23: Selling in Emerging Markets (India) to Large Buying Committees with Abhishek Kohli

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of ViewedIt. Boost your email response rates and book more meetings with video by downloading ViewedIt by Vidyard at top1.fm/v, or go to any page on top1.fm and click on their ad. You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Abhishek Kohli from Clarivate Analytics, which until just recently was the intellectual property and science business of Thomson Reuters. So this should be really interesting on a number of levels as Abhishek is joining us from New Delhi, India, where he is selling to government agencies and institutions in the north and central part of India. Welcome to the show, Abhishek.

1:01 Abhishek Kohli: Thank you, Scott.

1:02 Scott Ingram: So we'll start like we always do with kind of the top 3 things that you believe have allowed you to become the top seller in emerging markets at Thomson Reuters.

1:13 Abhishek Kohli: I think it's pretty generic in whatever market you are in, but one thing that's strongly, strongly come through in the past decade of my professional experience is perseverance is definitely one of the key factors. It takes a lot to get to various stages of sales, as we all know, who spend day in and day out in a sales environment, from reaching out to the client, getting the first meeting, getting the client to actually reach a stage where he actually feels there is a genuine need to purchase, and then to take him or her through the purchase process, which is absolutely daunting in a, especially a government kind of environment, which is primarily the target market that I address. So in a long sales cycle business, I very strongly… perseverance would be one very, very, very critical factor. This was one of the things that I was asked during the course of my chase to the President's Club also during the year of 2016, that what would be one. So I think perseverance is definitely the top one, but yeah, the other few things which I strongly believe that add to it is customer focus. I think at many levels, and when we say that, it's a very broad domain that we're talking about because we're talking about listening to the customer. Really, we're talking about interpreting what the customer, or delving into what the customer's actual need is, which probably customer has still not been able to figure out on his own. And then to actually be able to create an internal champion who's your voice in the organization, because without that, you're actually nowhere. There are hundreds of situations every day, and especially during the sales process, that questions are asked about why is the proposal like this, why are we getting this, or why are we even buying this? Do we really need it right now? Is this the right time to go through this? And so on and so forth. Your internal champion is your voice within the organization, is absolutely critical. People who can own the proposition that you've given them, the value, they actually become your speakers and they give, they propose the value within the organization as to why it is important to get a partnership, get a subscription, get any kind of service or product from a particular organization. So I think that's the second key thing. And the third, which is like a pillar of all of this, is self-belief. I think every salesperson faces these phases of self-doubt and the fact that, can I do my quota this year? Can I overachieve my quota this year? Can I crack this particular client? Is it even possible to make this client sign the dotted line? So on and so forth. The fact is that this self-belief is what can drive everything during the process. I think I dreamt about overachieving my quota, my target again and again. And the fact that I just felt that, yes, that would be a brilliant, brilliant place to be and then drove myself with self-belief belief that it's possible to be done even when it was just a few months into the business when we actually… the FY16 kicked in. So yeah, so that would be my 3 top sales success factors: perseverance, customer focus, and certainty.

5:18 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And we'll definitely dig into kind of some of the complexity that you're facing there in obviously selling to government, selling in the Indian market. But when you talk about creating an internal champion, What are you looking for in that? Like, who's the ideal person to be your champion and how are you enabling them to support your effort?

5:41 Abhishek Kohli: Yeah, so my internal champion would first need to be a person who understands the value proposition of the product or the service that is offered. He's a guy who actually assimilates and digests completely, saying, yes, this is something that we really, really could do with, this could improve, and understands what value is the organization that he belongs to is getting in the whole process and can articulate it internally and is ready to own the process of purchase and influence people around him at every stage so that So that somebody doesn't just come up and say, we don't think, I don't think we should be doing this. I don't think we should be spending these X dollars on these guys. We've been doing so far fine so far without it. That's the kind of internal champion we need in you who's ready to take over all the internal obstacles, become your person for putting across a value proposition because he believes, he shares your self-belief. In the fact that this particular product or service can bring huge value or change or dramatic improvements in whatever they are doing, and hence he becomes your champion. So yeah, I think all of these put together would be, would be very, very critical to identify an internal champion. And obviously, this in a hierarchical process, this person needs to be pretty senior. He or she might or might not be the top decision maker, but very close to that, so that the influence that this person is making is consistent. And the reach of this internal champion is to the top stakeholders who are actually the signatory authorities. So that's what we… because it's always difficult for a signatory authority to be your internal champion for various reasons, but But the second echelon or third echelon is probably very, very difficult. When you talk about hierarchical systems and where this person would be positioned in the organization, I would say, yeah, it needs to be a second or third echelon person for sure to make that impact.

8:05 Scott Ingram: So Abhishek, talk about your role and just the types of solutions that you're selling.

8:11 Abhishek Kohli: Right. So my role at Clarivate Analytics, which is the formerly Thomson Reuters IP and Science business, is basically to engage with clients in the north and central part of India for maintaining a revenue book which includes renewals and subscription. Now the tools and solutions which are the enablers of research and innovation that we offer are the kind that researchers, a research community at large uses in the process of research itself. So from the first stage where they're figuring out what should be the kind of research they're doing, figuring out what part of the research that they're interested in doing has been already done, who are the people who have written great work related to that research area, which have been already done, which could potentially be literature that they wish to review, to the fact that they want to just collect references in a tool which makes it easy for them to organize, to a point where an institution wishes to actually benchmark themselves in research vis-à-vis their competition or a government agency who is looking to understand the investments that they've made in last 10 years in research and development has led to what outcome, and so on and so forth. So that's essentially where we are tying up with various institutions and government agencies. We could delve into it further, but yeah, that would be the broader brief of what I do. A lot of our tools are, or most of our tools are subscription tools. So there's a In my book of revenue, I manage subscriptions which are new subscriptions. So when I, when we talk about quotas and targets, for me, they're basically new business targets, but I also have a renewal target, which is percentage basis of the business that I own already in my territory within my clients.

