Author: Shiwen, Master of MBA 2012, Founder & CEO of Suzhou Shishi Jewelry Ltd. Company, Founder of Miss Pearl

Have you ever been turned down during job hunting?

Or got any friends, who are excellent,

But still end alone with no wife or husband?

Where do we actually go wrong?

Founder of Tsutaya Bookstore, Muneaki Masuda once pointed out:

“Selling is to a company as living to the human being.”

Selling definitely matters a lot.

Business won’t survive if products even fantastic ones hardly sell.

What does selling mean to us as individuals then?

With 20-year experience in sales,

Alumini Shiwen here shares:

Why everyone needs to know how to sell?

Following is the speech

by Shiwen at TEDxZhengZhou in October, 2019

I’ve gone through three stages. During the first decade of B2B, I adopted zero-sum thinking. After finishing MBA courses, I took on win-win thinking. However it is when I began to restructure business in 2015 that I realized ecological thinking was a necessity if we aimed at the ultimate victory.

So what’s zero-sum thinking? It’s actually the game thinking. Take an apple for example, if I have more of it, you’ll have less and vice versa. It is in fact price competition, a price game. Upon graduation from university in 1999, I dedicated myself to foreign trade. I enjoyed and took pride in doing business with foreigners in English and have been engaged in this trade for 2 decades.

It took me ten years to generate sales of 500 million from scratch. I personally attributed this to my love of this career, being so keen on clothing and foreign trade that drives me to be more and more sophisticated. And clients always stay touch with me.

During this decade, two negotiations uplifted my selling ability significantly.

One was in 2006 when one of our clients started group-wide purchasing strategies and had McKinsey, the top-notch consultancy in the world, to negotiate with us. I was unsure about this negotiation and got quite anxious because this was my only client and I needed their order desperately. However, that was a first and I knew literally nothing about negotiation. Being cornered, I had to resort to our President in China for help via mobile phone text message. WeChat was not created yet back that time. Our President replied the bottom line was that we didn’t do business that would lose money. That got me clam down and start working on how to stick to this bottom line without hurting feelings during the negotiation. Beyond expectations, we beat our competitors, ranking first and our sales surged from 2006 through 2008.

But not for long, the market changed and sales plummeted after the financial crisis. Our factory downsized 2,000 staff with only 1,000 left and thus was not capable enough to deliver bulk orders. The dilemma was that our clients insisted because they believed the market would bounce back after 2009. So they placed an order worth 10 million dollars, which even exceeded the largest in 2008. Since we could only deliver one third of the order, I was tasked to negotiate with our client to raise the price by 8 percent, by which I gathered our client wouldn’t accept. Initially I tried asking for 20 percent and our client agreed on 11 percent at most. It was totally fine but I reckoned there was still room for more. So I said no to our client and they again compromised and then offered 13 percent. I decided to hold on. They gave me 30 minutes to make a final decision. I panicked and each second was torture to me. I was afraid I would annoy them and end with no order at all. When I was about to contact them during the last two minutes, I received a call from London, offering me 17 percent. I gathered my composure and promised I would report it to higher management for final decision. Hanging up, I was swept away with by the surprise: I earned 5 million more just because of this last one minute!

This negotiation was a big success. But in the shadow of the finance crisis, the future was not bright. What should we do? I was deeply lost. That’s why I decide to get out of my comfort zone and go back to school to find out how to stay competitive and increase sales.

Negotiations simply based on price no longer work. It came upon me during the 4 years on campus that in future we got to have win-win thinking to succeed.

Out of offers from Nanjing University, Xiamen University and Tongji-Manchester University, I chose Tongji-Manchester University’s MBA program after deliberation. This was because I was in foreign trade business and there was only one opportunity for me in my whole life to get back to school. I’d better learn from the one that suited me best. I learnt to know more about our clients, not just their requirements but also themselves.

