3 years, 6 Managers ~ Relationships helping me not to fall apart!

For the last 3 years, I have been fortunate to have worked under six immensely humble and learned managers. Though it’s rightly said, People don’t leave jobs, they leave their managers, the side we do not talk about is how managers really hold all of us together pushing us to the extent we don’t know we were capable of. Here is my journey of taking chances, failing miserably, and standing up-right again — because I had the right mentors when I needed them the most.

I had joined Lead Squared, approximately 3 years ago as an Intern, switched different profiles within the company to finally work as a Customer Success professional. Different roles come with different responsibilities and hence, learning in abundance. Since, learning is a process, switching between different profiles helped me gain knowledge not only about LeadSquared as a product but also learning about the different business process within the organisation and the customers’.

All of us plan things in our heads for ourselves stepping up ladders, but managers always have a different view for you, judging your capabilities. In the past 3 years, I surely have learned about my emotional and professional strengths only because I had my managers with me, pushing my limits.

Consolidating below, how I came out of my shell and leveraged the learnings to serve clients.

1. Do not underestimate yourself — I used to stammer initially when on calls. But being in sales demands a pitch that can be understood by others. It failed for quite sometime when I used to get on a call and couldn’t deliver a perfect one. But my manager made me work on my pitch and made me realise the importance of aligning my words with the prospect’s thinking. Eventually, I started working on myself which resulted in improvements in my pitch and levels of confidence. I learnt how right words can actually turn around the tables and help you create an understanding of the product, adding value in the prospect’s life.
2. Smart Work — You have learned a lot already if you know the difference between Hard Work and Smart Work. Having worked as an intern in sales and contributing to generate revenue, directly I was given a responsibility to automate the process for Inbound Leads for India depending to the quality of the prospects. With this, the responsibility of understanding the flow and automating it came along. The faith a manager shows in a fresher to let transform a process pumps up the confidence to the levels no one can imagine. Also, automating the Inbound flow not only pushed the cold/warm leads to move through a nurturing flow but let me focus on the hot ones. Thus, increasing productivity by 33%.
3. Creating value with Consistency and Excellence: Early 2018 came with a lot of promises and one I made to myself was to learn to sell online! I started working towards it and took small steps in converting the potential prospects to customers. Creating value for a prospect and providing him with solutions to help them grow and what he paid for translates in your growth too. The belief my manager showed for my opinions and ideas, is what everyone would need. A sense of ‘creating value’ makes you invest your abilities consciously in everything you do, with an intention to create the best out of your capabilities and drive it to excellence. With time, I started completing my targets for each quarter and was able to directly contribute to revenue by converting 10% of 300 hot prospects. Sometimes, rigorous follow-ups yielded the conversions and sometimes patience, where the customer took almost 3 months to convert a deal.
4. Voice your Opinion : The manager who can inculcate a behaviour of questioning the decisions which he or the management takes for you — I feel is the one who actually deserves to own that post. I had been inquisitive, but it took me a manager’s perspective to understand how feedback is important for an organisation too. Being opinionated not only helps them but yourself to find the rights/wrongs in a decision.

With all this, I not only had managers who nurtured me into a professional with ethics, but I was able to attain professional stability. The whole learning process had made me whom I am today, believing in 3 essential learnings -

1. Give in your best, whatever challenge you might get. If not successful, you’ll learn a lot. Set goals, work for them.
2. Stay true to yourself, your work — this means integrity. Do the right thing, even when no one’s watching.
3. Be a good person, built rapport. The customers stick to a product because of the relationship we offer them.

:)