Prakash Batna Show (PBS)

Greetings and a warm welcome to the Prakash Batna Show! I'm your host, Prakash Batna, and our mission is to transform sales and selling into an enjoyable and seamless experience. We are thrilled to bring you some of the most brilliant minds and industry experts who have not only navigated the complex landscape of sales but have excelled beyond imagination. They are here to share their incredible journeys, success frameworks, invaluable experiences, unique perspectives, and profound learnings. Join us on this enlightening journey into the world of sales, where we uncover the well-guarded secrets to staying ahead in the game and achieving extraordinary success. Our goal is to inspire and empower you to elevate your sales prowess to new heights. Welcome once again to the Prakash Batna Show! A Heads-Up for Your Startup: Embrace the Unknown journey. A very interesting view on the startup journey and how to navigate it successfully. We have our special guest Mr. Prasad S N, an entrepreneur, Founder of Grewind Solutions LLP, and a sustainability advocate. With a background in Marketing, Strategy, and Product Management, he draws experience from renowned companies like TIMKEN and Bosch. Prasad holds a Mechanical Engineering degree, an EPGDM from St Joseph College of Management, and recently completed EGMP from IIM Bangalore. He's also an author, focusing on guiding first-time entrepreneurs. Beyond his professional journey, he promotes Indian culture and facilitates cross-cultural understanding. He's known for impactful initiatives, such as sponsoring menstrual pads for orphaned girls since 2018. Prasad is on a mission to build a greener future. Highlights of the podcast: 1.Professional Journey: 4:45 2.The transition from professional to Entrepreneur: 20:00 3.Decision making, Self discovery, startups fail-entrepreneurs don't: 28:00 to 31:00 4.When is the best time to start the entrepreneurial journey: 32:05 5.The unknown variables in the entrepreneurship journey: 40:00 6.Importance of mentors and mentors with right experience: 48:10 7.Simple journelling ideas: 53:20

Greetings, and a warm welcome to the Prakash Batna Show! I am your host, Prakash Batna, and our mission is to make sales and selling an enjoyable and seamless experience. We bring you the most brilliant minds and industry experts who have traversed the sales landscape and are now here to share their incredible journeys, success frameworks, invaluable experiences, unique perspectives, and profound learnings. Join us as we dive into the world of sales, uncovering the secrets to staying ahead in the game and achieving extraordinary success. Get ready to be inspired and empowered to elevate your sales prowess to new heights! How to sell in real sense, without actually selling. A very interesting take on sales and selling and this we will be discussing with our special guest Mr. Pawas Agarwal – Founder and Managing partner at PathFinders Knowledge Advisory. With over 24 years of senior leadership experience in both corporate and academic realms, Mr. Pawas Agarwal has passionately translated his expertise into the founding of PathFinders Knowledge Advisory. His impressive background includes board interactions, enterprise leadership, and international partnerships, nurtured through roles at Narsee Monjee (deemed University) and Tata Administrative Services. Pawas's distinguished career spans substantial market share growth, pioneering distribution strategies, and successful national brand launches for 70+ global companies. Recognized as a respected panelist, speaker, and writer-contributor, he is renowned for his connected, provocative, and outcome-focused approach. He is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta and IIT Kanpur and holds certifications as a Corporate Director (Institute of Directors) and an Executive Coach (Coaching Australia). Highlights of the podcast: 1.Career Journey: 4:00 2.The transition from professional to Entrepreneur: 12:00 3.Why Pawas believes that one can sell without selling: 20:00 4.At individual level what qualities are required to make this happen: 25:50 5.A real story of how trust can be built: 32:05 6.Framework & principles to sell without selling: 35:15 7.3 key learnings that can be applied: 38:20 8.Words of wisdom: 47:20

I use lot of elements in my live sessions to keep the audience hooked for anywhere between 60 mins to 6 hours, and believe me doing this day in and out is not an easy task.

After 500 hours of live sessions, 10,000+ trained professionals and delivering 300 hours of content I have some understanding on how this works and what tools you can try to do the same. Im laying out this for you to try this in your next session.

The typical challenges in the online sessions that one come across:

o Participants are less responsive during the online sessions

o Have a short attention span and are easily distracted by things around them

o Low engagement and response rate

These are some of the challenges faced by all during the online sessions. Let me share you tips to engage with the audience.

• Setting the expectations

You should set expectations at the start of your session so that all participants know what will be happening. You should explain what you’re going to be doing and what the protocol will be (cameras on/off, muted/unmuted). As a general rule, ‘cameras-on’ will make people feel more present and involved (but be understanding that there are certain situations in which cameras can’t be turned on). Tell everyone that yours will be an interactive class and explain how you will be asking people to participate.