10:21 Scott Ingram: Got it. And speaking of quotas and targets, can you kind of quantify your results for us? What did it take to get to number 1 in emerging markets last year?

10:30 Abhishek Kohli: Yeah. So, uh, so essentially my last year's, uh, new business target was $360,000 of new business. Uh, I achieved 174% of that, which was around $627,000 of new business, which led me to this position. Yeah.

10:51 Scott Ingram: Excellent. And why don't we delve into your backstory a little bit? And I'd like to understand kind of your history in sales, and then we can chat a little bit about what it's like sort selling in India and obviously selling to government, which is, which is a different animal in the space that you haven't always been in. But tell us about your background and kind of how you got into sales in the first place.

11:11 Abhishek Kohli: Yeah. So, so essentially I'm a, I'm an engineering graduate in information technology and later I went on to do my MBA after 2 and a half years of work ex. So I started as a technology guy. Although I knew that that's not primarily what my personality was cut out to be, but it was a starting point to understand the basic nuances of technology. So I spent some time there. It was basically telecom-based technology for… British Telecom was one of my clients that I was working for as a software engineer and an advisor or consultant on technology. But then after my MBA, I think, yeah, that was the point that I clearly decided that I need to… I can't be a technology guy per se. I have to be doing something that was just more people-oriented where I have day-in, day-out interactions with people at large. And that was more exciting for me than an office desk job, technology job, which encompasses sitting on a on a laptop coding all day was not something that I was really cut out for. So that's where the transition happened. After completing my MBA graduation in Dubai, I was looking out for a sales position and I started with this organization called Kingsman. They were into exhibition-related services and they had their HQ was in Singapore. They were a good design organization. So their services encompassed from design to execution of an exhibition booth in a show. That's what we could do for people. I think that was a great learning point because the fact of the matter is that I was working directly with the director of sales in that organization, and that gave me exposure to very large clients who were recurring business for Kingsman. It also obviously allowed me to get my hand into acquiring newer clients and also a lot of cross-cultural exposure because prior to that time I hadn't moved out of India per se. Both my jobs were within the Indian geography, but although I had clients who were sitting in the UK, but this exposure of working in a sales environment in Dubai, which is kind of a very, very very, very international place in that sense. I was working with clients from Arabs, Arabs obviously because they're there, but yeah, Brits and French, Indians of course, and so on and so forth. So it really gave me a good starting point to understand what all goes into making sales happen. Yeah, so So that was a sorting story, but I wanted to come back and settle down with my family in New Delhi, and that's when I thought that I should look for an opportunity. And India had been growing as a market. 2009, when I graduated, was a bad time in the global economy, so didn't get that many options of campus placement as we imagined we would. But coming back to India in 2010, I think was a great decision. I was looking to pick up anything that would give me great exposure. And I picked something up which was, I would in current context say, yeah, it was hugely challenging. So I got offered with this startup, which was hardly 5 people who just had a concept in their head, which was let's get to support this National Solar Mission, which was the government's vision to get renewable energy up to speed, 20 gigawatts of renewable energy by the end of 2022. That was the vision at that time, just to let you know, that's been 5 times now in terms of the vision document itself. So that mission is now 100 gigawatts for 2022. The idea was to tap into that opportunity and offer tools, hardware tools, which could help people learn better about renewable energy systems, how they function, what are the concepts behind it, especially in the academic institutions, because ultimately the man force would get started, the technical man force would would be the supplier of technical workforce would be academic institutions themselves. So with a 5-people organization, no product in the hand, only a concept, but a belief that this should be something that we should be able to make good with, I ended up spending 4 and a half years of quite a roller coaster ride It started from, it took 6 months to get the first client on board when we actually still then also did not have a final piece ready for the client to be shipped to. From that point, growing a business to, let's say, around a million-dollar-plus business within a span of 4 years where I close very, very closely played a role in practically every aspect of the business from product design to marketing, even hiring people, mentoring people. But obviously my primary responsibility remained sales. But yeah, because of being a small organization, I got my hand to probably doing nearly everything. That could be possible. So, so that's my backstory because that brought me to a point where in 2015 mid, I moved to Thomson Reuters.

17:29 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And I'm really interested in kind of the cross-cultural piece since you have a variety of experience there, but what, what is the business culture like in India and what's it like to sell in that environment?

17:42 Abhishek Kohli: It's a tough but Tough market, challenging market, but I think a market with a lot of potential. And I think that's essentially the reasons all large organizations globally have a lot of investments going into India as in past many, many years. But yeah, what makes the market very, very typical is that when you go to a person with any kind of solution, right, it can be a service, product, anything. I think the first reaction is we kind of something, we kind of have something like that, or the second kind of reaction could be we kind of been doing very fine without something like that, so why do we need it now? When you try and educate the client about a product or a service, a typical reaction is, I know about it. And when you ask them, so what do you know about it? They are zillions of miles off target. So I think it's unfortunate, but culturally the openness to be educated about a new product or a new service is the biggest challenge in in a territory like India. And that's the starting point. The client needs to first understand and appreciate what you are offering before can even make a decision or mindset as to does he or she want to invest energy into even going further into anything. So that's the cultural bit. That I find very different from probably a lot of other cultures because I've seen working with Europeans and especially Brits and French and other people, you go to them with an idea, they first listen to you end to end and then bring in their comments. In a geography like India, I think the difficult thing is to actually even have your client the patience to give you a complete hearing before he or she tries to make a conclusion out of what, what you're telling them.

20:03 Scott Ingram: And how do you overcome that challenge? It sounds like they, they sort of come predisposed and they're, they're not willing to listen. How do you open that up?

