him and paved the way for his growth in the organization. This made senior management to believe in him and appreciate his efforts. He was awarded with the outstanding sales man for the quarter. This made Nathan very happy and he believed in himself and his capabilities as a sales guy and decided to continue further in his current employment.

The Balancing Act

After a few months of handling the project as an Account Manager, Nathan started thinking, is handling project all about making sure that all promises made are delivered and on time or is it just about handling the customer? Every now and then, he was with the customer, quelling all his concerns on our capabilities to deliver or explaining them about how we handle their requirements. All in all, assuaging customer’s concerns and calming them. If he was not with them, he was having discussions with the implementation team.

Sooner than later, he realised, as an Account Manager, his responsibilities were more towards the customer, even though he was still the employee of his organization and not the customer. He surely realised customer was the King and he was one of his subjects J

On one hand, his delivery team was after him for not being assertive enough to say No to the customer and his every growing list of requirements. And on the other hand, customer was chasing him to meet all their agreed expectations and that too on time.

The delivery team at times would chastise him with taunts too. They would simply question his capabilities to handle the customer. Their ratings of Nathan would squarely depend on him able to say “No” to the customer. They would simply say, you just go and say Yes to everything and now we don’t have anything to deliver that. They would not agree that to get this project, they too accepted some of the difficult requirements from the customer.

The customer would just chase him saying that you have already accepted the requirements and its all listed in the proposal. So, you need to deliver them. And only then the payments would be made. Very well knowing that payments are all linked to the delivery milestones, which if no met, would automatically delay the payments.

Poor Nathan was struggling between the customer and the delivery team, little realising that there was another angle to this fight. It was a love triangle or may be a hate triangle where he was struck to make himself a living. He continued struggling to meet the expectations of all the stakeholders, also trying to establish himself in the organization and showcasing his capabilities. And suddenly he got call from ABC, asking him an update on the project and the monies to be collected from the customer.

He gave ABC an exact update on the status and told him clearly that because of this fight on the requirements, the delivery will be late, and hence the payments. To this, ABC asked Nathan – “What do I answer Mr CEO. He won’t listen to these delays. Yours and my salary will be delayed. Imagine how it will be like to see your salary delayed”.

Nathan explained the problems, but to no avail. What he got in reply was – “Its your responsibility and hence, you have to get the payments”. Nathan was completely shaken at the angle of payments to this ensuing fight.

With each passing day with them, Nathan was going crazy at finding a solution to his challenges. He had to somehow placate the concerns of each party and establish himself in the organization.

After a much thought, he decided to arrange a discussion between the delivery team and the customer so that some common ground can be found and eventually the delivery can be made and he can get the payment. He spoke to them and struggled to get the two fighting teams to get to agree to a common schedule to discuss the status and key issues.

Even though, he had arranged this, Nathan knew, nothing was going to resolve in just one discussion. We would need at least 2-3 more to come to an agreement for everyone.

Finally, after 4 rounds of discussions and many rounds of emails, they discussed each and everything and agreed to a final list of requirements to which both the parties confirmed their concurrence.

Nathan was happy that some of his ideas worked. After, each common discussion, he spent long hours discussing everything with the delivery team and then next day presented the same to the customer. He would then take back the customer’s feedback to the delivery team. This way, he was able to get each party ready with the action points for the next round of discussion.

This gave Nathan a lot of confidence in himself and his capabilities. And he learnt, his work was all about setting and meeting the expectations, more with the customer and then with his internal teams.

He accepted that there would always be a tussle like this, as Sales Team would promise moon to the customer to be able to sell. And at the end, the organization may not be able to meet the deliverables in the agreed timelines. He may not want to lie; however, he is left with no choice but to act in a particular manner as everyone else does too. It is a competitive world and he has to meet his targets too. If he doesn't sell, he can’t justify his existence in the company. He also realized that Sales team is the engine of the company. It brings in revenues and growth for the organization and provides momentum and keeps the morale high for the entire organization.

Meanwhile, Nathan continued with his core responsibility to sell. He continued arranging meetings and product demos, however, nothing moved to a stage of getting a new deal.

On one hand, he continued to get going as an Account Manager; on the other, he struggled to move ahead as a Sales Manager. 

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.”