On Love and Bonding!

Welcome back to my world!

It was a chilly Diwali morning as I sat on my balcony with my regular cup of green tea after my usual workouts. Across my apartment existed a fairly large expanse of a roughly walled piece of land occupied by a sole caretaker and his family of three residing in a hut surrounded by a meagre growth of daily necessities including a couple of banana and papaya trees, two cows and a scant number of chickens. The rest of the topography was a miniature jungle of sorts but pleasing to the eye considering the neighboring concrete expanse.

It was the dawn of the Festival of Lights, an occasion where families of traditional orientation wake up much before twilight, vigorously rub themselves from head to foot with oil, bathe, pray, joyfully burst crackers and usher in with the rising sun victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. However, in our modern day ‘simulated’ existence the average urban family wakes up to a combination of hangovers over the previous night’s exultant unbottling of spirits while chucking around playing cards over a crowded table, checking of messages and emails on their smart phones, or better still digging their heads back under their pillows and extending their nap time till lunch!

And since I had participated in none of the above and instead, done my regular thing every morning, I was blissfully reclining in my cane chair and sipping out of my teacup when quite suddenly the door of the caretaker’s hut flew open and out burst the family in absolute wild abandon laughing away to glory. Obviously this caught my immediate interest and I couldn’t help but focus my entire attention to what had begun to unfold before my eyes.

Father, mother, daughter and son held each other swaying gently to the chants of a prayer being sung by them while facing the rising sun from the east. Once this ritual was over it was time for the next which was the oil bath. Both son and daughter seized the oil bottles from their mother’s hands and started smearing oil, most lavishly, over their parents’ heads as they sat quietly on a few stones wholly enjoying the massage. It was then the children’s turn and positions were switched interspersed with much giggling and playful ‘smacks’ from their mother. This was then followed by a cold water bath which was exuberantly accomplished by pouring water on each other from an old blue cistern followed by warmly rubbing each other with a couple of thin cotton towels and then turning back to the sun in a final salutation before hugging each other tenderly and re-entering their hut.

And then there was silence for a while before the family came out once again joyfully lighting up a few sparklers while the chickens ran amuck.

As I sat sipping the remnants of my green tea, this visual encounter I had just witnessed repetitively played within the portals of my mind. What an amazing experience! It took me back several decades when, as a young boy I had been part of such similar rituals. A period when our lives were untouched with cybernetic influences but filled with practical moments of value, love and bonding. Value, Love and Bonding which were expressed through thoughts, words and deeds. Not through simulated creations that merely required one to express oneself through an oblong pad of alphabets. But through a desire to communicate one’s deepest feelings of adoration and respect through physical touch and expressions that only a pair of eyes and a smiling mouth could emulate.

I also realized what an amazing show of parental Leadership I had just witnessed! Keeping the family fused with traditional values and ever-bonding love while respecting each other’s individual freedom requires humongous understanding and patience by parents. And all this while ensuring relationships within the family never become estranged.

This was a morning I knew I would remember for a long while. A morning that was so delightfully extraordinary. A morning that forced me to reflect momentarily on the past and the way we existed today. And yet a morning that was wonderfully spiritual and festive!

I stood up from where I was sitting and wondered why my throat felt a bit choked and my eyes just a tad watery…

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

Email: anand@anandknair.com

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipinitiatives

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

Suicide – From Snap to Oblivion!

1930 hrs

I stood on an extended balcony of a friend’s residence 24 floors up on a high rise building with only a 3 foot extension in front of me and a world hustling chaotically several feet below. Through the ravages of my mind I recalled the newspaper article I had recently read of a young girl who crossed over a similar extension on a high rise building eventually ending her existence once and for all. As I observed the sheer drop from where I stood the blood in my veins turned cold. I was appalled with the very thought of what could it possibly take any human being to just walk off a ledge into committing suicide in this manner. In fact, I was even more dismayed trying to understand why people would want to end their lives in whatever form they adopted, be it a sheer drop from a tall building, a noose hanging from a fan, slitting their wrist or even consuming pesticides. And as I watched the road far below I figured that committing suicide must require humongous amounts of courage! After all, if it wasn’t courage, what else can it possibly take?

That’s what I assumed till I decided to reach out to several suicide survivors. Being an active Life Counselor all I had to do was to speak to most of my ‘patients’ and through them connect with those who made that one last attempt but survived. And believe it or not, the ensuing journey was an education of a lifetime!

