Some of the best lessons in business don’t come from boardrooms or case studies — they come from an ordinary afternoon, in punishing heat, running errands, you’d rather not be running. That’s exactly what happened to me over the weekend. What began as a lazy Sunday turned into a walking masterclass on what selling really means — and what it doesn’t.

The sample size was tiny: three shops. The conditions were perfect for human behavior to reveal itself: 43 degrees. M Block Market, GK-1. New Delhi. The kind of heat where you question every life decision that brought you outdoors. And then the market became a classroom.

Act 1: The Shops That Didn’t Realize They Were Selling

Scene 1: Depaul’s

For those who grew up coming to Delhi in the 80s, Depaul’s wasn’t just a cold coffee place. It was part of the summer vacation itinerary. Visit relatives. Eat too much. Go to Janpath. Drink Depaul’s coffee.

About twenty-five years back, they opened in GK-1, M Block Market — practically my backyard after I moved to Delhi in 1996.

So, there we were yesterday. Noon. Sweating through our existence. “Do you have cold coffee?” The response was so cold that, for a brief second, I wished it could be bottled and served. “No.” Fair enough.

An hour later, we returned. Now they had coffee. Progress. Except they wouldn’t sell it because they don’t accept UPI payments. Apparently, the owner has decided that cash remains civilization’s highest achievement. We suggested alternatives. Could we transfer the money to someone? Could an employee accept it and settle later? Could there be… any solution? No. Not rude. Just immovable. We walked away exactly the way we had come in. Hot. Thirsty. And now slightly irritated.

Some businesses lose customers because they don’t have demand. Others because they don’t have flexibility.

Act 2: The Man Who Wasn’t Selling Glasses

Scene 2: Seventeen Arcade

Then came Kamran. His family has run Seventeen Arcade for decades. Over the years we’ve spent more time discussing travels and why I look for certain kinds of sunglasses. He has become my default destination whenever I decide to invest in a pair.

Yesterday, though, he wasn’t selling to me. He was selling reading glasses to my friend.

Actually, that’s not true.

He wasn’t selling reading glasses either. He was helping someone discover what looked like them and brought out their personality.

She needed reading glasses delivered within thirty minutes because she had a flight in four hours. That’s what convinced her to step into 43-degree Delhi in the first place.

Frame after frame emerged.

It reminded me of cloth merchants in the 80s. Entire bolts of fabric would be unfolded across the counter. Nobody rushed. Not the buyer. Not the seller. Choosing was part of the ritual. Kamran did exactly that. Patient. Present. Listening to what she said.

More importantly, listening to what she didn’t. After half an hour, a shortlist emerged. Then her eyes wandered towards the branded section. Interestingly, Kamran never once announced a brand name. Never pushed. Never upgraded. He simply asked her to walk over to the full-length mirror. “Go see yourself.” Because he understood something. People don’t buy frames. They buy versions of themselves. Watching her try different pairs, I was also reminded how much research premium brands put into face geometry and fit. The copies imitate the design. But they remain copies, for a reason.

When it came time to pay, Kamran pulled off what magicians would call misdirection. The discount appeared to come because of my three-decade association with him. Whether planned or spontaneous didn’t matter. Everyone walked away feeling good. The purchase felt earned. Not extracted.

Act 3: The Sale That Wasn’t

Scene 3: Color Plus

The store had giant signs announcing: Buy Three. Get Three Free. I entered wanting one formal shirt. Everything else would have been indulgence. The salesman showed me one that fit beautifully. “I’ll take it.” “Oh, sir… this one isn’t part of the sale.” Fine. Need beats discount.

Then I asked to see linen shirts. Nice collection. But as soon as I liked something, I was told that it was not on sale. Then came the masterpiece. He suggested I buy a full-sleeve linen shirt that was on sale… …and simply get the sleeves cut off. That’s not innovation. That’s jugaad wearing a name tag. Full-sleeve and half-sleeve shirts are designed differently. They drape differently. They balance differently. A tailor isn’t a magic wand. I politely declined.

While they were billing my shirt, I asked the salesman and his manager whether they were open to a learning conversation based on something I had observed. Both said yes. The salesman couldn’t quite see beyond the fact that he managed a sale. The manager could. He immediately recognized the gap — in communication, ownership and understanding the customer’s buying journey. We smiled. I paid. I left. One shirt richer. One observation richer too.

The Moral of the Walk

Three shops.

Three transactions.

Three completely different experiences.

One refused to adapt. One never appeared to be selling yet sold beautifully. One had products, offers and discounts — but couldn’t connect the dots.

In 43-degrees of heat, every interaction leaves a taste in your mouth.

Cold coffee you couldn’t buy. Glasses that made someone smile. A shirt that came with an unsolicited lesson in sleeve alteration.

Selling has never really been about the product. It’s about reducing friction. Creating trust. And making people feel just a little better walking out than they did walking in. Yesterday, only one shop truly understood that.

The next time you’re on either side of a counter — selling or buying — it’s worth asking: which of these three shops are you?

Vikram Badhwar, CEO, Syngrity, is a communications coach, an experiential educator, and an artist trying to bridge the gap between the creative and the analytical side of our brain. He consults individuals and teams in the space of learning & development to enable transformations at a personal, professional and organizational level.

The post 43 Degrees, Three Shops, One Lesson on Selling appeared first on Syngrity Transformation Solutions.

