(Extract from the book ‘SELL’ by Subroto Bagchi, he is an entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of Mindtree, a leading IT company and also a consultant to the Government of Odisha.)
On the Cover Page of the book he says, ‘Selling is not a pushy, winner-take-all, Masculine act. It is an Empathy-led, Process-driven and Knowledge-intensive Discipline.’
PEOPLE WHO SELL WELL are a joy. They sell without needing to sell. The way they go about ‘selling’ elevates the act to the point where they are serving a customer’s needs. They make us happy, they make us grateful. We look forward to meeting them again, to buying from them again. Our relationships with them become ones that we cherish.
Take, for instance, my most favourite photo framer in the world. Her name is Veena. She has a small workshop tucked away off the Nandi Durg Road in Bengaluru. In most part, she restores period furniture and knick-knacks for art lovers. One part of her workshop, however, is devoted to photo framing. A few months ago, I had taken to her an old cloth embroidered by my mother that was in a state of despair. I asked her to frame it for me. She took one look at it and asked me to take the cloth to INTACH.
‘This is so precious,’ she said. ‘At INTACH, they should be able to restore it after which we will frame it. If I just frame it for you, it will last a couple of decades. If they restore it first, it will last a lot longer.’
I took her advice and approached INTACH. They took a few months to return it after a thorough restoration job. After that I brought it back to Veena and requested her to frame it for me. I have never had to tell Veena how to frame my pictures. She advises me on the many options I have and quite often warns me against something I may have chosen, something on which she could have probably made twice the amount of money.
As with Veena, I have another great relationship with the person who sells me seeds and saplings for my garden. His name is Susanta Das and he has a small store selling garden and farm supplies in Bhubaneswar. Whenever he calls me, I jump with joy. We talk about this and that – how the gladiola are doing and whether the neem cakes he had suggested worked to rid the lawn of white ants. But even as he speaks, I actually lose patience because I just want him to tell me about the new arrivals at his store and what I can add to my garden. Unhurriedly, he gets there. He has some late-blooming lilies, he says, and some gerbera that will bloom year-long. How many does he have and can he please keep aside a hundred of each for me, I ask. And so our exchanges continue. On matters of shrubs and trees and everything in between, Susanta has become a trusted advisor to me. At the crux of the relationship are his professional knowledge, his respect for his customers and his pleasant dealings. But, most crucially, he cares about what finally happens after his customer carries home a seedling or a bulb. The transaction of buying and selling between us is an incidental process that facilitates the blooming bud.
Then there is my favourite photo printer in Bengaluru. His name is Venkatesh. For as long as I have known him, he has been producing high-quality prints for studios, artists and designers, and amateurs like me who think a relationship with him upgrades them to being seen as ‘pros’. He can look at an image and tell you what paper you should print it on.
‘Use a museum print for this one,’ he will say. Or ‘This will work well on a canvas.’ Periodically, I book an appointment with him, like booking an appointment with a doctor. I don’t want anything distracting him when we are meeting. I take my photographs along, upload them on his system, and then we look at them together and settle for a size and type of paper on which to print them. The process often takes hours. In the end, I realize I had brought two dozen more images that we didn’t have the time to look at. I leave them behind with him and ask him to take a look at them at his own pace, choose the ones he feels will look good enlarged and make decisions on the print sizes. Later I call him, ask the amount I owe him and sent a cheque. He offers a service, like many others, but he does so with admirable dedication and professionalism.
In my business life , I have done many deals. I have, as you know by now, tremendous pride in my basic ability to sell. I consider it my defining, core skill. In that ability, I hope many people I have done business with feel the same way about me as I feel about Veena, Susanta and Venkatesh.