The Mind is a very powerful connect between the Soul and the Body and can be likened to fire which can cook your food and cook you too! Within the precincts of the Mind exists three minds: the Conscious, the Subconscious and the Unconscious Minds. The Conscious Mind consists abysmally 5% of the entire Human Mind. The rest 95% constitutes the Subconscious and the Unconscious Minds. The Subconscious Mind holds memories which are recent in nature while the Unconscious Mind records every moment of one’s experiences of life. It is an amazing storehouse of memories from the day we were born!

In a nutshell, the Conscious Mind converses with the outside world and the inner self through speech, pictures, writing, physical movement, and thought. The Subconscious Mind, on the other hand, is in continuous contact with the resources of the Unconscious Mind which constantly communicates with the Conscious Mind through the Subconscious Mind. It provides one with the meaning to all interactions with the world, as filtered through ones beliefs and habits. It communicates through feelings, emotions, imagination, sensations, and dreams. Hence the Subconscious and the Unconscious Minds play a very active role in tandem with the Conscious Mind to ensure an overall healthy and productive Mindset resulting in a remarkable existence of one self.

However, when the Conscious Mind begins to get excessively and relentlessly barraged with piercingly stressful thoughts and experiences, the Subconscious and Unconscious Minds strain to maintain the stability of the Conscious Mind. And as the Conscious mind ceaselessly becomes more and more turgid, it quite suddenly breaks away from the safe anchorages of the Subconscious and Unconscious Minds resulting in, what we call, the act of suicide. And this could happen at any given point of time: while walking on the road, working at the office, reading a book at home, working out at the gym or even watching an exciting IPL Cricket final!

For all of those who are presently harboring suicidal tendencies I can only advice:

1.  Stay within the Powers of your Inner Being. There is enormous Greatness within you! Feel it, embrace it and believe in it!!

2.  You can’t get out of life alive. So why prepone it? Life is a many splendored thing. Enjoy the meandering journey and don’t mentally resist when things don’t look too good. It won’t last forever! Never does!!

3.  Spend time deep breathing and meditating. Stay in the 'NOW'. You don't live in the past anymore. And the future can become awe-inspiring if you concentrate on creating beautiful Masterpieces with the present moment! Appreciate yourself for who you are and not in comparison with anyone else. You are YOU! The final Creator of your own Destiny! There never is a need to be anyone else when you can be fabulously YOURSELF!

4.  And finally, Celebrate Life…Celebrate being YOU!

And to all of those of you who are connected with someone struggling with suicidal tendencies:

1.  Please avoid interacting if you can’t help or remotely understand how precarious the person’s Mind is at the moment.

2.  Stop mirroring your personal stress and frustrations through your actions and words. It will have a deliberating effect and deteriorate the mental crises.  

3.  Be patient, loving and caring no matter how stressful the situation or relationship gets. It remotely compares to what’s actually happening in the person’s Mind!

4.  And finally, you have to realize one burning truth: IT DOES NOT TAKE COURAGE BUT JUST A SNAP TO OBLIVION!!

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

Email: anand@agnileadership.com

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipfoundation

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

The Deceptive Desire to Finally Light “Just This One Last Puff!”

May 31^st, 2018.

Newspapers, magazines, journals, news channels and almost every media available announce the ‘World No Tobacco Day’ and endlessly woo smokers to give up the habit.  A host of articles enumerating the hazards of smoking cover all the dailies delivered at doorsteps. The internet is abuzz with videos covering visual accounts of near fatal cases due to smoking. Commercials in almost every form of communication pump up the pot purée of information with likewise disastrous descriptions.

And yet the smoker reaches for his pack and lights another cigarette! 

I remember years back when I was graduating, we used to jokingly term a cigarette as “a roll of tobacco with fire on one end and a sucker on the other!” Years later when most of us became ‘suckers’ eventually, the joke spiked out more embarrassingly than humorously.

The fact is, just like within every fat man there is a thin man dying to get out and vice versa, within every smoker is a man desperately trying to beat the habit of lighting up a cigarette every 15 minutes with a deceptive desire to finally “light that one last puff” once and for all…

The fact is that every smoker is absolutely aware of all the hazards of his vice and no amount of information, data, statistics, facts or figures proving it all will make that big difference resulting in the smoker chucking the habit.

