Sharing Life Lessons
Effective leaders are essentially story tellers: and Subroto Bagchi is no exception. It is famously said “leaders are ordinary people who have discovered the power to inspire others through story telling”. This describes the author and his life’s work - much of which is reflected in Bagchi’s Sell: The Art, The Science, The Witchcraft.
In companies like Xerox – where I earned my stripes – all executives were trained to be salesmen. This was ingrained in us through TQM frameworks like Kaizen, which defined the concepts of “internal” customers way back in the early 1980s to press home the point that all functions are essentially selling some product or service and the necessity of viewing their roles as such. This, thus, became a second nature for most Xerox alumni of our generation.
Bagchi, who honestly defines his core skill as that of a salesman, attempts to do precisely this in the book with the benefit of his own experience gathered in the streets of Ghaziabad, Lucknow and California. He generously uses anecdotes from various walks of life garnered from people who have crossed his path to make definitive points in shaping the narrative. It is an easy read, written in his lucid, fluent style and filled with anecdotal wisdom though it could be argued that many episodes are retrofitted to clinch the argument with the benefit of hindsight.
I would have thus also liked to read about some instances where, despite such phenomenal sales abilities, the final outcomes in real life were far from desirable, and the learnings thereof. Having been his colleague in Wipro, and who replaced him in Lucent Technologies, this would have been especially enlightening given the success of Mindtree (which Bagchi co-founded in 1999) later, though that, too, had some well publicised situations where many of the principles espoused in the book could be debated. His honest perspective on such situations would have been invaluable in adding credibility to the core argument.
I am unsure of the positioning of the book though as most anecdotes from his personal journey are from the world of large, complex solution sales, which will be difficult to contextualise for the non-corporate, uninitiated reader who would perhaps derive the maximum value from imbibing the principles enunciated in the book by reskilling themselves while selling used automobiles, garments or insurance in the bye lanes of real India. For the seasoned corporate honcho though, it seemingly lacks the depth and promise of a fresh, insightful perspective to retain sustainable interest. For a non-MBA, corporate executive, not exposed to training programmes ala Xerox, GE or Unilever, this will serve as a good toolkit to understand the big picture and provide inspiration to delve deeper into their self-improvement goals.
Sell will undoubtedly provide immense benefit for those who use its broad principles and have the ability to apply in their own spheres while reflecting in the context of their own experiences and situations.