I was sitting with some friends last night and having a discussion in a ecstatic state about various emotions etc etc. And one of the things that was brought out was the phrase – ” I am LOVE”. A wonderful phrase and an expression – it is. It sounds like a vessel that is full of water and suddenly, it “appears’ that the water has taken the shape of the vessel – the earthern pot. This is the state that I also relate to the various phrases that I have heard by fello martial artists, dancers, artists- something to the tune of the dancer and the dance are the same, the art and the artist merging and also a stat where the body and the movement seem the same. I love the very thought of this intimate merging of the action and the doer yet it has often taken me down the thinking aisles whether there is anything that exists like this or whether it is a SENSATION and a FEELING that is so overwhelming that the brain stops comprehending the difference between the doer and the action and the emotion from the person.

When someone says “I am happy” , what may be referred to is that the person is experiencing the emotion of happiness at THAT given point of time. Likewise for sadness, jealousy, anger or any other emotion. Here the emoiton and the person become two different entities. Yes, like i mentioned in the pre para that, the sensation can be overwhelming enough to not being able to differentiate. But the love or happiness that one person may feel can and is also felt by the other person sitting thousands of miles away. So is there an external emotive “database”, if I may be allowed to call it so, where the emotions stay. I call the universe, the database for the emotions and when I am opening myself to the emotion, i am filled with the emotion which has been triggered by an external stimuli – an activity, a person, an event etc etc. So, I could be completely sad or completely happy or whatever.

Another point that was brought up was that Love as an emotion has the ability to corrode and corrupt. Maybe, if the properties are changed. In the ideal sense, the benevolence of universe’s love is boundary-less and hence there is love in the first place. The water takes the shape of the vessel because it doesnt fight it. But if I put salt or baking soda or any other substance into the water or tamper with the molecular structure of the water, without making sure that the vessel changes its properties to adapt to changed water, there will be corrosion. If love is left the way it is, and honoured for what it is, maybe it may remain unmoved and uncorrosive. There are a lot of maybe’s because I dont know of any definitive ways of talking about emotions. if the universe is vast and boundary-less, atleast to the common man’s understanding, and emotions are about openness, then how can words – which are structures to depict A SPECIFIC meaning – hence with boundaries describe something so vast as an emotion as Love or any other.

So here I invite all of us – the illiterate amongst the literate class to enjoy this handicap of words!

#warriorsjourney, #syngrity

Vikram Badhwar, CEO, Syngrity, is a communications coach, an experiential educator, and an artist trying to bridge the gap between the creative and the analytical side of our brain. He consults individuals and teams in the space of learning & development to enable transformations at a personal, professional and organizational level.

The post I am happy, Are you? – excerpts from an elevated chat! appeared first on Syngrity Transformation Solutions.

In the process of understanding Meta physics and how our culture functions, I realized that there is no difference between customer service attitude and personal attitude. What was being taught was not really valid in the Indian context. Because being nice to strangers is something we have never struggled with. “Atithi Devo Bhava, Guest is God”. We have always welcomed guests. Some of them stayed on for 250 years. Irrespective of the British invasion, the freedom struggle, the British’s creation of the middle class and the subsequent exploitation of the word, “democracy”, we still continue to extend the generous and pleasant us. It’s in our DNA. So if it is so much a part of us, then why don’t we use it to the fullest? Why do employees of MNC’s dealing globally get scared and intimidated by a non- Indian? Why haven’t we gotten out of the awe of “white skin”? Why do we stammer and stutter when dealing with customers over the phone? Why, inspite of being good and honest workers, barring a few, we are not exceeding expectations of our management all the time.

The truth lies in the oblivion that most Indians live in. The truth lies in the illiteracy among the urban educated class. The truth lies in the social stereotypical conditioning of the Indian mind. The truth lies in the fact that we refuse to look deeply in three qualities that govern a person’s attitude: Sexual preference, Political inclination and religious beliefs. When I was being trained to be a trainer, my mentor cautioned me saying that these topics should never be discussed in a training environment. I listened to him and never spoke about the forbidden fruits for a few years. Till I realized that until people didn’t speak openly or till an environment wasn’t created where individuals felt comfortable in talking brass tacks, they will never get or want to know their own reality. And their reality is “theirs” which they logically deduct while mapping themselves.

Customer service, in an Indian context, is an extension of who we are, how we behave, whom we interact with, what we believe – our personal attitude. Our space has been such where we, at times, have forgone our convenience to keep another happy. We have slept on the floor and given our bed to a guest. Our parents stayed hungry, at times again, to keep their children full. Our social circle has always invited us to follow a path – belonging to whichever religion – that makes our life worth living. We work better in groups, as a unit, as a team, as a collective. Our identity lies with us, in our space, in our environment not a few thousand miles away.
India has always encouraged diversity. If you look at an Indian currency note, you will find 15 languages on the back and Hindi and English in the front making that 17. Which country in the world uses as many languages on their currency? Which country speaks these many languages and many more? Only ours! We communicate with different cultures speaking different languages, celebrating different festivals, following different faiths, eating different foods all in one country. Realizing and respecting this fact immediately gets me to be a lot more comfortable when I am speaking to people beyond our borders.

The purpose of this note is to ensure that individuals who choose to be in the service industry need to look at the next level of professionalism – super professionalism which translates to normality. How normal can you be, with what ease can you deal with a customer is the main goal. This note also aims at looking at the next level of customer satisfaction after customer delight. Customer exuberance. This note allows individuals to take ownership and responsibility of every task they do thus increasing their entrepreneurship quotient – a product of the sum of emotional Quotient (EQ) and Intellectual quotient (IQ). The next level. Passion Quotient (PQ) is catching up soon.
 
Vikram Badhwar, CEO, Syngrity, is a communications coach, an experiential educator, and an artist trying to bridge the gap between the creative and the analytical side of our brain. He consults global teams in the space of learning behavioural patterns and implementing new techniques to reach Max Q potential.

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