Nepal’s fast-evolving market place and business houses are moving towards walking in step with the best business practices around the world. Today, there are a plethora of facets that contribute to ensuring whether a business grows to be a success or an abject failure—there are thousands of books, university courses and degrees and countless experts dedicated to the topic. But one basic tenet remains true for all businesses all around the world—sales are of the umpteenth importance; for without being able to market and sell their products, no business can possibly survive. With that essential fact in mind, Growth Sellers, an HR consultancy group, organised Nepal’s first ever sales summit, dubbed MAW Sales Summit 2016, to bring pertinent issues regarding everything sales to the fore. Held at the Hyatt Regency in the Capital, with the theme ‘Upgrade your potential and possibilities’, the event saw speakers Harish Bijoor, CEO of Haris Bijoor Consults Inc, Sunim Tamang, general manager of Resonance Nepal and Joseph B Niraua, a certified NeuroLinguistic Programming Trainer (NLP) speak to business and sales professionals from all around the country. The event also included a panel discussion between Sudeep Acharya, CEO of Dish Home Network and moderator Somesh Verma.

 “We have been specialising in the field of Human Resources and the main objective of organising this sales summit was to help businesses promote their services and grow as organisations,” informed Mohan Ojha, managing director of the organisers Growth Sellers. “Having worked as HR specialists, we realised that a business and employees can prosper only if the company’s revenue is excellent. If a company has a strong sales team, other areas, like HR, are easier to balance. That was the main idea behind this summit.” He further added that even though many companies have distributors all over the country, it is essential to inculcate the culture of giving individual and proper training to each and every salesperson.

Speaking during the event, Sudeep Acharya, CEO of Dish Home Network said, “Dish Home started seven ago and since its launch, the sales of the television set-up box is increasing year by year. Our sales team is incredibly enthusiastic, which is why the company has turned into a brand name.” He mentioned that sales team survives on incentives and the team needs to know the products inside out. When that is achieved, according to him, there is no limits to what a company can achieve. 

Sunim Tamang who serves as the general manager at Resonance Nepal, an IT service company based out of Nepal, shared his views on what he termed ‘The brave new world of sales’. “Count the average number of your key activities including meetings, e-mails, follow up calls, and new conversations initiated per week, or per day etc,” Tamang told the participants, referring to utilising your time well as one of the keys to becoming a great sales person.  He added that to become an efficient salesperson one needs to evaluate themselves daily on how they’re doing compared to their businesses and competitors. “As a salesperson you need to position and rank yourself accordingly, if you are a distant and undecided, you will never be an established or a top salesperson,” he further added. 

Harish Bijoor, the CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, a private-label consulting firm that specialises in brand and business strategies, was the key-note speaker at the event. Bijoor presented his outlook on the topic ‘Brand new selling for a brand new era’ at the programme. Talking about the hurdles and changes of sales strategy in Nepal and India, he stated that there is a lot of western influence in our countries in terms of methodology of salespersons—this may sometimes be great, but he stressed that eastern countries need to bring their own individuality into the game and preserve their unique selling styles. He shared that each salesperson has their own strengths and weaknesses but as a whole the strength is the networking skills. “To become a better salesperson one has to acquire the qualities of suaveness, aggression, intellectualism in their orientation, well informed than others and very focused on their products,” he informed.

Bijoor also shared that as a salesperson, one needs to tap their growth—closely paying attention to the contribution one has made and how much of business has been generated every year. “Thinking big means thinking outside the box and integrity is the biggest buzzword of the future—be honest, sincere and it’ll do wonders as a salesperson and as an individual,” concluded Bijoor.

Joseph B Niraula, who is a certified NLP trainer and practitioner of hypnotherapy, spoke on the topic ‘Building the mindset of a sales champion using NLP’. “In order to be more effective at selling, it is helpful to make certain assumptions about people, communication and influence,” shared Niraula on techniques employed during sales. “Sell unto others, the way they want to be sold to. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. First impressions are important since they are a baseline for future expectations,” he added.

Speaking to the Post, Manoj Singh Bhandari, marketing head at Neco Insurance Pvt Ltd, a participant at the summit said, “I am a part-time teacher and attending this sales summit I have learnt a better way to enhance my knowledge on sales. I got to learn about new techniques and about the practices done internationally. This was truly a fruitful experience.”