Customer Centered Sales – Russia

“Everyone sells something; either a product, service or idea for some sort of pay or compensation.” by George J. Dole former Vice President of Sales and Marketing at J.T. Baker Specialty Chemicals, Phillipsburg, N.J. My father told me this idea endless times. The more time goes by the more I agree with his statement.

When I was 13 dad taught me how to do business forcast “pre-Excel type” spreadsheets manually by-hand after I passed my Algebra-I class with an A+. In college, In college I wanted to escape what I thought was the tedium of business so I changed majors to Political Science at Villanova University but added lots of statistics courses. In graduate school I got a free Masters degree by teaching  a required Statistical Methodology SPSS course that all Villanova undergraduates and all Social Science graduate students need to take. When I graduated I realized that I became a computerized version of my father’s background and found business sales and marketing exciting.

Although Russians are getting much better at business management there is precious little customer service experience. This is understandable since formal Customer Service experience was not needed or existed in the Russian business culture from 1917 until about 1998.

One of the things I do now is combine the sales and marketing teachings of Rob Jolles, (the former Head Sales Instructor at Xerox Corporation), which I learned from my Xerox trained sales manager at Digital Direct Service (a B2B IT/IS sales company) , Total Quality Management that I learned while I worked at The Conference Board in New York City and add top Customer Service concepts from various sources for seminars for Russian and “International” companies in Moscow.