Insights

Insights

Top Soft Skills in Workplace for 2023 & Beyond

Few days back (somewhere near the end of May 2023) I have been reading an Article in Economic Times Titled “Six Must Have Soft Skills for Freshers in 2023”. The article is based on a Prediction by Deloitte which states “soft skill intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030.” They identified 6 Must Have Soft skills in today’s workplace as Collaboration, Decisiveness, Creativity, Strong Communication, Adaptability and Emotional Intelligence. I created an Acronym for myself to remember these 6 Must Have skills & that is ACCCDE (To read as ATrippleCDE) : Adaptability, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Decisiveness & Emotional Intelligence.

After finishing this wonderful Article I felt myself non-fulfilling & had been trying to figure out what’s missing!

It didn’t take much time to get that one single skill which must be added to the above 6 skills & that is PRODUCTIVITY; my Acronym now changes to ACCCDEP (To read as ATrippleCDEP). Yes! I believe firmly that Productivity is extremely critical & important skill in workplace! In today’s world full of instruments of distractions surrounding us pulling all of us in diverse directions every moment has all the potential to make us Non-productive. On top of this, think of the expectations of organisations & customers demanding “more for less” and “faster than ever before”; the only way to fulfil the expectation is increasing Productivity. Too many things triggering our thoughts every moment is leading us in a state where everybody is Busy. People perception of success has been changed – sign of “busyness” is perceived as success. In such scenarios success of business is not “busyness” but being Productive.
When input is becoming costly, whether it is material, manpower or money, the only way for business to be successful & gain competitive advantage is increasing Productivity. This article is all about skills required for workplace & hence let’s think of manpower as the input. RAIN Group USA did a research which revealed that 71% of company leaders don’t believe their sellers manage their time and day effectively to become productive. This means only 29% of the sellers are productive. In another research on Top performing Sellers by RAIN Group revealed that there is a strong correlation between Productivity & Top Performance, i.e. Top performers are much more productive than the rest. Research also said that Extremely Productive sellers spend 1.8 more productive hours per day than the Rest.
Now, let’s do a math on the basis of the above research-based data. Let’s think of a sales manager’s team of 10 sellers having a mix of 3 extremely productive sellers (in line with the research) & 7 are the average rest. So if all the 7 average rest sellers can increase their productive time by 1.8 hours per day, that will translate to extra 63 hours per week and 3276 extra hours per year (assumptions here are 1 year = 52 weeks, one week = 5 working days & 8 working hours per day). This is equivalent to working hours of 1.5 sellers for the full year. Think of an organisation having 100 sellers whose business plan is aggressive revenue growth which necessitates to add 20% more head count but having the constraint of less budget not meeting the 20 additional headcount requirements. The best solution @hand is investing on sales training to existing sellers to drive productivity; in our example above productivity increase itself is equivalent to 15 additional headcount leaving the organisation to recruit just 5 additional sellers to reach the planned revenue growth goal.
Another no 1 challenge many organisations, especially MSMEs, are facing now is to recruit right sales talent & onboarding them with competency very quickly to get output very fast. The best way to get results as desired here is to go beyond providing Internal Company induction training alone which is necessary but it delves on the hard skills on the features and benefits of products & services of the Organisation. Winning sales in this era of complex buying & aggressive competition driving Value is at the core of success; sellers are the key differentiator in today’s competitive world where even the high tech products & services are commoditised. The HR, Sales & Sales Enablement Leaders must invest in building and developing the selling skills augmenting the Productivity skill in the curriculum. Last but not the least is selection of the right sales training partner compatible with the organisations’ DNA who promises assured results post the training which will make life easier for the leaders.

“The article is little modified by the Author himself; author of this Article is Abanibhusan Bera – Founder of BCS which posted in LinkedIn on 31st May 2023”

MSME Business Headache – There’s a Solution Called MSME Business Advantage

It’s a great boon for those who are registered as MSME in India which, as per data & information publicly available, contribute 30% of GDP of our Country.  Think of the numbers of such MSMEs in Indian landscape now – that’s whooping 63 million. It’s also known that there are lot of benefits designed for MSMEs to help them grow but the question remains, are all those external leverages leading to Growth of MSMEs as desired? This question is always striking me more and more as I tried to know for this sector through my own research & talking personally.