• Encourage participants join by their names

Many a times participants log in with their device names and it becomes difficult to communicate. Request the participant to change it to their First name and Last name and address each participant by their name

• Participants first

You are doing this for them. Hence everything need to be centered around them. Monologues are a strict No. This is a live session and hence interaction, participation is the key to the success of the live session

• Listen, Listen, Listen

Comments made in chat, verbal dialogues need to be listened and understood. Ensuring that you understand and value every comment that is shared will encourage more participants to join and take part. A win-win

• Ask and Wait

Ask questions regularly to see how much your audience is in sync with you. Involve them, check their understanding, wait for them to respond, listen to their answers. The whole objective is to keep them engaged and busy throughout the session.

• Be best version of yourself

Always remember if you do not enjoy, are excited, are enthusiastic then why will the audience will be. You should enjoy the overall experience throughout and only then the audience will connect with you at a deeper level.

These 6 points are the softer and finer aspects of engaging the audience during live sessions. Use them and try doing this in your next session for a greater positive experience and impact.

In the next section we will see the technical aspects of engaging the audience which includes the top 5 tools that can be used to make your session more meaningful, fun, interactive and engaging.

And that’s it for today. Do keep listening to my sales and selling podcast  and Don’t forget to follow, like hisales consulting on the Linkedin and FB platform. Also check out my website www.hisales.in for free resources and blogs.

Lastly, let me know what you think and I greatly appreciate it. Myself Prakash Batna reminding you again “ Selling is Fun, When you know How”. Take Care

One of the best sales tactics is learning how to say “no.” That sounds counterintuitive, right? Well, it isn’t.

When it comes to sales, if you’re the one selling, your goal is to bring in revenue. But your customer has a different goal: to pay as little as they can and get as much as possible.

What I mean is You & the customer are trying to maximise the gains and minimise losses. Not in literal sense though.

The customers I’m talking about are the ones who ask for more and more – often after a contract is signed and deal is closed – and expect additional incentives, discounts, rebates etc for no additional business or cost. Those are the customers you have to learn to say “no” to.

The word “no” has the power to make your business more desirable to potential clients, weed out people you don’t want to work with and, most importantly, increase your bottom line. “Power of saying NO”, the most important tool we all salespeople and business owners possess. Many a times we do not realize the importance of these two letters.

To clarify, let me share a story with you. When we first started our consulting We wanted to get money coming in and so we were afraid of saying no.

What did that lead to? A few bad deals. By being so willing to say yes we were ground down on price and we allowed for unreasonable scope of work with couple of clients.

On one deal it cost us significant chunk of money and time over few months. The client had good manufacturing, production and other capabilities but on the sales aspect everything was missing right from team to systems and process to a well defined sales ecosystem. Everything was adhoc, forecasting was a challenge, absence of sales pipeline and a sales leader to drive the the bare bones team. Further the CEO believed there was no challenge and his expectations were not in sync with reality. We still took up the project for the money part and saying NO was not hard wired in us. In doing so we set the tone for the ongoing relationship i.e. we give and you take. It was ok initially but later on it caused uncontrollable scope-creep and copious hours of non-billable work which was sending us towards the hazardous rocks of insolvency and not giving attention and time to right customers.

If you start from yes you might have just given away time or money and every time you come to negotiate with that same prospect they’ll expect that same starting place, and believe me they won’t thank you for it and will push further. Hold the line and say no you’ll be much better off.

This power is often used casually, cautiously, out of habit and in many other ways without understanding the implications on the final outcome.

I always fed myself with books, articles, inputs on how to get the customer to Yes and No was often looked by me as a negative tool.
The fear of losing deal, client and goodwill resulted in accepting or giving in to the client’s unreasonable demands most of the time.
These are the clients I learned to say NO to or get in return a fair deal for the additional demands.

"Power of saying NO", helps me:
• Saves time and Stress
• Weed out wrong clients
• Protects the bottom line

Today, saying no is one such strategy at Hisales. That is, saying no to the wrong kind of clients. Over the years I discovered that accepting the wrong business/clients or customers saps not only time and energy but profits, too. I also learned that saying yes to the wrong business slowly but surely kills morale. Employees become exhausted and confused; very talented people leave. Such damaging effects seem obvious now, but again, like virtually every entrepreneurial venture, we had to learn about them the hard way.

Use the Power of NO wisely and realise the immense benefits that comes with it.

In sales we create our own rules, frameworks, process, strategies and tools which works in our favor and discard those which do not fit the bill.

Similarly I have created my own frameworks, rules and tools basis the experience I have gained over the years working across companies and industries. One such rule I follow is the - 1-2-4 Rule in sales and selling. This is applicable to any salesperson.

Few months ago, my friend took a new sales job at a Series A funded company. He’s good sales person I know, but soon after starting, he messaged me saying he was struggling.