The fact is that the smoker knows he’s hooked by a powerful drug called Nicotine existing in tobacco and as long as his brain craves it he will remain a prisoner to his vice.

Like every smoker, I knew I was literally burning away both my health and finances for just that craving for a few ‘puffs’ more. And as long as the craving taunted me night and day, I gave a damn about anything else but lighting up and believing how much I was enjoying every moment ecstatically as I deeply inhaled the smoke into my lungs giving myself a temporary ‘high’ till the next cigarette. And never mind the dirty nicotine stained teeth or the discolored finger tips.

But yet, there are smokers like me who finally did give it up, and quite suddenly! YES, it can be done and it’s actually no big deal!!

The truth is that no amount of emotional blackmailing or advice from relatives and friends made me make the decision to quit. Quitting a vice that one has lived with over several years can’t be done on somebody else’s opinion, guidance or suggestion. Quitting a vice is a very personal thing. The decision lies squarely on the victim of the vice and on nothing or no one else.

So then how did I manage to quit? Did I have an exemplary Will Power over others? Was it because I loved my family and close friends so profoundly that I wanted to do it for them? Or was it because of the circulation of so much information on the nuisances of smoking intermittently being bombarded right from several media options available to the permanent cigarette packet design?

Actually, it was none of those. Like I said, giving up any vice is a very personal decision and no one can ever influence it except one’s own mind! It was just one amazing moment in my life when I suddenly and most passionately wanted to change the way I existed. And just to never, ever light another cigarette in my life. The fact is that when I deeply desired to become the CHANGE I secretly always wanted to be, this desire overtook and overshadowed a continuously nagging desire to remain the SAME as always. And the moment that happened, I chucked it all away and never looked back again! So when I say giving up a vice is a very personal thing, I know that this is the truth because I am a practical witness to prosecuting my own iniquity.

To all the smokers across the world who are actually enjoying their regular bouts of ‘puffing’ it up, don’t bother about how good or bad it is for you. Don’t give a damn on who, genuinely or sincerely, want you to give up the habit. And don’t even remotely fancy that you lack a formidable Will Power to never light another puff (after all, how does it matter anyway). And of course, screw the fact that you have smoked away buying a new house or a fancy car or even some top of the line threads for your wardrobe with every cigarette you bought and puffed over the years.

But for those of you who secretly desire to quit smoking once and for all…all you got to do is do what I did. First, seriously contemplate on it. Then give yourself a comfortable time frame to quit. And as you gradually reach towards the end of the timeframe, continuously keep concentrating on crafting an intense desire within yourself to become the CHANGE that you covertly wanted to be instead of remaining the SAME as always. It’s really this simple. After all, you wouldn’t be doing all this if you seriously didn’t want a change!

CHANGE is an amazing constant. Yes, it will be a wee bit difficult in the beginning. A little tough in the middle. But AWE-INSPIRING at the end! It all depends on how passionately you have desired to embrace the CHANGE.

And believe me. If I can do it…SO CAN YOU!!

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

Email: anand@agnileadership.com

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipfoundation

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

Preeti - The Young Yogic Healing Wonder!

During my consistent jaunts at the Cubbon Park early Sunday mornings, I often observed a young girl teaching Yoga to a fairly large group of people. She has been doing this for the last 2 1/2 years and I really didn't ever closely watch her as I regularly jogged passed the green stretch she occupied behind the Bandstand. 

But last Sunday, I just happened to stop by and observe her more closely and something fascinated me to a large extent. As I watched her expertly exercising along with the people participating in her free session, I couldn't help cherish the intensity of her love and passion for what she was doing, clearly etched on her face! Very rarely does one happen to observe such dedication and commitment bonded with so much affection. I stood for quite a while observing her till she finished the class and then decided to have a chat with her, to know more about her and what encourages her to do what she was doing.

Preeti hails from Chandigarh and is in her mid-twenties. Her love for Yoga and more importantly Pranayama, was due to an emotional and physical debacle she had faced several years ago. It was through Pranayama and Yoga that she was able to heal herself entirely and it was then that she decided she would, most passionately, heal as many people she could meet who would have had similar pasts, or otherwise.