All the advantages & benefits to MSMEs are external to the entities which can help only those who have the organizational “intrinsic strength & immunity” to reap the benefits from external environment.
What can be thought of as a challenge or headache in the face value has also it’s flip side – it has its own advantage if perceived differently and established accordingly. Let’s say, it’s often said & also shared by many MSME Entrepreneurs that they have talent hiring & retention headache! This is half the story, since there is another half which is not being looked at. Some of the questions which you need to answer as an entrepreneur like how is your branding & visibility, how are you creating your job ads, how great is your hiring & onboarding process, how you are creating employee loyalty through your culture which inculcates learning, training & upskilling to engage and retain them, are just to mention a few. All the perceived obstacles can be turned into your Small Business Hiring advantage with minimal effort in terms of both TIME & MONEY. What you need is to identify a knowledgeable expert advisor who can help you through collaborative discussion with you.
There will be more such items of perceived obstacles which can be turned into advantage through the collaborative activity between an entrepreneur & a trusted advisor.

Another important challenge for MSMEs is Growth & Profitability. This is the one singular area which is very critical & important to an entrepreneur. Now the question is, do you have the right revenue strategy in place including the growth strategy? The revenue Growth is dependent on few important factors, e.g., developing an affordable but yet impactful marketing & branding strategy, creating a Top performing Sales Team, deciding the top 2—3 Strategic Initiatives which must be made successful through the sales team following a model of Execution, improving productivity of sellers as well as productivity in areas having scope for improvement.

The mission of Bera Consultancy Services is to serve predominantly the MSME sectors to help them break the shackles of PAIN to Unlock their growth potential through Consulting, Training, & Coaching. We use BRASSPOT approach, SIESMIC Revenue Strategy Model with GAME Execution Framework. which contains SIESMIC Strategy & GAME Framework & many more.

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Digitalization Advantage of MSME OEMs – Improved Customer Loyalty & Profit Margin

Let’s think of a hypothetical situation wherein an OEM won an export deal with competitive bidding having a 3-year extended warranty beyond standard warranty of 1 year. Based on history in very few occasions a service engineers are deputed within the warranty period; however, in this deal the OEM had to depute service engineers twice within the warranty period

As a machine builder or an OEM, you must create a service model that transitions from reactive to proactive mode of operation through innovation provided by digitalization. Making the availability of data of machines and assets remotely to the service technician can enable him to fix the issues of machines which tripped unexpectedly, or showing any other abnormalities.

Just by the adoption of technology to enable remote monitoring can not only save time & money in terms of providing a service engineer but by reducing downtime you help customer to run the plant with higher productivity; it’s like “killing two birds in one stone” – making you and your customer profitable and also gaining customer loyalty.

As a part of our mission to help MSME OEMs in creating roadmap for success to achieve the outcome of increased profit margin and customer loyalty, we have created a service model called DigiVision. Over & above providing the digital strategy, we can help you in your end-to-end implementation solution through our expert partner ecosystem starting from your shopfloor level to business systems.

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What are the keys to Success of Small & Medium Professional Services Firm

We are living in an age which is changing at rapid pace in terms of market, opportunities, buyer’s behaviour, buying psychology, challenges and many more, majority of such changes are driven by disruptive technologies. In yesteryears, selling has been easy & simpler, market place has been much less crowded offering reasonable Pie for all vendors because of limited choices to the buyers, less commoditization of products and services and many more. Now everything is just the opposite with reference to yesteryears.

The challenges become more apparent to the professional services firm especially those which falls under MSMEs and many of which are solopreneurs. How such firms can be successful by maintaining sustainable growth Year over Year depends on firm’s ability of creating visibility of their expertise & personal branding of the professionals of those firms.

Creating visibility of firm’s expertise & also their professionals’ expertise has to be the topmost priority of the Leader as it needs research & planning to build strategy, make strategy to work & evaluating the performance for continuous improvement and course correction.

brandingNvisibility services from us can help you in making your firm’s expertise visible leading your firm to be a highly growth oriented.”

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How an expert working professional can continue financial freedom in current volatile job market

What’s the recent trend in corporate world with reference to the job security? Can performance alone act to safeguard one’s job? What if someone has been doing extremely well in his job & consistently performing above par, had the feeling of security because his boss had always patted on his back for his performance but still lost his job; the person couldn’t even arrive @any conclusion on why he lost his job in spite of fulfilling 100% of the tasks of his role coupled with above par performance. In reality, it’s not easy to find out the reasons on why you are the person who had to bite the bullet in spite of being a great performer.

In such scenarios the professionals who have specific expertise in specific domains and functions, can truly create alternate fallback option to ensure financial independence.

Such expert professionals must continuously develop the expertise, make plan to create visibility of the expertise & his or her Personal Branding. (S)he must establish himself and herself as an expert through visibility through social marketing so that organizations and/or individuals reach them for taking help of their expertise to solve problems.

brandingNvisibility is our services to help you create your personal branding and make your expertise visible through deep diving with you and working in collaboration to understand your expertise, how to differentiate and position & create outreach strategy for lead generation.

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