Adding Value to The Selling Process
The Indian Optician, October, 2008
Packaging of a product, they say, is a silent salesman. But it ‘speaks’ louder than anything else.
So also, in today’s competitive & professional world, plain functional skills as a product offering are not enough & need packaging as well. Having functional skills is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Infact with rigorous academic curriculum & examinations, functional aspects of a subject, hopefully, (though the relevance of some of the subjects being taught is continuously debated) should be taken care of adequately. Employers feel a general lack of employability even if candidates have relevant academic qualifications & subject knowledge. Quite often ‘soft’ skills are where the gap lies, they say & most interviewers would be checking these in an interview situation.
The area of development could be plain simple communication skills, related to working English or in many cases even effective communication in a vernacular language. Body language, clarity of speech, dialoguing & listening skills are important basic elements here. At the next level, personal grooming/hygiene, planning, time management etc. are areas which should be given particular attention.
Again, ‘personal/individual’ specific areas of development are not enough. Organisations are an interplay of multiple relationships. Therefore adaptive thinking, flexibility, right behaviour/attitude & teamwork become essential for effective & productive functioning of any organisation in order to maximise results. Most courses/degrees do not handle these areas at all. Specific attention is needed to develop these very important attributes of one’s personality. Sensitivity to view points of team mates, peers, superiors and subordinates will be possible only if proper behavioural training & inputs are given or rather taken proactively by the candidates to not just sensitise themselves but to internalise these traits.
Since every organisation exists for serving the customer, one way which can help candidates to develop the above attributes, is to develop a strong customer orientation. Quite often, lip service is given to this term. However, if this is understood & ‘internalised’ well, then the need for all the areas discussed above (be it communication, grooming, listening, teamwork, behaviour etc.) will become automatically clear & one would understand their significance in organisational working. Colleagues are to be seen as internal customers & hence the concept is helpful in cross functional alignment & working as well.
Needless to say, none of these so called soft skills can be picked up a few days before appearing for an interview or be played in isolation or faked. These should be developed continuously over a period of time so that they become second nature to one’s personality ….. bootstrapped together to present an integrated whole individual, facing the challenges or rather opportunities of the world GRACEFULLY ….. !!
J.P.Singh
JPS Consulting
Just Plain & Simple
….. Helping Realise Potential
JPS Customer Value Academy
Just Plain & Simple
….. Helping Create Customer Value
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