As we got chatting, I realized with much adoration that Preeti and I held similar views regarding our purpose on Earth and the Powers of the Universe as expressed in my first book: The Sledgehammer’s Edge. She firmly believes, just like everyone else, she was born with a certain purpose decided by the Universe and she realized this soon after she overcame her personal debacle.

She strongly believes in the Power of Love - to Love selflessly and without prejudice! And, through this love, to heal those that needed to be healed. Needless to say, many people have overcome some of their most tasking health conditions just by being with her and attending her classes. In fact, I happened to meet a few of them in the group that morning.

Preeti strongly believes not only in the power of Yoga but more importantly in the power of Pranayama or the manner in which we breathe. She firmly expresses how important it is for everyone to practice Pranayama for at least an hour daily. While most yoga teachers generally revolve exclusively around Yoga exercises, Preeti blends her one hour class with both Pranayama and Yoga most skillfully as I had observed that morning. She considers Pranayama as the soul of Yoga and hence the two cannot be isolated from each other. She also advocates that one should combine Pranayama with Meditation regularly.

Incidentally, Preeti who is a strict Vegan, wakes up at 2.30 am every morning and meditates till dawn. While this may seem quite a stretch for most of us, the result of what she does vividly shows in her physical form and in her exuberance for life!

It was most enjoyable chatting up with Preeti that morning and I can add a thousand more words to this blog about her! But instead, why don’t you drop by on a fresh early Sunday morning at Cubbon Park and discover this young yogic healing wonder yourself!!

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Educationist. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

anand@agnileadership.com

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipfoundation

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

The Sledgehammer's Edge

The Sledgehammer’s Edge is a moving story about how one can use the several Powers of the Universe to successfully achieve every dream in one’s life and create amazing masterpieces for the world to enjoy.

It is because we think, we exist and not the other way around. The very content of our thoughts dictate the standards of our existence. We have a choice in every moment of our lives to either be a victim or a winner! The story entwines itself around a young boy whose personal and professional dreams are turned into reality by a man who makes him recognize the inner strength he has by surrendering to the Universe and all its Powers embedded within his inner Being.

This book takes you on a path of realization of the enormous powers that lie within you to be exemplary in every walk of life. Hence, this book is not necessarily entrepreneurial in nature, but deals immensely with the Soul, Mind and Body and how they subtly relate to each other in creating masterpieces in whatever one does, both personally and professionally.

Leadership is not about leading a group of people or an organization to success but living a life delightfully and living it from the very core of one’s inner being without being prejudiced by the fears of the unknown influenced by one’s external experiences.

Written in the simplest form of narrative, this book will tug at your conscience and lead you to believe, just as Raj, our protagonist did in the Powers of The Universe. I have written this book in a simple and uncomplicated language flow so that anyone, across the world who reads it, will be able to understand each and every paragraph crafted by me.

I hoped to emancipate your existence through this book and have faith in the fact that I finally will. 

So download the Kindle vesion and enjoy this journey with me…

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Educationist. Business Consultant.

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

(Readily available on Amazon Kindle)

Musings of an old Maverick: Cubbon Park - A Kaleidoscope of flora & fauna, fin...

Musings of an old Maverick: Cubbon Park - A Kaleidoscope of flora & fauna, fin...: Cubbon Park. Sunday  0600 hrs.   .  Bliss and harmony combined in an area of approximately 190 acres - once over 300 acres i...

Cubbon Park - A Kaleidoscope of flora & fauna, fine art performances, fitness freaks and CEOs!

Cubbon Park. Sunday 0600 hrs. . 

Bliss and harmony combined in an area of approximately 190 acres - once over 300 acres in size but forcibly shrunk by rapid urbanization.  For those living in Bangalore including several corporate 'big-wigs' (preferring to talk  business informally in an open fresh environment instead of during Saturday night cocktail circuits...finding them too cliche and meant only for the uninitiated!) flock every morning to the pristine offerings of this natural park. 


Intricately shaped trees, centuries old, interspersed with a wide variety of plants and flowers, rare winged birds, squirrels, butterflies (the list could go on almost endlessly), never cease to serenely calm the mind, body & soul of every walker, jogger and casual visitor to this wondrous green abode. Just a few kilometers of an engaging walk through its meandering pathways can revive the most tired or stressed individual from the aftermath of the week gone by.

But these are not only the offerings that this park engulfs you with. 

