Sales & Sports

There are a lot of similarities between Sports and Sales.

Top performers in both areas show a lot of grit, commitment, dedication, creativity, teamwork, focus, and have access to the right playbooks, guidance, and coaching.

When we started Nektar.ai, we wanted to see how we can learn from the principles behind high-level sports performance and apply them using technology towards:

1) Improving sales productivity while taking away the administrative and cognitive burden of dealing with CRM,

2) Removing friction during internal collaboration with the internal GTM team,

3) Learning from the best practices of the peer group,

4) Getting extremely motivated to hit their goal aka number?

From the day we started last year, we continue to make great progress on the product as we iterate and reimagine the future of modern #b2bsales, meanwhile, I wanted to test these first principles on myself to see whether the psychology of guided selling or for that matter guided anything will work.

To do that, I shortlisted 2 fitness apps (one for running and one for nutrition) that guide the user to take progressive micro-steps and potentially improve on a daily basis.

I started with the running app. I had resumed running after a break of 5 years and as expected struggled initially. But I believed in the power of coaching and started following the daily motivation and the step-by-step guidance I got on the app.

Gradually, I started enjoying every minute, every mile of it and ran almost every day of 2020 clocking over 1000 Kms in the year compared to barely 2km in Feb 2020.

I took a goal to run 16 km on the 16th Feb 2021 to celebrate my birthday differently and continued to work towards that daily getting constantly guided by just one thing- motivation to hit that goal.

And this is what happened today.

I got up at 5 am in the morning and ran towards smashing that goal, keeping in mind what I had learned and practiced daily for the last few months.

This has established my belief that if the technology is built and executed for a use case contextually, it can surely boost performance and productivity.

I have become a living example and beneficiary of the same and can't wait to see how this applies to boosting sales productivity.

The concept of guided selling using the best practices that exist within the organization and gets curated into winning sales playbooks is at the very foundation of Nektar.ai and we are excited to see how we can replicate a similar success for our users and customers as we launch for general availability and give the platform into the hands of the salespeople globally.

Stay Tuned. I will keep you updated on my journey with the fitness app as I start using that and also the much-awaited general availability of Nektar.ai.

You can still register for early access to Nektar.ai here

Happy Selling!