spent the better part of this afternoon in a meeting with my boss and a colleague. and it served like a wake up call, like a stinging slap in the face. haha!
for those of you who don’t know me or my line of work here is a brief summary. i’m a petite asian, working as a technical representative in a mostly male dominated industry. well, to be fair, most of my competitor’s are also female but our customer’s are mostly male. the owners of the manufacturing plants that we cater to.
so, as i am fairly new in the business, some give me a hard time before they would start listening to me. something that is pretty understandable because, in the sales industry, customers have to be able to trust you first before they could trust what you sell.
and this afternoon served as a stinging wake up call because my boss made us realize how huge our target is for the year. meaning one and only one thing. we need to be selling as much as we could, as early as we could. in short, we really need to work our asses off in order to perform well.
why? for the main reason that most of our products are not price-competitive. sure, most (if not all) of them are top quality raw materials but that’s not the only thing that our customers look at when they consider a particular raw material. they also look at price competitiveness and this is where we lose most of our edge.
so, between a top-of-the-line but expensive raw material or a mediocre but affordable raw one, most clients would opt for the latter. and this is where “working-your-ass-off” would be a big help. we need to forge a good relationship with our customers so they would, at least, look the other way when the prices of our products are a bit higher than others.
the thing is, there are times when even the strongest bond of friendship is not enough to make them look the other way. and this is when some even more serious ass work-out is needed.
so, it’s time to heed the wake-up call, face the music, and sharpen those butt-cheeks in preparation for a whole year of stressful yet fun work.
shakenotstired 