Create more than you consume

Sales musing #2

Learn and be curious is the most under rated leadership principle in the corporate world. One more philosophy that we often forget is that we have an equal responsibility to contribute. Contribution to every stakeholders/team members we interact with. Contribution to the life of others. Contribution to the ecosystem.

In 2020 shareholder letter by Jeff, he mentioned the importance of a principle – “ Create more than you consume “ . This couldn’t be more applicable to any other role other than sales. The mere existence of a sales team is to create disproportionate value for our customers. Whether this it is through product expertise or any solution. Our goal should be to create maximum value for all our stakeholders, employer and customer in whatever capacity.

In its true business sense, we all are creating value for our employer and the employer is paying us in return basis the value created by us. When looking at a macro level , every job is trying to add or create value in the system . But, we sometimes overlook the importance of adding or creating value in our day to day task. We sometimes ignore to add value in few relationships unintentionally. And relationships defunct when either of the side stops adding value.   

Example we might forget to

One thing that I realized lately in my career is that learning compounds fast if we share it and depreciates faster if we don’t . This is the single biggest incentive that sharing offers .

Today the most successful companies are open source . Most successful products are those which have democratized the way of doing things . Some of the companies thrived because they were open source. 

One of the best example is comparison between Wikipedia and Microsoft encyclopedia Encarta. Both the companies aimed to become a single place of repository for any information.  Encarta charged few bucks , written by specialists  and shared with few whereas wikipedia was open source and relied on knowledge sharing and was free of cost. We all know which model is more successful.

This philosophy does not only work with employee employer relationship , but  in every other relationship . Be it personal our friends/ family / relatives. I will somehow ignore talking to a friend who cribs a lot , or drains me out. But I will try talk to a friend whose presence brings joy /good vibes . True for relatives, I always make a point to teach something new to my relatives which is a value add for them . For ex- (how to book tickets online, how to transfer money , how to order from amazon etc. etc. ) . Morally, we all owe this to the ecosystem that we have been in nurtured in.

If at all I need to evaluate my life objectively and mathematically , the only and the most important metric will be the value that I am creating as an employee, friend, parent, relative , manager, entrepreneur etc. Similarly if I want to realize the importance of anything or task  , I will look at the value that is created by that thing in my life. And this value is different from the price , a 50k mobile may not add value to my life but a 1k sports shoe definitely can .

Lastly, I strongly feel that the 2 most important, under-rated and  un-coachable skills required for any sales person are learning and giving .  is a. Learning – Learning as much as we can and constantly keeping us up to date in this ever evolving world   b. Giving – How well are we able to contribute in the learning of others or add or create value to an ecosystem  .Hence, don’t be a passive listener any more but be an active participant in any discussion. Don’t just be a consumer of information or best practices instead try to equally contribute in creating it.

So learn more , share a little more and create far more :)