Osama on Salesmanship
Movies thorough the years have echoed the realities, thoughts, fashions, fears & histories of our times. While the movies have always had a lot of lessons to offer about leadership, humanity, friendship, love and even hatred, very seldom does one come across a motion picture that has something in it about salesmanship.
The movie I saw recently is a take-off on Osama bin laden look alike and a small town reporter, Ali, who crafts a fake interview to meet his aim of going abroad. In his endeavor, Ali is faced with the difficult task of getting different personalities needed to make this interview a reality, see the goal as one. However, realizing that, he does not possess all the capabilities himself; he works on getting their buy-in and in the end creates a sell-able tape of the interview. He learns early on, that to succeed in his goals; he needs to lean on his colleagues & his client (Osama look alike poultry farmer). In reality a lot of, sales professionals, try to run opportunities themselves without using the help from resources that are available to them. We as sales professionals, do not realize that we would be able to create something that is more sell-able & of higher value, if we use the combined expertise & experience of people within our organization & partner ecosystem. While organizations build the ecosystem & tools for us to succeed, most of us are wary of leaning on others in their organization and want to drive the opportunities ourselves and often acting as lone rangers.
Also a key lesson was the fact that while all the people involved in the plot had different priorities, Ali was able to get his goals on their agenda. Ali realized that different people have their own aspirations & ambitions in life and it was important for them to somehow see his project helping them further their agenda’s. The make-up artist’s priority was to open a saloon, the editor wanted to earn money to quit his job, the voice over artist wanted to have his real feelings heard. Ali was able to show all these different folks how by collaborating with him they would, in fact be able to further their own goals & ambitions. Such was Ali’s, ability to get on people’s agenda that towards the end, he even managed to impress upon Ted( the man entrusted to catch Osama)that he would actually be helping him further his political ambitions by allowing him to complete the fake interview.
While Ali may have followed these two principals of salesmanship inadvertently, we as professional do not need to interview Osama to learn these fundamentals. Whether we sell soaps or spacecraft, we need to be aware that we will deliver a more valuable offering to our clients by taking assistance, knowledge & inputs from our colleagues & partners. And no matter how good a salesman you might be, you are unlikely to meet your objectives if you cannot get on to your buyer & other stakeholder’s agenda & priority list.