20:11 Abhishek Kohli: I think it's a lot of… it's a, it's a lot to do with connecting with a client at a personal level, and especially the person you're trying to speak to. Because you know for sure that if you're going to sit across the table and you're going to give your pitch, an elevator pitch, it's going to get shot down and you're going to not be able to get through your message whatsoever. So I think in these predisposed situations where you know that you're going to be blocked the moment you start completing 30-40% of your pitch, the idea is to not pitch. The idea is to actually not. The idea is to just go on a different route where you first try and understand the client, what the client institution is doing, what the client challenges are, and then probably in that picture, just give a short, sweet teaser as to what, where is, where are the help areas that you could bring in. And then when that happens, probably the discussion becomes more open. It might not exactly be the first meeting or the second meeting. You might need to invest more time and energy into it. But, but at least when the client hears you out in a situation where, where he or she has got a chance to speak to you about what they are doing and what their challenges, what the real challenges are, what they feel their challenges are. I think that's really helpful.

21:43 Scott Ingram: Sure. And you've got the added layer of complexity, I'm sure, in selling to the government. How does that work and how do you overcome some of those challenges?

21:52 Abhishek Kohli: Government is a very, very typical animal, as you rightly pointed out. I think the most typical thing about the government is contradictory to the second thing that I said in in the customer focus bit, which is creating an internal champion. People do not want to own a process, own a purchase. They don't want to. In the government, it's very, very simple. If I don't purchase, I'm fine. But if I do, there's always a potential of getting into trouble. For various kinds of reasons. Now, so essentially you're dealing with people who are not… who are actually disposed to not own a process. They don't want to. Typically how government bureaucracies work is a single person, even if wishes to have something, will not buy it just like that. And I'm sure that's the way most of the markets work. But so essentially he would, he or she would ensure that there's a committee, there are 5, 7, 8 members who collectively decided to ask to take a decision, to take a call about a product or a service purchase, which could be useful in a scenario. These people could be internal or external experts. Some of them would preferably be external experts to ensure that there is less bias built into the system. Because it's like if a boss is saying that, you know, we should have it, the 8 guys reporting into him very well can nod and say, yeah, yeah, we should have it. But the external experts ensure reducing that bias, although it does not, because again, that system is gamed in a sense because people who are also from the external stakeholder community are also people who knows this particular person who's putting together the committee to ensure that the end result is favorable. But the whole process that we get into to ensure that all of this happens, the process is… so a lot of my government clients tell me that In the government, outcome is not prime, process is prime, process is king, which means if I do my process right and the outcome is whatever the outcome is, it doesn't matter. I can't be questioned about it. But if it's the other way around, even if the outcome is great, but I somehow try to bypass a process or expedite something, overlook certain aspects, That can really get me into trouble. So people prefer to go through, go buy the book as black and white as possible. And that leads to enormous delays, enormous delays. So it's essentially because you're looking at, if, so I, like I gave you an example, if I have to buy, if somebody needs to buy a $100,000 service from me, And for that, they're going to constitute a committee, get it approved internally, and then make these 8 people sit together in a room twice or thrice before the final decision is reached. You're talking about anything between 4 to 6 months of loss of time purely because the availability of these experts is not that easy. So it essentially brings me back to the point that it asks for a lot of perseverance, a lot of patience from a salesperson's side to even deal with the government day in and day out, because you've got quarterly numbers to beat, you've got monthly numbers to beat, but these guys move in a cycle where 3 to 6 months just go from a point where the nod came from a top person to a point where the, the process of formalizing that nod in black and white over papers was completed. So, yeah.

26:21 Scott Ingram: Well, and I mean, that's fascinating because I think here in the US and just sales globally in general, we're seeing more and more of this emergence of a buying committee and a lot of people being involved in those decisions. And it sounds like what you're dealing with is really an extreme form of that. So I, I think maybe the ways that you're getting through that could be really instructive, uh, to those of us who, who deal with that in, in not quite as, as extreme a form. So given that the process is so important, are you asking them to help you understand what their process is and then enabling that? Are you trying to drive them through a certain process? Like, how do you manage through that and keep things moving?

27:10 Abhishek Kohli: Absolutely. I think the couple of things that you said are completely ground realities. We have to do that. We have to, one, because these processes are not institutionalized to a level where every organization that we deal with follows exactly the same process. They are obviously very similar to each other. But there can be additional layers or lesser layers depending on whom we are dealing with. So it becomes absolutely imperative for us to, one, understand in every meeting with our internal champion or our pointman in an organization as to what is the next step, what are the kind of decisions and outcomes we are expecting from the next steps, who are involved in that. And is there anything, any data point, any supporting document or any presentation that this, or us as individuals are needed in any of those meetings to ensure that the driven outcome of the next step actually happens and culminates? Otherwise, are we just moving back and forth? Otherwise, we're just losing time and we're not leading to any decision. So this is the given aspect. The not so given aspect is the patience part because clients universally in these government organizations in India expect you to be patient, but your organization is not patient with you when it comes to, you know what I'm saying? The organization is not patient with you when it comes to putting numbers on the board. So you are at a very, very tricky situation where you need to balance the pressure that you're getting from your managers and your management vis-à-vis what kind of body language and conversations you're having with the client. Although you are very subtly pushing and driving them, but not pushing them to a point where they take offense or feel that you you're not able to understand their situation because ultimately everybody expects you to understand their situation, not the other way around. And then egos, I think very critical to understand. We deal with very fragile egos in the Eastern part of the world. I don't know how it is in the other parts. I feel that they are not that fragile. They are more self-assured, but especially in in the government, the bureaucracies, the cogs of the Indian government, what I've really felt is that 80% of the people that you're dealing with are dealing with very fragile egos. So yeah, you need to be absolutely… you're practically treating them with kid's gloves all the time in spite of knowing the kind of pressure that's on you to get the things done. It's a very, very, very tricky game.

30:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And in terms of that committee, I mean, are you guiding them and directing them in who to bring into that conversation? And then how are you managing kind of those, those individual stakeholders and various influencers?

30:31 Abhishek Kohli: So it can be both the situations. One would be where we guide appointment to bring in people whom we know are positively disposed about our solutions, about our organization. And our experts who are hugely respected in that area. Yeah, if you're able, if you're in a position to do that, there have been a few situations where we have been positioned to do that and we do that, right? We know that, you know, if this person is on the committee, he's definitely gonna give a positive word about our product or service. But then the second kind of situation is where the internal champion himself is very well networked within his community and he or she decides that, you know, okay, I'm gonna bring in these 10 people. I know 6 or 7 of them are very close friends through various channels and have worked with this person at various points of time in lives. And he knows that he'll get his way around them anyways. He just educates them about it offline and they will have a positive outcome. So both happen, both situations happen. Uh, it's obviously we feel more in control when we are asked, but even if our internal champion is confident of his or her network, I think we're happy in that situation as well.

31:50 Scott Ingram: And how are you, I mean, it really sounds like you are relying super heavily on that internal champion to do so much of this effort. How are you kind of qualifying them and selling them on doing this level of work and effort for you to bring things to closure?

32:09 Abhishek Kohli: I think it's a lot to do with the identification bit. I think one thing that every salesperson does is look for these people who not only understand the solution very well, not only can articulate the value internally very well, but somehow have some affiliation or motivation in individual context to do something regarding that, right? So internal champions would definitely be people who are, who are people who have some connection to, in our case, research and innovation, right? So for example, if there was this internal champion who was about to retire in a few months before the contract was supposed to sign, it was very clear that his thing was about legacy. He wanted to leave a legacy for his institution as to the kind of work this individual did contributed. And one of the things, one of the dreams that he had was to bring in our solutions so that that improves the research infrastructure of that government agency. So that's the kind of… we need to understand individual motivations also. Having said that, I think we talk… I've spoken a lot about the internal champion and And there's no two ways about it. I think 60% of the internal cogs are moved by this person himself. But the other bit is obviously, and I'm adding this because I thought you have not given any impetus to that, is the other cogs in the wheel, which are the final signatory authorities, people who are decision makers, the other members of committees, especially internal. External ones, some of them we know, some of them we don't. Sometimes, but internally it becomes a good idea to still go and individually pitch to other people also in cognizance with the internal champion so that there are more people who are already positively disposed about the solution. One. Second, keeping the signatory authority in loop and also articulating value of your solutions to to them, because ultimately the papers are going to come to his or her table to get the final assent before a purchase order or a contract is signed. So the other 40% would encompass including people who have some kind of voice within the system, engaging with them in cognizance with your internal champion, but ensuring that there are other people educated about the product or service that the institution is potentially planning to subscribe to. And second is these decision makers who are also critical, and you don't get interface with these decision makers as often as you get it obviously with your internal champion. But the fact is that these guys are really, really important, and at the end of the day, they need to very clearly know in their head, this is happening, this is what I'm expecting, these papers are going to come to my table for final assent, and this is the value that that these guys are bringing, and hence they're talking to us again and again, so that there's so much conditioning that's already happened before the actual point when the final signatory authority receives the papers to give his or her set. So that also becomes very critical in the whole process, right? Because if we only 100% rely on the internal champion and something goes something goes wrong somewhere, the person retires, switches organization, or something like that, we're in a huge soup because we have no second point backup. And a top authority is always helpful because even if this person got replaced because of various factors, he or she could always point you back that, you know, now this is the person who has replaced Mr. XYZ, who is no more with the organization, and then you start to work from there rather than losing the whole effort that was made in the long running around with the internal champion.

36:28 Scott Ingram: Sure. Now, Abhishek, what is your process? How are you managing through all of this?

36:35 Abhishek Kohli: Okay. So yeah, I think so. If I talk about the process or my daily daily agenda that I follow, to-do I follow. I think one aspect is definitely meeting these people and having conversations over phone, over emails, and so on and so forth. A lot of it also goes about researching as to what these guys have done in the past, what can make a precedence convert into a current solution because it's always this thing about what has been done in the past can be replicated easily in a government situation rather than doing something afresh. Also, for the identification purpose of a potential internal champion, I think a lot of it has to be backed by the homework that we do at our workstations where we'll be looking at people who come from a great research pedigree, some of them who are well exposed to foreign education or some kind of work with foreign authors, collaborators, you know, those people are more positively inclined towards these issues. Also liaising with the top authorities who are not even decision makers within these individual institutions, but are people who become your voice within the industry itself and also give you probably, I would say, probably much in advance an idea about the kind of policy changes that are coming into the field of research and education and innovation, which you then factor in and figure out how you can positively use those policy changes for the benefit of your business. For example, I'll give you an example in this regard. So with this, we have this national ranking framework in India which got introduced a couple of years back. 2016 was the first time when India actually released as a country a ranking of hundreds of universities compared on academics, research, and so on and so forth. And there in the policy document, one of our products is being used to measure the research score. So there were 2 aspects to that. One, to know that something like this is happening. Second was to influence the weightage and the score that our product would have in that. And third, to handhold and handtie these people with us to ensure that we are continuously influencing policy to increase our influence within that community. And obviously the outcome of that is that at the end of the day, use this framework as an opportunity to reach out to more leads and prospects who now are keen on being one of the top 100 or whatever number you want to put at. In the ranking framework and bring… because we bring them the value that this product is being used to benchmark. If you would have that with you on real-time basis, you'd be able to monitor. And not only that, you might be able to even influence by telling your individual researchers to benchmark themselves continuously on this scale. You would probably be able to improve your chances of improving ranking. Within the whole setup. So a lot of high-level work also goes in at policy influence and understanding policy changes and how we can use these policy changes to generate more leads and prospects in the industry.

40:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah, interesting. Well, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about how your habits and routines kind of work. How are you typically structuring your day and what does that look like?

40:53 Abhishek Kohli: Okay. So I think there are 2 kinds of days that I have, right? And so I would rather than giving a day's perspective, I'll give a week's perspective because a day typically can be either on the road, completely on the road where I'm meeting 2 or 3 clients during the day. And understanding various next steps or pitching new products, services. Or the other extreme side can be that I am spending the whole day in office where it starts from me putting in a to-do agenda for myself, which would include replying to emails and sending proposals to clients who I have already visited and are looking for proposals for taking it forward with their team. Or a lot of internal meetings are happening within the group to discuss marketing options, inside sales options, how to bring in more leads and what kind of marketing endeavors need to be taken up. So it's a mix of all of that. And that's why in a weekly perspective, I would say that in a 5-day working week, typically I have around 2.5 days on the road. Uh, which can be within the city or outside the city. And the rest of the 2 and a half days, uh, I have in office, which would include, uh, sending these proposals and everything out and having internal discussions and doing my, uh, my own homework to figure out whom to reach out, who are the best people to reach out, identify further needs and so on and so forth.

42:31 Scott Ingram: And walk us through kind of each of those. I mean, if you're in an in-office day, How are you structuring that just to maintain productivity and efficiency?

42:44 Abhishek Kohli: Okay. So in a typical office day, I think what I tend to do is, especially in a situation where I've come back from travel and I know I have to send across a few proposals, I allocate a good 1.5 hours to focusing typically on building up these proposals and the nuances of these proposals and the supporting documents that need need to go out on that, right? Probably the other, another couple of hours, another couple of hours, 2 to 3 hours are spent on sending these out and through email or identifying more leads and prospects and homework, which is typically the desk kind of work I'm talking about. So maybe another 3 hours typically go into that. And the rest 2.5 hours allocated to internal discussions, because generally when you're in an office and you've got your team around, it's a good time to actually catch up and discuss learnings and what is happening and to just share industry information and market insights, market intelligence that somebody else has captured, or to discuss marketing strategies and so on and so forth. So typically that would be the split. You would want to dedicate a probably around, I'd say, yeah, 1.5 to 2 hours of your time typically yourself where you're building up. And when I say yourself means focusing on building up these proposals and documents that the client would need to process an order. Another 1.5 to 3 hours typically to look through the… send through the communication and do your desk research related to leads and prospects. And the other 3-odd are a bit internal discussion and can be related to marketing, market intelligence, and so on and so forth. So typically I'll break it up like that.

44:39 Scott Ingram: Are there particular tips and tricks that you've found work well when you're doing the traveling? And what is the traveling? Is that fairly local or are you ranging quite wide?

44:52 Abhishek Kohli: The territory that I map is pretty wide, so I would say, but it's a mix. A lot of my current prospects and current client set belongs to my local geography, which is New Delhi and around. This is a pretty large catchment area, large city per se, and also the political capital of the country, which means most, and when I say most, it's like 90% of government agencies have headquarters here in and around the office, but typically institutions are far and wide because they can be within the Delhi and in and around area, but a lot of them will not be in the same place. So I travel to… I could be taking a flight in and out in a day to a location which is like 200 miles out or 300 miles out, even in cases 500 miles out. Or I might have a few-day schedule, especially when we talk about 500-600 miles distance. We might look at a situation where I go in for a couple of days, spend time in a particular city, meet all the potential current clients, prospects, leads which just come in and just try and qualify if there's any potential to that and so on and so forth. So completely focus on the business generation bit and that kind of a day would be, you spend most of the time on the road and when you come back in the hotel room, probably the urgent ones, you build up the proposals immediately and send it out by the night or early morning or next morning. And the ones you feel that are not that urgent or imperative to be sent immediately, you wait for reaching office, uh, on the 3rd or 4th day and then send them out.

46:50 Scott Ingram: Got it. And are there tools and apps that you're using in your day-to-day? Speaking of tools and apps, take a look at ViewedIt. This is a simple yet powerful tool that allows you to easily insert videos into your emails. This might be a video of yourself that you use to introduce your company to a new prospect, or even to reiterate a key point to someone you just met with. You can also do screen capture videos, perhaps to emphasize a key capability of your solution or to point out something specific on a prospect's website. Give it a try today. Just go to top1.fm/v to get started with the free Chrome plugin.

47:28 Abhishek Kohli: So I think primarily what we're using is Salesforce. That's our pillar. We do We map our opportunities, the movement of our opportunities, and now made a system where we're even putting up activities and tracking those tasks of calling up a client and emailing the client or having a face-to-face meeting with the client through Salesforce itself. As far as the proposals go, they're typically Word templates. You just need to fill up those details which are important to these clients. Any typical thing that a client asks in this situation related to how the payments would be done or the subscription would be given or so on and so forth, those kind of modifications can be made. But typically for those, we have a Word template which guides us and then we can pop in those details. The pricing bit is more or less governed by by an Excel price calculator that's provided to us in the beginning of the year related to the whole product and services range. So we can look that up and have a ballpark idea of what we should be ideally quoting. And then we use our, our discretion to an extent with an approval from our manager saying, okay, this is what we should be ideally quoting to this client, but But the ability of the client might not be to bear such an expense. So what do we do? Do we trim down the offering and bring it down to the level and/or add discounts, which we can within the limits that are provided to us? So yeah, so that's built in.

49:19 Scott Ingram: And what about your information diet? What are you reading, listening to, and watching?

