The Art Of Selling
There are multiple ways of selling things, be it an idea, a product or service, or anything in this world. Selling, as an art, is very subjective. Everyone learns it at their own pace and through their individual experiences. There is no level at which you attain mastery in it, as being the best seller does not involve following a common procedure and whoever completes the procedure first or in the minimum time is declared the winner. It varies from person to person those who eventually do succeed in forming their own strategies to sell that they want, are the winners, in my opinion.
Learning how to sell stuff will ensure that you are always ahead of the competition. This form of art is one that does not come under the realm of the social sciences and humanities subjects, but rather a type of art that a person learns with experience. It can be taught, but honing it has to be done individually.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Economies have recorded the lowest output levels in years, recession is predicted in the foreseeable future leading to huge unemployment and businesses suffering huge losses. But wait a second, just the other day I heard that Mr. Mukesh Ambani has become the sixth richest person in the world and cracked a superb deal between Jio and Facebook, Jeff Bezos’ net worth has crossed a whopping $200 billion as Amazon becomes more powerful than ever, Elon Musk has entered the ‘top 5 richest people in the world’ list (though the list keeps fluctuating). People will point to the increasing income inequality between the top few richest people of the world and everyone else. But those who make it to the top 5 or 10 do so by doing business and searching for more opportunities to make money. They don’t pile the huge amount of wealth that they have by stealing from banks or fooling people. They work for it. They see the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity and their companies adapt to the changes happening in the world. And since change is the only constant, they keep changing shape and form like water, when it is put in different containers.
The deal between Mr. Ambani and Mark Zuckerberg marked Facebook’s entry into the retail sector in India through Reliance JioMart. I am personally not a big fan of what Facebook does, but Mr. Ambani’s game-changing deal does deserve attention. How did the legendary Mr. Ambani crack a $5.7 billion deal amidst a global pandemic? Simple. He used common sense. The Jio-Facebook deal will empower over 3 crore kirana stores and allow people to order groceries from their local kirana stores through WhatsApp. Apart from all the ‘gyaan’ that gets shared on WhatsApp every day, it will now also be used for grocery shopping, which is just one among the many things that Mr. Ambani has in mind with regards to this deal. How easy has life become for people who cannot go out due to the risk of catching the virus? Just open WhatsApp, which Indians have a Ph.D. in using, and order whatever you want and wait as it gets delivered to your doorstep. Ambani observed how people have started using their mobile phones now more than ever, thanks to the lockdown imposed by the government. Once again by using his common sense, he made use of this opportunity to expand. Looking for opportunities is what entrepreneurs do. Opportunities are there all around us, we just need to pay attention. Or as Sherlock Holmes says, “You see, but you do not observe.”
Coming up with this idea is just the first half, selling it to a huge company like Facebook would have taken another great deal of thinking. With everyone’s businesses suffering, why would Facebook want to enter the Indian retail sector when its core business is providing a social media platform to users? The answer lies in numbers. Facebook has the largest number of users from India, currently at somewhere around 300 million, and since Facebook owns WhatsApp, whose number of users in India — currently around 400 million and growing — is the highest in the world, it’s easy to understand the reason behind Mr. Ambani approaching Zuckerberg for a great deal that is beneficial to both the sides. So that means that Mr. Ambani did his homework/research well. To be a successful seller of anything, doing your research is of utmost importance. Without adequate research, you would just have a product or an idea in mind without any knowledge of when and where it will sell and at what price. The true meaning of being in the right place at the right time is this- RESEARCH, RESEARCH AND RESEARCH as much as you can. No amount of knowledge is ever too much. research not just about a potential market that you want to enter or about a potential client or a company, but about the world in general.
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