Yesterday, I had the privilege to be part of a sales training at Sunway Resort Hotel next to Sunway Pyramid. The event was organized by ECS Pericomp together with Oracle. I did some Googling and found out that ECS Pericomp was just appointed as Oracle’s Value Added Distributor last month. Since the company I work with is a partner in some other products they are representing, they’ve invited us to come for this event. Becoming a business partner is not an easy task, my guess is they are looking for alliances with the others for them to achieve their sales target. Basically, leveraging on other people’s contacts, time and energy is the best way to kickstart their venture I supposed.
I wished the event was held after the fasting month, this was because I could have enjoyed the drinks and meal that were provided. ;-) Anyway, since I arrived at the place early (The event was supposed to start at 9am but the majority of the people invited only came in at around 10pm), I’ve gotten myself one movie voucher at Cathay Cineplexes (Thanks ECS).
4 years ago, I had the opportunity to come an Oracle event also at Sunway. You can refer to my blog post here. That was like a long time ago when I was just started off in the technology area. Bringing back the memory, I wrote that I was going to get an IT degree. Well that didn’t happen because it was just too expensive at that time. My mother just last week asked me whether I did think about continuing my studies because my younger brother had plans for it. I replied to her that I wanted to get married first and later on think about it. Then again, what can I gain if I pursue for further studies when all I can get is a better paying job. The question remains, is it a fulfilling one?
Enough about my ramblings, let’s move on to my sales training yesterday. The title of the training was “Oracle Partner Demand Generation Training”. Confused? Me too. It sounded like a name of product but its not. The trainer was a guy from Oracle, Nick Tielman. Before that, we had the Oracle channel’s manager giving a brief of what how Oracle company and product doing these days.
Getting back to the training session. Nick did a great job at presenting his presentation. I really like the first part which is the Goal Setting. That is one aspect that most of us or mainly me neglect the most. The rest is just like the usual sales training but from the aspect of technology industry which I also found is interesting considering I haven’t been on a sales training for a very long time. Anyway, relating this training to my job. I wear many hats in the company that I work with. I can still recall the time when I was a telemarketer and failed badly (this was before I landed at this job right now), it was one of the most difficult job I had ever done. I never enjoyed a moment of it.
Basically what Nick presented was a refresher course for me. However, I love the part where the Customer Relation Management system usage that Oracle themselves are using. I’ve implemented an open source CRM but hardly use it. There’s no harm in trying after learning all of what the sales training has provided, right?
By the way, Nick is from the Oracle application business development unit and what he had said about Oracle’s product is fairly true, with all the 60 acquisitions within 4 years and humongous amount of applications under Oracle’s umbrella, there is no way a salesperson could remember all of them. What they can do is basically get the ball rolling by bringing in pre-sales, consultant and tech-guys into the picture before getting the sales transaction completed.
What I saw yesterday was only just to sell Oracle’s product as if it was a box of software being presented to the customer and we need to close the deal as fast as we can. I am more into looking on how the implementation and services that we can provide because a lot of the clients that I’ve seen doesn’t have a clue on how to operate the software. Apart from that, the services and implementation area are more profitable rather than making a small percentage of profit margins of the product itself. By doing that way, the cash flow business can be sustained longer and the effort can be justified. I am just writing what come into the top of my head here.
Anyway, the sales training is a good approach in knowing what Oracle businesses is. I wonder if entering into Oracle University would be a good move for me. I guess I’ll have to look more into it as I reorganize my own personal goal.
