TaxSo Goes To Market - The First Sales Call
September 5th, 2017 By Manoj Naudiyal
"Thank you for your time sir. It was great talking to you and I will see you at 11:00 AM tomorrow in your office."
I had just finished a phone call with the first potential customer for TaxSo. I felt happy and excited as the person on the other side sounded keen and enthusiastic to learn about the features of our GST compliant software. It was my first ever sales call; I did not have any experience of sales whatsoever. Holding a Master′s degree in Software Engineering and working as a technology architect for more than a decade in leading corporates firms was, I guess, not the ideal training for conducting client sales meetings. But then, there are many things in life that we learn as we go along. So, here I was, about to meet a potential client for the first time to sell our software product.
The development team at Arohar had done a tremendous job for over a year. Now all eyes were on the first sales meeting because acquiring the first customer was crucial for us. I was very excited and motivated to demonstrate TaxSo to our first potential customer. Reaching up to that point of conducting a ′product demo′ with a customer was in itself huge because most of the people we had met before simply distanced themselves when they learnt that we were from sales. Just imagine a typical sales pitch from a pushy salesman. "Sir, le lo bahut acha product hai. Ek baar try toh karo" : )
The next day, I along with Himanshu started from our office around 10:20 AM for ′THE MEETING′. We reached their office well on time and requested the receptionist there to inform her boss about us. She picked up the phone and spoke to someone. She asked us to wait for some time as the boss was busy in some other meeting. We sat down on sofa and bided our time. Near about an hour passed by and there was still no sign of the boss calling us inside. Himanshu sat upright every time the phone at the reception rang, in anticipation that the call was for us, and then leaned back slowly when he realized that it was not. I had already rehearsed my presentation twice by then. The excitement and enthusiasm from the morning started to vanish. Our condition at that moment was similar to that ′pink bunny wearing sunglasses′ (from commercials) beating his drum with full speed when on new batteries and gradually slowing down as battery level starts to drop.
Then suddenly, the phone rang and Himanshu sat upright again. This time it was for us and we were called inside. I regained my energy, took a deep breath and we went inside. The 40 minute presentation went as anticipated. We addressed all their queries and concerns. The potential customer sounded positive about our product and was interested to discuss the roll-out plan. I felt happy that the deal was almost through and that TaxSo would officially have its first customer. But all that euphoria came to a screeching halt as soon as we heard the following words
We all know what that means, right? All of us have heard this statement many times. It is similar to an HR person saying after the interview, "We will get back to you."
That was the last we heard from them.
The journey back from their office to ours did not feel as great as it did that morning. A sense of self-doubt started to overpower us. I wondered what had gone wrong. The stakes were high and the pressure was on. I certainly did not feel positive about it. We had created such a great product and were a 100% confident and super convinced that it was going to rock the market. And here we were, returning empty handed from our first sales meeting.
We at team Arohar believed in our self, believed in TaxSo and continued our efforts to move forward. No later than a week from that failed meeting, one of our well-wishers called me and said that someone they knew was interested in TaxSo. So, with a bit of sales experience now added to our portfolio, we went ahead with renewed confidence to the meeting and succeeded in adding the proud first customer on TaxSo Platform. Below is the testimonial we received from him after 2 months.
What did we learn from all this? NEVER GIVE UP!!
There is always going to be anxiety, uncertainty and fear of failure, but keep pushing yourself to move forward. You will never know how close you were to succeeding if you quit now.
Thank you for reading. Till next time.
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