As we settled into life in America, Saman and I thought ourselves pretty well off. Life was good. Our electricity stayed on all the time, and didn't go off for days on end. Our telephone line was installed and working within hours instead of years. We had cable TV that gave us access to hundreds of channels. Wherever we turned, abundance lay at our finger tips, including freebies that came just by filling out applications for credit cards—a food tray, a pitcher and six glasses, a watch, a small radio, a clock. We didn't know then that we were hurting our credit standing by applying for all this free stuff.
We found a great place called Pedro's Restaurant where $4.00 bought us all the hamburgers and fries we could eat. We skimped on soft drinks and sipped slowly on one large drink with two straws rather than spending money on two drinks, until I saw a woman refill her drink without paying extra. That's when I learned refills were free. When we wanted something better, we treated ourselves to dinner at Perkins Pancake House.
In America, we discovered to what extent convenience was built into the fabric of the culture. You could pay bills by mail. If you bought an article of clothing and it didn't fit, you could return it. And you could browse through magazines at newsstands and replace them on their racks without having to pay for them. But our first bus ride showed us the greatest discernible difference between our previous and current lives. We noticed that the bus driver pushed a button and lowered the entire bus to accommodate a senior citizen. The bus was air conditioned, quiet, and we sat on cushioned seats. You could hardly feel the bumps in the road, and it was orderly and comfortable. As you may recall, this was quite different from the buses I was used to. Riding on them was noisy. No matter when you got on, people were crammed so close together you could hardly breathe. Passengers rode on the inside, on the outside, and even on the roof.
As immigrants, we found the United States to be highly supportive, full of opportunities, and without limits to one's growth. To say that we were enthusiastic about living in our newfound homeland would be a significant understatement. We traveled widely and marveled at how easy it was to get from one place to another. Though the places we visited were new to us, they reminded me of past events in my life that now helped me to bond with America.
We visited the National Aquarium in Baltimore's inner harbor, where, upon exiting, I noticed that someone had set up a telescope. He was charging a dollar to peek through it and look at Saturn's rings. As I handed him a dollar, I couldn't help reminiscing about my youthful explorations of space through the telescope my father bought and repaired for me. At the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., I marveled at the actual lunar module in which Neil Armstrong returned to Earth. It took me back to 1969 when Bassam, Nidal, and I witnessed the moon landing. I can't deny it. Starting our life in America gave us an unabashed rush.
Interestingly, however, the Americans with whom we came in contact didn't seem to share our exuberance. Many seemed disappointed and complained about life in general. What a contrast this was for Saman and me. To us, America appeared to be a nation of prosperity.
The country, however, was mired in recession in 1988. An economic pall lay over society punctuated by daily news of billion-dollar companies like General Motors and Chrysler laying off thousands of workers. Everyone—from professors in universities to employees in the workplace to nightly news anchors—was obsessed with the economic downturn. (Does this sound familiar?) In fact, many corporations were deeply in the recession before their CEOs and CFOs realized what was happening. In all fairness, the early signs of the downturn were almost imperceptible; even seasoned executives missed them. Business went on as usual until the jolt of lost revenues hit them.
When the harsh reality of the recession sank in, top executives at these companies turned defensive to the extreme. They instituted changes helter-skelter that solved nothing and only made matters worse. Their focus shifted from long-term development to short-term fixes. They cut mainstay programs and fired valuable talent. They downsized marketing staffs and slashed advertising budgets. Instead of concentrating on growth and innovation, they became preoccupied with reducing risk and production costs and eliminating product development. Some of these companies walked away from difficult customers and reduced support for those who remained. In the process, top executives turned a blind eye to the negative impact that these defensive maneuvers had on employee morale.
It was interesting to see that while some companies were failing, others were succeeding. Many Fortune 500 companies still flourished, posted record earnings and strong growth numbers, and expanded their operations. This dichotomy sparked a series of theoretical questions in my mind: Why would two similar companies that made comparable products have two completely different outcomes—one struggling to survive and the other doing well? Why did some companies with better products fail, while others with mediocre products succeed? And why did innovative American firms have such difficulty competing in global markets?
On the surface, corporations that went out of business appeared to have had issues with products, production, marketing, and quality control. The one problem, however, common to them all that led to their demise was poor execution of sales.
I should say that I reached this conclusion by a circumstantial turn of events that brought me into contact with salespeople at a time in my career when I had no knowledge whatsoever of sales or what salespeople were about. Up to this point, I had spent most of my time working with highly polished engineers, professors, and technical people given to highly analytical thinking. They had a tendency to live on facts and be satisfied with well-justified solutions to problems that stood the rigor of precisely formed proofs. As well-grounded individuals, they took nothing for granted. Salespeople, however, were another kind of animal altogether. They seemed to have a devil-may-care flair about them. They were always on the go, in and out of airports with briefcases in hand, meeting with clients and prospects. They talked a lot about deals in the pipeline—whatever that meant—and the ones they had to close to meet their quarterly numbers. I could not get a grasp on what they did, nor how they spent their time. As a group, they seemed to me like a puzzle I couldn't quite understand.
As it turned out, I was asked one day to accompany some of our top salespeople on customer and prospect calls to see how I could support their efforts. Contrary to my initial expectation, this turned out to be a rare and valuable opportunity for me. I soon discovered that these top salespeople weren't your average employees. They were the elite members of the company, and working with them was an exhilarating experience.
They were social thinkers with masterful associative abilities. Even in a tough, recessionary time, they took a genuine interest in the prospects and customers with whom they spoke, and were curious about what they had to say. It was interesting to see how Hollywood portrayed salespeople as flash-and-dance show-offs, or as troubled individuals worn out and down on their luck. Initially, I too had a negative opinion of them for no real reason. In retrospect, I understand that I was programmed by TV shows and movies.
Salespeople, I realized, were deep thinkers, whose selling styles involved far more than presenting and closing. Each of them discussed a process that was highly elaborated, mature, and evolved.
They loved working interactively with others and thrived on conversations with customers and prospects. And they enjoyed being on the go. Their work style was interrupt driven. They moved comfortably among different tasks and shifted easily between the practical and creative aspects of sales, and they did all this without missing a beat.
Salespeople were eager to learn about best sales practices and what worked for others, and they weren't reluctant to incorporate others' successful methods into their own sales repertoires. They studied what sales gurus wrote about and read whatever they could on selling. Their ability to process information was fast and exquisite. They sized up their environment, discerned patterns in large amounts of data, assessed situations quickly, and wasted no time in taking pinpointed action. Lateral thinking and free-form association came easy to them. They sensed opportunities coming their way long before such opportunities appeared.
They also seemed to possess a high level of inductive reasoning—the ability to leap from a present point to a future point not yet clearly defined. This power rivaled some of the best entrepreneurs. As individuals with high energy, they were dogged in the pursuit of their goals but resilient in the face of adversity.
The salespeople I knew adhered to a process orientation that was every bit as effective as a manufacturing production system. Although they weren't manufacturing goods, they were producing unified behaviors that ultimately drove a sales process from the start of their deals to the close.
It finally dawned on me that the questions I mentioned earlier in this chapter had a direct answer. Companies that had figured out the formula to bottle the sales process of their top salespeople and transfer it across their entire sales organizations became super-successful. Such companies succeeded—even with mediocre products and services.
This prompted the start of my next Junoon—democratizing superior sales execution. Up to now, this had been the province of elite Fortune 500 companies that could spend millions of dollars in sales training, sales process, and recruiting elite salespeople. My Junoon was simple—to give all companies the ability to build a superior sales organization, without their having to spend millions of dollars to do so.