All the problems he told me was because the day planning was not tight and measurable, the calls were random and adhoc with no call blocks which hindered in the pipeline creation process and meetings were not set dedicatedly to followup on calls which resulted in lesser conversions.

I suggested him the 1-2-4 rule which goes like this:

1 stands for ONE HOUR –

Everyday first thing in the morning - focus on PREPARATION and first thing to do is plan for the day

· Clients to call

· Proposals to send

· Followup calls

· Reporting work

· Meetings plan

· Route plan and so on

I believe that if you don’t plan your day, then someone else will and this is not advisable at all.

Once the planning is done go to 2

TWO HOURS of COLD CALLING. Post planning, a sales person should spend TWO HOURS by using call blocks in setting up meetings for the coming days, creating leads, filling his pipeline etc. Call block is a time period which is dedicatedly kept aside for doing a calling activity. No other activity will be take up during this time – urgent or no urgent nothing will derail this activity.

How to call block:

· Set an appointment with self using a google calendar for these 2 hours

· Switch off social media notifications, news alerts, watsapp messages etc which ever acts as a distraction

· Sit comfortably in a place where you will not be disturbed

· Let your colleagues, superiors know that you should not be disturbed in these 2 hours

Do this and see the difference in the productivity and efficiency

Last but not the least, the most important 4

FOUR HOURS in FIELD meeting clients, networking, building the pipeline, closing deals, follow-ups and so on.

If all the planning is done, calls are made and meetings are set then it needs to be followed up with meeting people demonstrating the value proposition and delivering solutions

This is a process which needs to be diligently followed and is inevitable to a salesperson, irrespective of rank and hierarchy (the process will remain however the form and intensity may differ as a salesperson move up the ranks).

1 hour - preparation

2 hours - Calling and building pipeline

4 hours - Meeting people, demonstrating value and networking

Just 3 months after our lunch, my friend called to say how he was seeing promising changes in himself and the overall results and was thankful for this advice and suggestion.

We are meeting again in few weeks, this time to celebrate the success and the positive changes he witnessed.

And that’s it for today. Do keep listening to my sales and selling podcast and Don’t forget to follow, like Hisales consulting on the LinkedIn and FB platform. Also check out my website www.hisales.in for free resources and blogs.

Lastly, let me know what you think and I greatly appreciate it. Myself Prakash Batna reminding you again “Selling is Fun, when you know How”. Take Care

Today the topic of our discussion is – Negotiation.

A complex but most important and relevant topic. Understanding negotiation is half the job done. The balance is in successful execution of the negotiation strategies.

Many of us dread negotiation, not recognizing that we negotiate on a regular, even daily basis. Most of us face formal negotiations throughout our personal and professional lives: discussing the terms of a job offer with a recruiter, haggling over the price of a new car, hammering out a contract with a supplier.

Then there are the more informal, less obvious negotiations we take part in daily: persuading a toddler to eat his food, working out a conflict with a coworker, or convincing a client to accept a late delivery.

“Like it or not, you are a negotiator … Everyone negotiates something every day,” write Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton in their seminal book on negotiating, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

Today, I will attempt to decode this subject by putting a simple framework which serves the purpose.

But First Lets understand What is Negotiation?

The authors of Getting to Yes define negotiating as a “back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed.”

This is perfectly defined. We all know Negotiation is complex, it is nothing but a communication designed to reach an agreement which brings us to the next question?

Remember the PEARLS of Negotaition. PEARLS is an Acronym which for:

Perception, Emotion, Attitude, Resistance, Likability, Seal the deal

Perception - The customer with whom you are negiotiating should always have a positive perception about yiou, the company, the solution, the overall deal. He should feel that he is getting a good bargain at the price at which he is buying. As long as the perception is positive Negotiation is in your control

Emotion – We will negotiating with humans and when humans are involved there is bound to have positive and negative emotions – Anger, Ego, fear, excitement etc. These emotions need to be well balanced – specially the EGO and handled well. Emotions play a major role in negotiations and many of them fail due to poor handling of customer emotions

Attitude – Always enter in to negotiation with a win and positive attitude. An attitude to solve the problem, give the best solution. People see through you easily and if the attitude is to only win without any consideration for customer problems and their solutions then you know how this negotiation will go through

Resistance – The customer will have very high resistance at the start of the negotiation and it is the responsibility of the sales champion to reduce the resistance – here the resistance can be of price, service, contract, quality etc as the discussion goes on and by the end of the discussion the resistance should come to zero

Likability – You all have heard of this; people do business with people they like. This is so true in negotiation. If on the liking scale a sales champion is very low then the customer will be hesistant to trust and negotiate any further. Improve the credibility and trust aspect and this will make it easy to negotiatie

Seal the deal – Last but not the least once you have done systematically all the above the negotiation becomes successful and the deal is closed

I follow the PEARLS of negotiation religiously and this has helped in winning more contracts and getting customers for life.