Sales as a % of Life
Life > Time > Sales
Sales is a part of everyone’s life.
Many earn by selling commodities, some by services and a handful earn by selling their time directly. Essentially, for every person on earth, sales is a product of time.
A trader spends ‘x’ amount of time to make purchase decisions, to maintain inventory, to hire resources and then expects a return ‘y’ purely on the basis of his time spent.
A software professional invests ‘x’ amount of time to write code, test the logics, debug any errors and then expects a return ‘y’ on the basis of his time spent.
A retail business where the business man is himself the cashier, 20% - 40% is minimum margin expected.
While, the same business where the entrepreneur doesn’t have to invest much time & runs on auto pilot through his team makes him happy even with 5% net margin.
We saw how all sales processes are products of time & time is the unit of life.
Its beautiful when we relate Sales directly to life in percentage terms.
This is also what sounds to be a difference between how a business owner & an entrepreneur pitches.
While a business man convinces his prospects with pitches such as
- This is the latest version in the market
- This is the best price you can get it at
- This is backed with guarantees/ warranties
- This is the best product compared to other brands
- This is the best offer / discount you can get
An entrepreneur always measures his product with impact it creates & to put it simply, he co-relates it with a percentage of life the prospect will spend with his product.
Read through to explore a few co-relations of Sales with Life
Mattress : A business owner selling mattress would start pitching about the price, discounts & brand options while an entrepreneur would just say,
You are gonna spend 33% of your life on our mattress, allow me to choose the best one for you.
This is by far the best way to sell. The focus of customer has now completely moved from discounts to how serious this purchase is for him.
Any salesman who taps into this part of a customer’s mind, wins.
I’m a strong believer of coincidence of work & play; however, for easy calculations, i’ve split the day into Work, Play & Sleep
6 AM - 10 AM : Play
10 AM - 6 PM : Work
6 PM - 10 PM : Play
10 PM - 6 AM : Sleep
That’s a total of 8 hours of Work, Play & Sleep each.
We use many products day in & day out; and below is a list of categories of products & a percentage of life we spend with the product.
Laptop : 33% of life
Chair : 33% of life
Spectacles : 67% of life
Watch : 67% of life
Mobile Phone : 67% of life
Footwear : 67% of life
Its amazing when we visualize the products as a % of life & not as a meagre purchase decision.
For all those into sales : Lets sell the product talking around the product more than talking about the product.
Below are a few tweets on Sales
Click Here to read all my tweets on Sales & add your perspectives too :)
Thank you for your time,
Manish.