“Original Thinking, Learning by Doing”, the motto of Manchester University have cast a profound influence over me. It keeps crossing my mind. Learning is productivity. But learning is nothing if it cannot be turned into productivity. We must think independently. That was why I brought business cases into class. When processing theories I usually discussed these cases with Chinese professors, English professors and classmates, trying to discover the logic behind them, the actions we shouldn’t do and should have done and figure out what we should do in future to improve competitiveness. After discussions in class, I shared these theories back at work with my colleagues and exchanged our views. Combining theoretical simulation and practical operation, I gradually had a picture of how to keep competitive.

As a matter of fact, learning is a process for you to redefine, accept and shape yourself. Only when you know yourself deeply, understand your own competitiveness and shortcomings can you accept yourself, rebuild yourself and discover opportunities. This is true not only to individuals, but also to businesses.

From 2015 to 2019, I orchestrated business transformation. The future lies in creation of value and ecological thinking started growing on me.

Putting theories learnt from MBA courses into business practices, I have created more value and interacted with clients more efficiently. Simple organizational structure enhances efficiency of operation. Project management takes good care of each order. Outstanding compensation system drives each team member to be dedicated because project operation and the interest of every employee are closely bound.

Even though the business transformation has paid off, each business has its own limitations. I can make adjustments but cannot change it in a profound way. It’s like a tree was planted and has grown into a big one. It’s unlikely to make breakthroughs and crisis probably awaits it. The value we created doesn’t last. So again what should we do? This time I took a broader view.

I originally intended to enter China’s market via OEM. This approach didn’t work out as we were not ready. Our business couldn’t cope with this. This got me thinking. Besides this apple tree, are there any other trees? Constantly staying vigilant and observant is my approach to cope.

Jack Ma noted, “E-commerce is dying and new retail is coming.” What can we do in this business environment? We’ve already missed out our chances in B2B. Are we going to have our share in new retail and social commerce?

Once I came upon a bottle of Dior perfume on a social platform, priced at 99. I travelled a lot and knew it cost a little over 300 overseas. At the very start, I doubted if it was genuine Dior and I purchased one, finding out it was indeed Dior. That was a big price gap and it would sell well. So I made a try. 240 bottles were sold within 3 weeks, which astonished me and prompted me to find out why. Firstly, clients trust and believe me. I have endorsements and relevant experiences. Secondly, the price meets their expectations. They deemed the price was reasonable. Thirdly, I created a scene, bringing them endless imagination. Here is the ad I used: You can tell a woman by her scent and each deserves a bottle of perfume. Don’t you want to have a bottle of Dior perfume with only 99? This intrigued people’s desire to get their first.

In the following year I attended the sales competition again. Within 3 weeks I sold out memberships priced at 1,688 to 300 stores with a turnover of 500,000 and a profit of 300,000. That again surprised me. Keeping figuring out what clients wanted I made rapid progress in sales. And I realized we could plant banana tree, orange tree and pineapple tree besides apple tree. There is a lot around us worthy being noted and shared. In this way more value can be gained.

My minded opened since then. Take business administration for example. We use SaaS system developed by Xiaoman Technology for customer relationship management. This frees a lot labor force and enhances efficiency of the whole sales team. I shared this in my WeChat moments and inspired many employers to take a look at the system. I understand clients’ pain points and know from my own experience the problems the system can solve. My recommendation works way better than Xiaoman’s sales pitch. What’s more, training is crucial to business administration. Private enterprises lack training, especially in our garment manufacturing industry. And you cannot depend on me myself to do all the training and what choices we are left. Chazuo Institute offers various courses at a reasonable price. The courses are well organized and easy to follow. We tried before recommending it to friends. They too found it a good way to solve the problem. We should pay attention to things worthy being shared around us and let others enjoy too. When we discover and spread these things, solve problems, we are in fact creating value.

In nature the core of social commerce is human-centered consumption upgrading. Everyone is self-centered. We are not the center of the world but we can be center of ourselves. Further to our own business, we also need to stay sensitive to the whole society. We need to spot things of value and pain points around us. We share and help solve people’s problems. In this way we gain more value while delivering it. In the harmonious relationship we are indispensable to others and keep gaining their trust in us. The whole society will be very harmonious.

Thank you!