Be Nice!

Five years since maa breathed her last and I am often pulled back to those last days I spent with her in the hospital. Since then I have, unfortunately, witnessed one more death in the family and several others in the extended family and friend circle. I have witnessed last interactions in some cases and in others have heard the survivors who succeeded the deceased lament about how they would have behaved better had they known.

Having lost my father at a young age and not having very happy memories of my last interaction with him—he was hallucinating on my last visit to his bed in the hospital. He did not recognise me, his 15 and half years old daughter but kept calling out foar my brother who was just 5 and a half. My teenage heart could not forgive his hallucination-induced forgetfulness for the longest time. And as I grew older I spent many a days wondering what I could have done differently to make that last meeting a meaningful one for me.

As clichéd as it sounds, much later in life, I read somewhere—maybe in an SMS or email forward or a self-help book—that ensure that your goodbye/farewell is sweet because you never know if that is the last time you’ll be talking to that person. It stayed with me. To the extent that even after heart breaking fall outs with former friends/colleagues, I spent my last day in the company treating everyone and leaving heartfelt thank you notes for all of them.

I am glad that the sentiment of having meaningful goodbye stayed with me when the doctors told us that maa would not be leaving the hospital alive. Akshat and I took turns sitting by her side in the ICU. We massaged her feet and hands lightly, applied thick layers of moisturiser to her limbs as that was the only thing that gave her some relief. I made an effort to dress up smartly for my daily visits to the hospital because all my life maa had laid a lot of stress on me dressing up smartly. She would say, if you dress up smartly to meet someone, it shows them that you are giving them importance and value them. Even now, half a decade since she’s gone, I still make an effort to dress up smartly for occasions that are and people who are important to me. She loved looking at the sky and trees, so we requested the hospital staff to move the position of her bed in such a way that she spent the last days looking outside the window.   

Five years ago Akshat and I and all of my mother’s Twitter friends were trying hard to fulfil her wish to meet Shah Rukh Khan. There were online comments by strangers saying they did not understand why a 60-year-old dying woman wanted to meet SRK. How come her children were not bothered about keeping her alive and battling cancer and were instead focusing on reaching the message to SRK. I am sure offline too people, we know and love, must have wondered the same, even though they maintained decency and never asked this of me to my face.

It was a genius masterstroke by mother. And I wish more children in our shoes are as lucky. Why do I say that? Well, we spent our time trying to figure out how we could help realise her dream, her last wish, rather than sitting and crying and anticipating dooms day scenarios. She gave us a task which seemed impossible to achieve, so we put in all our energies to accomplish it. Through it all we learned that:

1.       If we set our mind to it, we could achieve anything! Even getting SRK to record a video message and then call to talk to her.

2.       We can rely on people, known and unknown. We won’t be alone even with her gone. We miss her but we are not alone.

3.       When it seems that you cannot change a situation, get busy doing something constructive.

4.       We must employ all the tactics in our arsenal if we really want something. And we will be rewarded.

5.       Being nice pays in surprising ways. She was nice to people on Twitter. Be it being nice while RTing beautiful images or sentiments, knitting sweaters for babies of her Twitter friends, sharing daily, blurry updates from her small green patch or penning a thread on why she liked people from different regions. She went viral because she was nice on Twitter. And because she was nice, everyone who interacted with her rallied to spread her last wish to the point where the story was picked up by news outlets and finally reached SRK’s team.

Even if your last interaction with your parent was not something that you are proud of or happy about it’s not too late. Be nice to your siblings, spouse, in-laws, children, help, co-workers. Even if they are in the wrong, even if you think you know better. Fight if you have to but be nice. If either one of you is staring at death, you won’t remember all the times you proved a point or won an argument. Trust me, you will regret not being nice when you had a chance.

The Psychology of Selling—My Takeaways

 I have been in the business of school textbook publishing for over 12 years now and a part of the workforce for nearly two decades. My first job, a summer affair, was as a sales executive for Times of India. The task was to accompany newspaper boys/men on their routes in the narrow lanes of Patel Nagar, Ranjit Nagar and Baljit Nagar, (areas in West Delhi with a heavy Punjabi population) knock on doors in the morning hours and convince readers to take up a combo offer of Navbharat Times (a Hindi newspaper of the Times Group) and Times of India (an English paper). In a market that was predominantly a Punjab Kesari readership, the task seemed uphill to begin with. However, within days I had found my rhythm and am proud to this day about the number of customers I had converted and the first pay-check that I had earned and the friends I had made.

After completing my graduation, I forayed into the product side of things and as recently as 2010, I joined the cult of editors! I say cult because we are whether we admit it or not. Wren and Martin and the Editorial Style Guide from University of Cambridge are our holy books, we believe that we can uplift humanity converting more and more people into grammar Nazis and our modus operandi is correcting spellings and grammar!  

Early on in my journey I chose to be a part of a sub-sect of this cult—the Digital Department. We enhance books, bring in the drama of cinema in form of animations, further the cause of correcting diction and pronunciation by providing audio support, add the element of interaction by designing games, tasks, quizzes, and thanks to high speed internet our biggest promise is access to resources anytime and anywhere!  

