The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized a management development programme on “Selling Successfully in Fiercely Competitive Markets” on 25th January 2017 at Hotel Sonnet, Salt Lake, Kolkata.

The programme was meant for managers and executives at middle and senior levels of the organization and from various functional areas who are involved in (or provide support to) development of business level strategies, formulating and implementing marketing and sales strategies, and strategic analysis of markets and their re-segmentation.The objective was to expose them to the concepts, tools, and live examples from leading organizations.

The programme was designed by Prof Ranjan Das, Professor of Strategy, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Leadership, The Strategy Academy and formerly from IIM Calcutta who was also the sole faculty of the programme. Participants included Senior Level Managers and Executives from ICRA Online Limited, Jubilant Foodworks Ltd, Bajaj Industries Ltd, Team Taurus, Phillips Carbon Black Ltd, Tega Industries Ltd, SGS India Private Limited and Prerana Engineers & Consultants Pvt Ltd.

Key topics of the programme which were explained by Prof. Ranjan Das were:

I. Changing world of business and understanding the characteristics of fiercely competitive markets

II. Analyzing Customers, customer value propositions and why Customers do not buy our products

III. Analyzing Competition and their game plan

IV. Selling to direct customers, institutions and channel partners: Addressing their concerns and expectations

V. Special topics:

• Demand innovation for growing sales

• Provocative selling

• Competing against low cost rivals

• Selling during depressed market conditions

VI. Personal Skills essential for achieving success in selling

• Understanding self and others for establishing socially comfortable relationships with customers

• Negotiation and conflict resolution

• Inter-departmental communication, coordination and influencing support services to deliver along the lines customers want

• Result orientation

• Time management

• Essence of personal selling and psyche of a successful sales person

This program on Selling Successfully in Fiercely Competitive Markets provided a perspective on strategic challenges faced while doing business in highly competitive markets, caused primarily due to excess capacity and frequent recessions, and facilitated discussion amongst participants on the options available at firm level to achieve competitive success even when the overall economy and sentiments in general are subdued.