Management

1.  The best time to cold call is between 4:00-5:00pm.  The second best is 8:00-10:00am. The worst times are 11:00am and 2:00pm.  (InsideSales and Kellogg School of Business)

2.  Thursday is the best day to prospect.  Wednesday is the second best day.  Tuesday is the worst day.  (InsideSales)

3.  In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect.  Today it takes 8 attempts.  (TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group)

4.  80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting.  44% of sales people give up after 1 follow-up.  (The Marketing Donut)

5.  After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories.  Only 5% remember statistics.  (Chip and Dan Heath)

6.  70% of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems.  30% make decisions to gain something.   (Impact Communications)

7.  Each year, you’ll lose 14% of your customers.   (BusinessBrief)

8.  Prospects that buy have 58% more objections than prospects who don’t.  Learn to appreciate objections as they provide opportunities to solve customer problems.

9.  The #1 reason Customers buy from you isn't service, selection, quality or price -- it's your confidence! (Guerilla Selling)


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Key insights:
On building the company:
In India average staff turnover can be between 20% to 25%. This is a huge waste of resources in constant recruiting, impact on morale, loss of knowledge and capability. To address this Co founders need to create an atmosphere where employees do not leave: where turnover is close to zero. To do that co founders need to build a family where people feel connected to the company and to each other. To constantly create a sense of optimism within the company particularly at time when events make it exactly the opposite. 

On talent acquisition:
Hire young people and train them to be superstars and avoid paying high salaries to hire supposed “superstars” i.e create an environment that helps ordinary people do extraordinary things. Recruit candidates one level below the target job level but have the hunger and capability to grow into the target role. 

On being a CEO:
Really important to carve out two hours in the day, every day to just think and plan about the business, and not just the day today operational problems. Otherwise you will get caught up in the day to day and no ideas will come.

On sales:
Ensure that your sales people create a personal connection with the buyer. People do not buy based just on the product spec but on a host of other variables including trust in the person that is selling to them.

On running the company day to day:
First Innovate to begin with. Then create processes & monitoring systems so that it becomes a repeatable process.
Decide what share of mind you allocate to each part of the business. When things go wrong or more usually just not happening fast enough ,founders and entrepreneurs have to inject themselves to push through on an issue to sort it out. 

On fund raising:
Find a way to get the latest technologies become part of your solution. Eg: IOT, big data , customer analytics ,AI , machine learning blockchain etc. This will excite VCs.

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