Great Salesmen Rule the World

Another blue ribbon worthy speech tonight. Awesome. This was delivered by Alan Goon, the President of the ING Leadership Toastmaster's club.

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Great Salesmen Rule the World

Good evening fellow toastmasters.

I believe that Great Salesmen Rule the World.
People who have the ability to sell things, make the most money in this world.They are the most successful in business and they are always ahead of the pack in the workplace. Those who have the gift of selling are also the ones who hold powerful leadership positions in business and in government. In other words, if you want to rule the world, you need to be great at selling a product, selling a vision, selling an idea or maybe more importantly selling yourself.

If salesmen make the most money in this world, then Bill Gates the richest man in this world, must be a great salesman. He definitely was a revolutionary visionary, because way back in 1977 he had a vision of Personal Computers being pervasive in all our lives. This was at a time when computers were the size of a whole room and most people did not know what computers were.Having a great vision is not enough to succeed. You must have the courage and the ability to sell your great idea to others, to make them believe in it and to follow you. Microsoft is where it is today because Bill Gates succeeded in making others follow his vision.

When we talk about great salesmen, another icon of the technology industry comes to mind. Steve Jobs is the definition of a consummate salesman. He can sell ice to Eskimos. He knows what the customer wants and more importantly, he is able to communicate this and make you want to buy whatever he is selling. People queue up to hear Apple’s keynote session when Steve Jobs is supposed to reveal some new product. Everyone wants to hear Steve Jobs sales pitch. Apple is successful because Steve Jobs is such a great salesman. Steve Jobs is a rich man because he has the gift of selling.

If salesmen rule the world, then the most powerful man in the world must be a great salesman. To become the President of the United States, it takes years to sell yourself to your political party to be selected as a candidate for the Presidential elections. The job interview process happens once every 4 years and it is a long drawn out sales campaign to sell yourself to the American voters. No one gets elected President if he is a bad salesman.

Closer to home, recently as a member of the Talent Review Board, we were tasked with selecting 5 fresh graduates as candidates for ING’s Local Management Trainee Program. It was an intensive, detailed selection process. Despite all the IQ tests, the academic records, the job experiences, the psychological profiling, we basically selected people with great presentation skills who managed to sell to us that they were the best candidate for our management program. We were selecting the future leaders of this company and we did that by selecting the best salespersons out of the group.

In conclusion, if u want to be hired for your dream job, if u want to be the richest man in the world, if u want to be a corporate icon, if u want the job as the most powerful man in the world, you need to be a Great salesman.

How do you become a great salesman?

For some, it comes naturally. Some people just have the knack for selling. For others, it can be taught. To be a great Salesman, you need to be a great communicator and a great listener. You need to be able to speak confidently and have the courage to connect and maintain a connection with people you do not know. You need to manage your body language and vary your approach to suit different people. You must be able to think on your feet to handle objections. You need to become a master at persuading others to do what you wish

The good news is that all of you are in the right place tonight. The Toastmasters competent communicator program teaches in a step by step way all the things you need to begin your journey to be a great salesman. Being here tonight means all of you are on the road to Rule the World.

The Coincidental IT Professional

Here's the winning speech for this week. An ice-breaker from our very own IT professional, Mr. Teh KL.
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The Coincidental IT Professional

Toastmaster of the Evening and my fellow toastmasters. Good evening.

Introduction

From the title, you should already know that I will be talking about my ambition. Well, what most of you see in me today is a consummate IT professional but I am using the term coincidental here to highlight the fact it was not by design.

I was born into a large traditional family of 5 girls followed by 3 boys. My 5 elder sisters didn’t have a lot of opportunity for education as my parents basically pinned their hopes on the boys.

As a result, we were all imbued with the thoughts that we should study hard and be a “somebody” when we grow up. From a very young age, I have always wanted to be a doctor.

Why am I not a doctor?

