To succeed in life one needs two skills only: people skills and selling skills. According to Mr Shiv Khera, author and motivational speaker, as one goes up the corporate ladder, people skills become even more important. “People skills are 90 per cent of what you do, tech skills are only 10 per cent,” he emphasised.

In a talk sprinkled with advice, exhortations and asides, at the launch of his book You can Sell, organised by the Madras Management Association in association with Westland Ltd, Mr Khera told an audience hanging on to his words, that everybody is selling all the time. “Anybody who talks about a product or service is selling. Based on this definition, who's not selling? We are always selling either for or against ourselves. Success or failure depends on our ability or inability to sell,” he elaborated.

Values

Mr Khera said selling skills need to be on a bedrock of three values: integrity, respect and responsibility. “These are one's core values, the rest are all supporting values,” he emphasised. He was dismissive of MBAs, saying integrity to him was more important than a degree.

In selling one needs to learn the principles of selling, not tactics, as the former is based on a foundation of integrity, he said. “Tactics are manipulative,” he said. Selling he defined as “transfer of enthusiasm from seller to buyer. Ninety per cent of selling is conviction and 10 per cent is persuasion.”

Mr Khera was emphatic that organisations don't have business problems, but people problems. “Solving people problems can solve your business problems,” he said.

Elaborating on positive thinking, Mr Khera said it alone does not lead to success. “Being positive is a supplement, not a substitute for action,” he said. He said less than three per cent of people have goals. “A goal is a dream with a deadline. Where are the people who don't have goals headed? Those 97 per cent end up working for the three per cent,” he said, to much mirth.

vinaykamath@thehindu.co.in

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