It also offers to a plethora of people of various shapes, sizes and ages to work out their bodies to the rhythm of a trainer and his music, free Yoga classes conducted by those devoted to the cause of good health & vitality or simply setting up a net and playing badminton with friends or picking up a cycle and lazily biking around...or just doing your thing by working out all by yourself over large expanses of greenery!  


















But for me, the most fascinating contribution that this awesome place offers is an absolutely enthralling and captivating set of performances executed by young artists involved in fine arts and folk music on the Bandstand from 0600 hrs to 0830 hrs! 

I can assure you, that this is one visual treat for the senses that will effortlessly prove uplifting and joyful...something that can rarely be experienced by those who never flock towards the Cubbon Park on an early Sunday morning!! 

Professional Musings of an Old Maverick! (Concluding Part)

Business Development ‘Gladiators’ – Triggering the real YOU!

Part – X

Professional Attributes to become awe-inspiring Business Development Gladiators!

Welcome back to my world as we take the concluding journey for all you Business Development Gladiators!

On this journey we will explore the last three professional attributes of Executive Essentials for all BDEs: Presentation; Negotiation & Closing.

Presentation:

The Presentation stage normally would constitute your second meeting with your client. This is an important stage as it will now connect you with your client, more closely, on a solutions providing mode. The contents of your presentation would, quite obviously, be based on the probing that you would have done during your previous meeting. Hence, your presentation (in most cases a power point) should begin with a short description of your organization and its strong presence in the market. Next you need to highlight concerns that your client had expressed during your last meeting. Subsequently, you need to start highlighting your product as a solutions provider to his concerns.

It is very important for you to understand at this stage of your presentation that you should only depict accurately how your product can be a solutions provider for your client BASED ONLY on his concerns. Don’t go much beyond this even if your product can do more. Remember, information should be given on a need to know basis and not otherwise. Too much of information can confuse your client and will therefore necessitate another series of meetings which could delay closures!

Always begin your product presentation (after having highlighted your client’s concerns) with his most conversed concern. Try to epicenter your product presentation around it for a while. Then start building his other related concerns around it and provide solutions. There must always be a smooth continuity to your presentation based on your past probings. Don’t jump from one point to another unrelated point. It will not make your conversation with your client seamless!

Negotiation:

When you reach this stage you should have, by now, become quite familiar with your client: enough to be able to have a conversation on an equal level foundation. Reaching this level of a relationship is very important at the negotiation stage because much of the conversation will be a ‘cat and mouse’ play between you and your client who will continuously value the product’s solution providers with its final price offered. At this point your client will take you through a natural process of bargaining on the price. It happens in every deal a BDE does and hence is unavoidable!

But a powerful BDE could make this negotiating stage a winner for himself or herself if the Presentation stage would have been well detailed and effectively explained. If this has been achieved, the very superior core values of the product as an ideal solutions provider for the client will deter the client from overly fussing over the price!

Closing:

This stage is the easiest challenge to overtake, actually speaking! Most BDEs have an inane fear of this particular stage wherein they feel that, at the last moment, something could go drastically wrong and all their hard work may get wasted at the last juncture of actually collecting the order.

This is a stage most feared by only those BDEs who have inadequately handled the previous stages as discussed in my previous blog parts. As a BDE myself, this stage was never a challenge but an opportunity to explore several areas to build up a permanent relationship with my client. I never viewed this phase as a ‘life and death’ situation to collect the purchase request from the client. Instead, I would use this stage to further fortify my relationship with my client by offering to assist in taking his products to the market or giving him references for his BDEs to follow up with as an advantage to his organization or building up a strong after sales schedule, with immediate effect, for the products sold to him by me. For me this was a phase which I always looked forward to wherein I could impress him as a hardcore professional who was absolutely different from the rest: a World Class Gladiator!

I do hope you enjoyed reading the entire series of blogs I very especially crafted for all of you. This is the concluding part of the series and if any one of you would like to know more on how to become Awe-Inspiring BDEs, please do leave a comment below.

While this journey ends here, I will be embarking on a new one next week called “The Art of Effective Business Networking!” Do join me on this journey, too…

Ciao for now J

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Educationist. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

AGNI Leadership Initiatives

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipfoundation

www.facebook.com/AGNILeadership/

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge

Professional musings of an Old Maverick - Part IX

Business Development ‘Gladiators’ – Triggering the real YOU!

