Aim for the stars; only then you'll reach the Tree tops...

It was the year 2000 when I started my first sales job in Delhi. While I had done some internships and other assignments during my college days; but this was my first full time assignment and that too in sales. I joined a DSA for Standard Chartered Bank and we were supposed to sell Current Accounts with a minimum starting balance of INR 50,000/- with a target of minimum 3 sales per month. Now that was a tough sales target, considering the early 2000 era (it was definitely a very high-ticket sales format). I started on 1st Jan 2000 and was trained for about 2-3 days on the product & process and some basic sales techniques.

When I sat at my workstation post training, I saw a Target sheet pinned up on the soft board right in front of me which had the target slabs along with the incentive amount.

1 Sale – Rs. 1000

2 Sales – Rs. 2000

3 Sales – Rs. 5000

In the very first moment, my eyes struck on the amount Rs. 5000/ because that was even higher than my monthly salary at that time. So I borrowed a Red marker from my Team leader and circled the third slab – 3 Sales = Rs. 5000/-

The entire month passed by and to everyone’s surprise, I clocked in 3 Sales. Wow, I was so happy that day. Everyone was amazed that a new associate, who in her first month of calling, clocked in the highest target slab, which no one in the team had done till now.

It was a moment of celebration; so much so that the CEO of the company (Mr. Nitin Sawhney) came out of his cabin and applauded me in front of everyone.

Then on 1st Feb I received a fresh target sheet which had sales target starting from 3 sales right upto 7 and the corresponding incentive amount was also very lucrative. Again, I circled the last slab from that sheet and started running for that. In the month of Feb again, I clocked in 7 sales, the highest ever in the center so far. I not only received accolades from everyone including all my seniors, but also was I the talk of the town now. Some people even hated me because their sales target went up because of me; and surprisingly, the same team which never clocked in more than 2 sales each, was now logging 3-5 sales per person.

Come March and my CEO called me to his cabin to handover my separate target sheet. This time the target number started from 7 going up to 10; and he did the honors this time by circling the last slab for me. Well, I started running for that as well, as by now, I was enjoying the name, fame and also the money coming in to my account.

This went on for good 7 months and the last I remember, I clocked in 36 sales for the month of July 2000; the highest ever Current account sales done by a single associate PAN India. There was a grand celebration party planned for this achievement and the North Region Sales Head had personally come down to felicitate my performance and handover the trophy and incentive cheque to me.

Till that day, I didn’t know what was the reason of my achievement and the entire team’s achievement as well, until my CEO gave a thank you speech. He said something which has been lodged in my mind ever since. He said “Aim for the stars; only then you will reach the tree tops.” That statement just enlightened me; and I knew that he had decoded my pattern and helped me leverage it to my full potential. Then he went on to say “I knew from the very first day that Swati will be a star performer, because I saw the way she looked at her target. When she circled the target, she kept her eyes only on that number, with complete precision. With the kind of determination, how can someone not achieve what they desire.” He also went on to say “just because of Swati’s achievements, I could give the other team members also higher targets and they aimed for it; in the bargain reached at least mid-way, which was completely out of scope till about 6 months back” ???

That day I realized how a leader can enhance your skills and performance just by closely identifying & decoding your learning and working pattern. He beautifully did that with me and also my other team members.

Do you remember any such leader who has enlightened you in your life??