49:25 Abhishek Kohli: So my information diet, so I'm quite avid, I'd say I'm not an avid book reader, but I'm a very avid reader of financial news, political news. So from a newspaper to my apps, Twitter, to the news apps on my phone, I think all of them give me a lot of feed. And so typically what happens is, and I've been using this Android phone for the past 2 years, typically what happens is because I keep looking up for Ministry of Education related news and news related to, say, CSIR, which is the large government research institution, what typically happens is my feed has got built up of these things. So I continuously get updates on what is happening in these large research bodies in India, what are the policies and movements that are happening at the Ministry of Education level and so on and so forth. That gives us a lot of insight because that's like daily tracking and even the universities that we closely work with or trying to work with, I think once we start looking up news related to them, it typically becomes this self-learning algorithm, keeps sending you news related to that. That gives us a lot of pace because it's very… and we all understand as salespeople that it's very important for us to know what is happening on the client side. And all of this information you might or might not get while talking to the client or by talking to each other, but a lot of it is available in public domain. So yeah, I think my newsfeeds are my information sources. The other bit that obviously helps is my social network within the industry partners. So people who are not necessarily competitors but are complementing vendors to us in the same industry. A few of them you end up making social connects because you meet them in every 3rd or 4th forum together. So those are also information sources, but you don't trust them completely because at the end of the day you're looking at the same pie and you know even when you're not competing, you're actually competing for the same money available or the wallet of the client. So you don't, you can't completely base your decisions or thoughts on that, but I think better sources are publicly available sources like newspapers and newsfeeds from these apps. Yeah.

52:16 Scott Ingram: So a lot of detail and just improving your industry knowledge and understanding kind of what's happening among your clients and things like that. Are there other things that you are reading or listening to, to just improve yourself and your sales abilities and your business acumen?

52:34 Abhishek Kohli: Absolutely. So this was related to obviously the external stakeholders and the client, but from… because I'm in the research and innovation space, I need to read a lot about what kind of research is happening, especially. So if I'm dealing with a defense client, for example, right, and I've read up a few things related to defense research in the past and what these guys have invested in and so on and so forth, the conversations become more fruitful, more engaging. The client can connect even better with the conversation, even when you're not talking about particularly your product. You're just talking about research and innovation and what's happening in India and the world. And you know for a fact that there are certain things that have happened within this particular defense organization in the past which you might or might not quote, but you know that probably just mentioning that would trigger another set of conversations, which will bring out a few details, a few insights about the organization, which might be really helpful in the long term of understanding the client and how the client conducts business. So those are very critical things for us as well, from a learning perspective.

53:54 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Now, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

54:01 Abhishek Kohli: No, I… tough to say that. I don't know. I can't articulate something like that because I think I've not followed any particular sales philosophy per se, except the fact that there are things that have got evolved into my system over a period of past decade or so. I think there are a lot of times that you go predisposed into a client meeting and both negative or positive. One thing that you learn within when you spend such a long time doing sales is no predisposition is helpful because at the end of the day you don't know what client is going to throw at you. The fact of the matter is we've gone into meetings with a lot of self-confidence that, you know, this guy's profile seems great and he's the top authority in an institution and say, oh, this guy will definitely understand what we are offering, will definitely want to talk to us more, will definitely want to do this. And you go in a meeting and he's like, ah, so no, I understand all of that, but I'm not too sure that I need you guys. And you're like, what? And it can be the other way around also, that you've gone with very low confidence in a particular client thinking that this is not a place that I'm going to crack. I should give it a shot because there seems to be a very faint chance of doing that. But suddenly somehow things click. So I think one thing is going into a meeting with a very open mind. Second is, when do you give up on a client? I think that's a very tricky one because at the end of the day, when we talk about perseverance and everything, you're saying that, or I'm saying that, that means I'm ready to put all the effort that's required to convert a client. But that also means that probably you're investing disproportionate energies against the return that you're getting against them in a client who's actually giving you no or very little business. So when to give up on a client is another tricky one, which again has got evolved with time. I think when you're in your very, very young years of, or very starting years of your your sales career, you tend to hold on to even not that great leads or not that strong prospects. But as and when you start evolving, you start realizing that that is a baggage that you're carrying on yourself, and it's best to let it go rather than keep chasing when you know that nothing might come in the next 3, 4 quarters. And And if that's the case, it's better to wait out a 3-quarter time period and go back to the client and then prospect again rather than keep connected or keep meeting. Keep connected, obviously, the ways and means of doing that, but keep meeting to push when you know that push is not going to lead to anything. So I think that's something that's got really evolved in my head because You know, there are times when you're like, oh no, no, how do I… I've spent so much time and energy on this particular client. Why should I let this go? But at the end of the day, it's about not putting bad money behind already bad investment. You don't want to do that. Yeah.

57:47 Scott Ingram: And how are you making that decision? Because I think a lot of people get into that trap, especially like you just said, once you've… you're way down the road, right? You've put in so much, you don't want to back away, but It doesn't matter, right? You have to make those decisions at any point in the sales process. So how are you deciding this just isn't a good use of my time and deciding to walk away?

58:16 Abhishek Kohli: I think how it happens is when you start getting clear signals from a client which were contradictory to his or her initial disposition, right? So we have a case of a university where where our first and second and third meetings went phenomenally well. And the person we spoke to was the top authority at the institution, understood everything about our solution product, was already predispositioned towards us. We were like so gung-ho, so sure about converting things. And we even gave her a contract towards the last month of last financial year and it never got signed. Never. And it's 6 months from there and we've met her a few times and then you're like, you spend 1 year for probably around $50,000-$70,000 that you expected out of this account and now what? It's not leading to anywhere. So That brings you to question that how long will you keep following up? So I think the way, and you know how it is when you break up, it is like that. I think it's like you actually want to talk about the breakup. You actually want the client to say to you, and you create those enabling environment where the client actually tells you that this is not happening or this won't happen in the next 3, 4 quarters. That gives you that closure in the head that, you know, okay, I put all that was possible. And that's what salespeople are all about. They don't want to leave things. Good salespeople don't like to leave things midway. They want closure in the head. They want to be sure that, you know, all the effort that they put was very constructive, but this was not… it was just not the right time to get this closure or or some internal or external influences actually did not take it or was not able to drive it in a positive direction. So I think that kind of a situation where you give yourself a situation where all the factors around are able to convince you that you put enough effort. And second, but preferable one, this might or might not happen all the time, is kind of get a closure from a client where he in different… he or she in different words tells you that, you know, this is not really going to happen in spite of the fact that I was very positive. That actually helps you get closure on these things.