Part – IX

Professional Attributes to become awe-inspiring Business Development Gladiators!

Welcome back to my world!

In our previous journey we had talked about how important it was for BDEs to carefully plan and prepare before they decide to meet their clients. This, as explained earlier, would make that big difference between embarking on a very long term relationship with your client or being shown the exit door!

On this journey, we will explore the next two Professional Attributes: The Introduction and Probing.

 The Introduction:

This is when you get to meet your client for the first time. Needlessly to say, the Introduction is the first step towards building up a relationship with your client and needs to be taken very seriously. You will be trying to traverse a ground that you will have to finally shape from initial familiarity to bold professional bondage. And this depends majorly on how well prepared you are to meet the client (refer previous blog: Part VIII).

Please don’t ignore the old saying: The first impression is the last impression! If you are unable to impress your client in the very first few moments of your meeting, it could well end the relationship permanently. Here are a few hints to impress:

1.  Attire: Do not where any attire that is remotely outlandish. You aren’t headed for a party! Wear simple business outfits that enhance your image as a professional. Your face is the first thing your client is going to see. Keep your hair combed back neatly; your eyes warmly expressive and wear a broad reassuring friendly SMILE!

2. Body Language: Don’t meet your client with a put-on swagger or looking like you’re just about to enter a boxing ring! Walk up to him with measured, unhurried steps steeped in confidence. Shake his hand warmly while introducing yourself. Hand him your business card. Look into his eyes when speaking to him and not furtively around the room. Wait till he requests you to sit down. Don’t grab a chair right away. And don’t forget that SMILE!

3.  Conversation: Don’t attempt to get sociable immediately. Don’t rush it. If your conversation is well measured, it will eventually happen. Instead, briefly tell him about yourself and the work you do. Be precise. You are not about to write a lengthy essay. Eventually introduce him to your organization and then let him begin asking the questions. Let him do most of the talking hereafter. Don’t forget: you are a solutions provider and unless you don’t discover what your client’s challenges are, you will not be able to offer solutions. So it’s imperative you train yourself to be a GOOD LISTENER. And keep occasionally SMILING!

4.  Respectful: This is important. Always give your client a strong feeling of respect for who he is. Everyone warms up when they are respected for who they are. Self-Respect is something that naturally exists within all of us and we unconsciously need it never to be insulted. Disrespect can switch a positive relationship to a negative one as quickly as you could snap your fingers!

Once you have positively introduced yourself and your organization and are enjoying a good conversation with your client it is time to begin to probe.

Probing:

Many BDEs believe that probing is an art. I don’t think so. As human beings we are naturally inquisitive and hence good ‘probers’! So what is ‘arty’ about it? But yes, we need to be cautious in terms of how much to probe by curtailing our levels of inquisitiveness as we proceed probing our clients. An over-excess of it can be detrimental to all honest efforts in probing.

Probing is a very sensitive thing to do. And this may be a reason why most BDEs call it an ‘Art’. When trying to understand the present challenges your client is facing and the reasons why he believes that your product can plug it all, keep your conversation around the most salient features of your product and your understanding of how it can benefit your client by carefully listening to his challenges.

At this juncture, I would advise all BDEs to view ‘LISTENING’ as an art instead of ‘probing’ as one! Most BDEs I have come across get so enthusiastic about their product explanations that they shift from genuine listening to uncontrolled lecturing at the drop of a hat during a client discussion. Never forget: you are a solutions provider and if you don’t listen carefully or patiently, there are no solutions you will be able to provide with your product to your client.

Next, make notes as you speak with your client. Make a note of every important point he stresses on. This has two advantages: One, he knows you are listening to him attentively enough to note down every concern of his. And two, these notes will help you create a rocking presentation on how your product can fill the gaps he has just expressed during your next product presentation or negotiation meeting with him.

Remember that probing for information from your client should always be done fearlessly and precisely. After all, that is the reason why your client has decided to meet with you. He has a concern and you have a solution. It really is that simple!

Ciao for now! See you all next Monday when we journey on to understand how to give a world class presentation on your second meeting with your client as Business Development Gladiators!!

Anand K Nair

Leadership & Motivational Speaker. Mentor. Counselor. Author. Educationist. Business Consultant.

Founder,

Anand Nair Leadership Foundation

www.facebook.com/anandnairleadershipfoundation

Author of: The Sledgehammer's Edge