For our second episode of the Master of Sales Podcast, we had the great pleasure of hosting Sheetal Jain. Sheetal heads Signzy’s Sales and Business Development efforts in India and South East Asia.
She is an experienced leader in the FinTech space. Her career spans over 20 years during which she was instrumental in leading many successful GTM strategies and played a key role in building and mentoring many teams. She was an integral part of the leadership team that developed web-based platforms and enabled APIs for the BFSI market.
She says that her entry into sales was an accidental one. She spent the early years of her career in the corporate funding and research fields.
Her success story in sales stems from the fact that she loves identifying customer pain points and offering them solutions to solve their problems.
Sheetal believes that there is a misconception regarding sales — that salespeople are like snake charmers who entice people to buy products. However, that’s not the case. Salespeople are problem solvers and solution finders.
Here are the excerpts from our conversation
How difficult is the shift or transition into a career in Sales?
Sheetal cites that the transition is simple if you as a salesperson are convinced about a product.
” When you are trying to sell a product which you are not convinced about, it’s difficult to sell anything.”
It’s important for you to understand the product; and when you are convinced about a product, you are not just a salesperson but you transform into a problem solver for your client.
“You will not be able to sell if you don’t understand your product.”
Digitisation has brought buyers and sellers closer. Today, you cannot sell something to a client and just walk away. The customer trusts you and you have to be there every step of the way.
How to motivate your team and ensure that they are as convinced about a product as you are?
Sheetal believes that when salespeople go to customers and understand for themselves what the customers’ pain points are, they then start believing in the product.
As a sales leader, you need to work alongside your team. By giving them the right answers to their questions, you will be able to convince them about the product.
You have to let them know that it’s good to have competition. Competition simply implies that your product is in demand and that is why multiple players are trying to sell the same product.
What matters is:
- Is your product performing better?
- Do you understand the customer better?
- Do you have a stronger relationship with the client?
“Teams see the ownership that you take on the account and follow the leader ”
Is the future of sales going to be product-led or process-driven?
Sheetal is certain that sales is not going to go anywhere. There may be tools that aid the process but the basics of selling will remain intact.
“People buy from people”
The product cannot sell itself — salespeople are required to sell to a larger audience.
How do you keep yourself motivated?
Salespeople live by each sales quarter. At the start of a quarter, you may be looking at how many leads you have in the pipeline. Halfway through the quarter, you realise that you have a lot of ground to cover and by the end of the quarter you give it your all to finish well and achieve sales goals.
Sheetal rightly points out that if you don’t enjoy the drill, you are not a salesperson, to begin with.
Pro tips for those who are starting out a career in sales
- Sales is all about discipline
- Your motivation must come from knowing that you are solving customers’ problems
- Hard work pays off
Tune into this episode of the Masters of Sales Podcast and get exciting insights on the latest trends from the sales industry.