1:00:54 Scott Ingram: Sure. Now, Abhishek, so we talked about kind of the philosophy side of things. How would you describe your style?

1:01:01 Abhishek Kohli: I think I describe my style as a very person-oriented approach. Okay. And when I say that, I say, I feel that you have to, and for every salesperson, it's imperative to get down to a level of the person, things he or she relates to, and talk to them in that tone, tonality, words which click, which resonate with them. So I think I have a very person-oriented style where Where I try and understand the individual's personality when I meet them. And it's not that tough because you're working with a similar set of people when you enter an office of a director of a school or a secretary or a joint secretary of a ministry or so on and so forth. Their office, their first few words, their handshake, the way they're talking to you gives you a clear understanding of… and their response to the introduction, the quick introduction that you make about you and your organization gives you a very clear sense of what are this person's primarily areas of where they'll resonate and what is that they will not connect with. And then go down to delving into creating a need and creating a relationship and so on and so forth. I would, I would say that.

1:02:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes sense. So in your top 3, you talked about perseverance and you talked about self-belief. What motivates you and how do you develop that self-belief?

1:02:57 Abhishek Kohli: I think what motivates me is is this passion about being a great sales performer, right? The fact that you… it's like you run… for a salesperson, it's like he runs a race from January 1st to December 31st every year, right? And the end goal is to either reach that goalpost or even far exceed that goalpost. It's a 365-day race that a salesperson is running. And the fact that the passion that I realized that I had for sales makes the little voice in my head always say, you always want to be past that goal, never ever on this side of the line, but on that side of the line. And then the fact that you've already done well in in careers which were even more challenging than where you are, where you built up a business from scratch and were able to do pretty well to grow the business into something substantial and back yourself up with the skills. I think that gives you self-belief. I think the ability to be able to prove to yourself that you have been doing it gives you self-belief. And when you're down, you have your family, you have your mentors. I have a great manager. Whom I work with in Clarivate. He brings a lot of confidence to me as well when I have my bad days or lost days. So I think you need those mentors and those people around also to pep you up. And obviously that belief that you've been doing this so well, why can't you do it again? And why can't you exceed it again?

1:04:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Now, is there something that you believe that the average seller might think is crazy?

1:04:55 Abhishek Kohli: That's a pretty off-the-cuff one. I think I wouldn't say so. My approach to sales, I don't think I bring anything crazy to the table. I have a very… I think most of the things that I spoke about in our discussion and conversation so far, I don't think there's anything that is that is way off cuff for any salesperson. I think these are all the very typical generic thought processes which every sales guy goes through. So I would say mine is a pretty classical kind of approach to sales that I follow. So nothing crazy for an average salesperson, I guess.

1:05:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:05:41 Abhishek Kohli: Well, I think the only The only bit would be to keep believing and to keep believing year after year that you can be successful, you can overachieve, you can keep doing what you've been doing. That might be slightly crazy, but yeah, otherwise I would say nothing else.

1:06:06 Scott Ingram: Is there anything on the flip side? Is there anything about other salespeople or even just all the content out there and what people are suggesting should be working in sales that you think is off base or crazy?

1:06:24 Abhishek Kohli: I think a lot of texts that are written around sales, a lot of things that are written around sales and how it should be done perfectly or What's the right approach? What are the right philosophy and so on and so forth? They're pretty much what an average sales guy does anyways. But I've read these approaches where they try and metric. I read this book I was reading. I don't remember the name, but yeah, they're trying to metric every conversation contact with the person. With an individual, with an appointment, a contact. I've read that approach and I felt that's… I don't know how feasible is that, you know, to be able to metrics or parameterize every contact that you have with a client into how well it went or what are the changes that you feel that you had in a relationship with the client. So on and so forth. Yeah, those approaches theoretically great. Practically, I think in the whole paradigm of what all sales encompasses anyways, I think it's difficult to take root. So yeah, because if I'm being told that I had 4 touchpoints today and now for every touchpoint I need to metricize, how well that conversation went. And even, and I have, and you know how it is in sales, you can have a conversation for 3 minutes, but you can also have a conversation for 30 seconds or even 20 for that matter. And why would you want to do that? And relationships, which this approach that I remember reading about spoke about that, you know, you need to, you should be able to quantify how your relationship with a client has evolved or improved. Now that's a tricky one as well because I've seen with my clients that a lot of it, especially clients who are regularly working with you, right? So the client, ministerial client of mine who's already given me a services order this year but is also giving me another subscription upsell, right? There's always an on and off, a sinusoidal curve you've had, or I'll say a blip where you know you have a great relationship with this guy, you know you have great camaraderie, but one of those off days that he's having in office and one of those periods, phases, not even one day, I'm saying phases of too much of pressure that this client doesn't take and comes across very negatively to you over a period of next one month when you've had a great relationship for one year, one and a half years. I think those, those approaches are good, good textbook approaches, but I don't know how much, how much an average sales guy can really do about it.

1:09:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, no, that makes it, that makes a lot of sense. What advice would you give to someone just starting out in a sales career today?