I have been fortunate to have worked with the senior most and best in their respective fields professionals in both the Publishing Houses that I have worked in. I seemed to have found my people in both the organisations with ease as the people I chose most to be influenced by are people who match my passion towards any project they take up and give their all in hope that it will succeed. I admit, I see very little wrong, if at all, on the product side of things and yet my brain cells are constantly working towards improving the product, the internal processes and finally the experience for the end user.

Of late, however, I have been trying to educate myself on other functions that have an equally important role in any product succeeding or failing. And the only way I know how to do that is to read and/or, these days, listen to a book. So, I picked up The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy—a book that I have heard many describe as the Bible of selling. The more I heard the nuances and strategies he described the more I could see how gaps can be filled. It afforded me an opportunity to retrospectively pat my back for incorporating some of those strategies in my first and only sales job. It also gave me a chance to evaluate how much more successful I would have been if I had employed these strategies consciously.

My takeaways, which can be life lessons too, about sales:

1.      Be passionate about your product. In my experience as soon as a salesperson’s tone indicates that the product lacks in any way, that’s the energy with which they talk about the product. Their body language, facial expressions and the choice of words all indicate the lack. Same holds true if a salesperson is excited about a product. Then there is no stopping them. They tend to promote the product to the product team too in their excitement.

I do understand that there is no such thing as a perfect product. However, one can train the mind to focus on the positives rather than the negatives. Remember, what you feed, grows. Tracy gives a very simple exercise to combat the negativity. List out at least 10 things you like about the product. Do this exercise for the same product for 10 days and you’ll have 100 positives in your hand to be excited about. And with your pocket full of 100 positives you become the expert of your domain and you are in a position to guide the client on why they should make the purchase and how the product will help them ease their lives.

This exercise is crucial to ensure that you are always prepared. The chances of you fumbling during your pitch will be lesser if you are proud of your product, and that pride is an outcome of your in-depth knowledge of the product.

2.      Choose who influences you. You are known by the company you keep sounds like a cliché because it is true! Choose to be surrounded by people who are positive. Be a part of conversations that talk about positives, progress, and resultant growth. This way your thoughts will focus on everything good about the others, about you, about your product and about your customer. And when you talk to someone they will bask in your positivity too. And a positive, happier mind will be better able to convince someone to spend money than a grouchy, tired-from-the-woes-of-the-world kind of person. 

Again, not everyone you meet will be positive and you cannot be the annoying person preaching good to everyone. But you are not a tree, you can move. So, remove yourself from any situation or people that come across as negative. If you can, remove yourself physically from the situation if not, cut off from the conversation and situation mentally.

3.      Know your customer. The best way to find about someone is to ask questions and listen to their replies. Be prepared with a list of questions for your customers that will help you find their key pain points. Practise the art of listening. Once the customer finishes speaking, pause, think and then reply with a follow up question (if you need to) or reply with a solution. The customer is likely to buy a product from you if they feel that they are important for you and you understand their problems. Even if you can predict someone’s train of thought it’s rude to interrupt them. The solution, even though brilliant, will lose the battle to bad manners.  

4.      Focus your energies. This works in every walk of life, whether you are purchasing groceries, planning a party or a wedding or managing your daily tasks—MAKE LISTS. Very few things in life are as satisfactory as ticking things of a to-do list. Make a list of clients you want to target. Assign them weightage based on how likely they are to make a purchase. Focus on the clients that score high on your parameters. Spreading yourself thin trying to approach everyone with the same pitch does not work because everyone’s needs are not the same. Customisation is the name of the game. Focus your energies into customising your pitch. This way the client feels that they are special for you (which they are) and that your focus is to help them above everything else.

5.      Set targets. Walking aimlessly might lead you to a great restaurant or a dingy diarrhoea-ridden shanty. But at the beginning of your journey if you decide that you want to reach the restaurant with delicious food and work towards getting there, there is a 99% chance of you having a wonderful, delicious and satisfying meal where you create happy memories with your family or friends. Same is the case with work. If you decide to say convert 10 leads by the end of the month. You know that now you need to:

    a.      Find 20 customers who are most likely to make a purchase

    b.     Zero-in on why each customer is looking to purchase by asking questions. Based on their replies/conversation categorise them into the following three

        i.     making a first time purchase,

        ii.     are not happy with the features of a similar product from another company

        iii.     are not happy with the service and sales teams of the other company

    c.      Find the key pain point that each customer wants to get rid off

    d.     Customise 20 pitches suited to each lead

    e.     Believe in yourself and your product and close the deal

By doing all this, you would have stacked the odds in your favour, and chances are you’ll achieve the target of converting 10 leads into profitable business.

6.      Invest in yourself. Remember that there is no better marketing or sales weapon in your arsenal than you. So, take care of yourself and invest in all aspects of your personality.

a.      Stay healthy and fit.

b.     Dress well.

c.      Read books.

d.     Update your skills.

e.     Interact with experts from your field. Learn what they are doing and incorporate those techniques in your operations.

f.       Keep your product knowledge up to date. And keep adding to the list of positives about your products on the daily. This will also help you reply to anyone who challenges you with any negative about your product.

g.      Find ways to stay happy. Like attracts like. If you are happy and successful you’ll attract more prosperity.

Hope some of you are inspired to pick up the book after reading this article. Please feel free to suggest some books I must read.