Body

Let me take you back 27 years to 1982 when I was doing my South Australian Matriculation in Taylor’s College. Yeah, I know, that’s how long it has been!

In my application for university admission, I duly put medicine as my 1st and 2nd choices and IT as my 3rd and 4th choices. Why IT? I am not sure but I remembered being told that IT is the job for the future.

To do medicine in Australia, you need an aggregate score of at least 430 out of 500. You see, I have always done well academically and 430 was certainly not beyond me.

However, I didn’t account for the fact that I was doing English Literature rather than English as a 2nd Language in my matriculation program. That means we were learning about Shakespeare rather than grammar, vocabulary and essay writing.

To cut the story short, I failed my English paper and only managed 49 out of 100 giving me a total aggregate score of 394.

I spent 7 years in Australia to learn all I need about IT.

When I came back to Malaysia, my first job was not in IT but to be a banker in Citibank. As a management trainee, I was going through training in various parts of the bank including corporate banking, treasury and consumer banking.
Six months later, I decided that a career in banking is not for me and quit Citibank to venture into business at the age of 26.

Even in business, my 1st venture was not in IT but in education due to influence from my sister who were (and still are) running very successful education institutions.

I did that for 4 years before I exited the education business and made a decent profit. More importantly, this is also where and when I landed the most important catch in my life – my wife!

From the education business, I went on to join the IT subsidiary of INTI to develop the IT business for the education market. Finally, I am going to back my roots in IT. As I was offered a stake in the company, I viewed this as a hybrid of doing business and developing my career.

It was during my tenure here that I first came into contact with ING as a vendor. I also had the privilege to meet the person who eventually played an instrumental role in my career development and personal growth.

My involvement with INTI lasted 4 years before I left and joined ING at the age of 34. So, you can see that I started my career late in life due to my misadventures in the business world.

I have been working here in ING for 10 years and my career progression has been good so far.



Conclusion

If you are a strong believer in karma, you will accept that everything happens for a predestined reason. Like when I failed my English paper, maybe it was because I was not meant to be a doctor. Or when I joined INTI and did the project for ING, maybe it was because I was meant to be in ING!

Well, my title says coincidental which means I am not into karma. I believe that life is often littered with events that require us to make choices along the way. The events and the choices that we make shape the life we live today and in the future.

Whether its karma or coincidental, I can have no regrets.

To Ah is human

Yours truly was the “ ’ah!’ counter” for the day. Ah counter is one of the roles played in the Toastmasters International Club and it’s purpose is mainly for personal growth, i.e. to practise the listening skills. The Ah Counter also helps the speakers get off their crutches and their dependencies on “Pause Fillers” during their presentation.

The role of an Ah Counters is exactly what the Title depicts. I count the number of Ahs that is used in a presenter’s speech. Actually I count other words or sounds such as “Ummm”, “Err”, “La”, “You know”, “So”, “Ok” etc. These are what the people in the public presentation world call “Pause Fillers”. Pause fillers are considered crutches that a speaker use to sustain their speech. In other words, pause fillers are, y’know, the time when you stand out in front of the crowd and you forgot what you wanna say and you start saying,” Ummm”, to break the silence while you try to remember the next line of your speech. Opps… I am also a sinner in this area. I use “Ah”,”Lah”, “Ok”, “Ummm”, ever so often that it has become second nature to me while talking and even while writing. Everyone does it, afterall, to “ah” is human, I mean, to err is human… :) We all do it but with the feedback from the ah counter, we hope that the dependencies on these Pause fillers are reduced if not eliminated.

Incidentally, today we found that even the most experienced speakers uses pause fillers in their speech, subconsciously… So to those new in public speaking don’t despair. Help is on the way. With more practise, we can all get rid of these crutches and stand on our own two feet.

To "ah" is human,
To forgive divine,
Lessons learnt are for a lifetime...

To learn is to change,
To change is to grow,
To grow is to a better tomorrow.

Toast to a better you and me. Cheers.