1:09:37 Abhishek Kohli: I think one thing is that get into sales only if you're passionate about sales, right? That's, that's very clear. The, there's I think sales particularly, and probably every domain for today, but sales particularly requires a lot of passion because the kind of pressure cooker situation that salespeople get into from all sides of business. So you've got your internal, you've got your compliance, you've got your pricing, you've got your management, you've got your HR, da da da. And then there is this client who's pushing you to do this, that, that, and on a price which is not possible, but you have a target pressure and so on and so forth. So salespeople get into too many pressure cooker situations. So to bring yourself out of such situations unscathed, the only way is that you have a lot of passion for what you're doing. And don't lose hope. I think self-belief, if you get into sales, get in with this belief that you have the ability to do it. Sometimes it will not start easy. It didn't start easy for me. I think I didn't have that kind of successes in the first 6 months of my career, especially with Kingsman. And even the first 6 months at the startup were very, very tough because we didn't have a single order to talk about. And then even the first few months, 3-4 months when we were… I was just picking up the ropes of the Thomson Reuters business, first 4 to 6 months, I didn't have great successes. So, you need to believe that success would ultimately come. There is always a cycle for success to come and have passion to what you're doing. Otherwise, look for another job. Probably you're not cut out for sales.

1:11:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now what about somebody who's a little bit further in, you know, so they've, they've been with their company or they've been in sales for some period of time and maybe they got behind the goalpost. I like that analogy that you used earlier. What would you suggest that they do to get back in the game and get towards the top?

1:11:51 Abhishek Kohli: No, I think, again, I would start with the fact that the belief should not go away. There are, because you always can have an off year. You can always have a couple of off years as well. But the belief should not go away. It's all in our mind. And one of the quotes that I was reading this day, this morning, by one of the ex-presidents of the US of A, Theodore Roosevelt, was that believe you can and you're halfway there. So don't stop believing no matter what happens. I can tell you even in my, even in 2017 FY that we are currently, we've now half a year, I've not had that phenomenal a start that I had last year in '16. Not that phenomenal a start because in '16 I was at around 85% of my annual target in H1, which was 30th of June or end of June. Right now I'm at around probably 55%. So the chances of me passing that goalpost were much more higher if I was just to compare my situation vis-à-vis last year. But the fact is that if I was to give up today in my head thinking that, okay, this year is going to be one of those years where I would not have done that great, I'm already giving up. So that approach is not going to work for sure. Second is about talk to people, talk to mentors. Don't be shy of getting advice. You can always use your discretion to filter out what's good advice for you, what is not good advice for you. But do seek out advice. One of the things I was just doing, I was talking to one of my friends who's in banking, who works with Barclays, and I spoke to him about my sales situation, and he's not in sales, he's a tech strategy guy, and he said, let me connect you to this guy who's an ex-sales director of his previous organization, and said, Why don't you keep in touch with him? He can always mentor. So look for people like that. I'm planning to connect with him, but I've always, within my family, I have people who are at the top of the sales hierarchies in their teams and are CEOs or regional directors. But the fact is you always need those people. You always need those sounding boards because situations in sales get really messy at times. And And like in every situation in life, you need somebody to tell you this is normal. This happens with everyone because the moment you hear that, you're like, okay, so I can't get into a self-pity mode because this happens with everyone. So even falling behind is one of those things that happens with everyone. That's a phase that you're going through, but that doesn't define you as a salesperson.

1:14:53 Scott Ingram: Love that. Good, good stuff. So Abhishek, what about, what would you want to hear or learn from top sellers in other organizations? What, what would you ask them?

1:15:05 Abhishek Kohli: I, I, I think, I think the same things that you've been asking me throughout the, uh, throughout the conversation that we're having. How do you keep going? How do you keep ensuring that you get past that goalpost? How do you keep identifying the right set to liaise with and work with to ensure that you're, you're always hitting your short and long-term goals? And how do you ensure that in all of this you're developing connects for your personal growth as well? So I think those are the kind of questions that come to my mind the moment you asked me that, what would I ask? I think these are the few things that I would really, really want to learn from other people as well, because there's a certain perspective that keeps getting evolved. As I said, you're evolving as a person, as a sales salesperson or as a person in a role, especially a role like this. So the more you, the more you're able to get feeds on how other people do, I think, I think it's, it really, it really helps you evolve your thought process further and further.

1:16:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now, is there anything, I mean, we're just about to wrap up. Is there anything else that you would want the person listening to this to know that we haven't already chatted about?

1:16:28 Abhishek Kohli: I think where I would want to close it, close our conversation for today would be that I didn't start as the best of salesmen in my sales career. And I'm still, I still think that I've just started to establish myself in my sales career. But so for everybody listening, there's no point in time where you can establish yourself or you can become a great salesperson. There's no definition of the fact that it didn't happen so far, even 5 years, 7 years into your sales career. It's not happened so far, so it cannot happen. Now it can always happen. It will happen. You just need to make it happen in your head and then make it happen on the ground.

1:17:23 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. Awesome. So the last thing that I always try and do is to try and create some type of challenge for the listener, something actionable that they can do over the course of the next 2 weeks till our next episode comes out. What would you have them do? What can they do? To improve themselves and their own sales results?

1:17:46 Abhishek Kohli: I think to improve sales results, I would say just 2x the number of conversations that you have every day with your clients, just double them. Just, just 2x them. Do nothing else because the more you get in touch, the more people you get in touch, it's gonna definitely have a bearing on your results. It happens with all of us. It happens. It will happen with everybody. Just double the number of, double the number of contacts that you make with your clients. And that's going to bear fruit.

1:18:22 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Abhishek, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and all of your insights and wisdom.

1:18:29 Abhishek Kohli: Thank you so much. And thanks so much for inviting me for this. Really appreciate that.

1:18:38 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.