Interviewer: Sohaila Wagih
Publisher: Amira Haytham
“ If the employee is passionate about his job, he will be committed to it because (passion generates commitment) and in turn his productivity will increase and he will be promoted over time...”
Mahmoud Keshk
THE INTERVIEW
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: At the beginning Mr. Mahmoud, could you tell us how you started your career at sales department and why did you choose this field to work in?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: I started my career life as an accountant but after a period of time I felt that is not what I want to do so I’ve decided to shift my career and I’ve found sales field is the most suitable for me and started to work as a customer service agent at one of the branches of Mobinil Company.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: In your opinion, what are the factors that helped you succeed in your career till you have reached your current position as a team leader at Vodafone Company?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: I always work to understand the required tasks very well and then work directly to achieve them. Also while I am doing that tasks I try to find a creative way that is totally different from others.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: As a team leader how you can measure or evaluate the performance of the team?!
Mahmoud Keshk: I evaluate the performance through monitoring each member. We look at the attendance, achieving his required targets every month, his behavior and attitude, his creativity and commitment and his awareness towards company’s services and products.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: From your point of view, what are the qualities of successful sales employee?
Mahmoud Keshk: The most important qualities that any successful employee at any department has are: “passion and commitment”.
If the employee is passionate about his job, he will be committed to it because “passion generates commitment” and in turn his productivity will increase and he will be promoted over time.
Also successful sales man is always aware of the products & services of his company. He knows the advantages and the disadvantages of the products & services and knows how these products or services could be developed. Moreover, he is aware of the products & services of the competitive companies and always try to find creative ideas or solutions that guarantee the continuity of his company in such competitive market.
Also you will always find any successful employee at any department works on himself to acquire the required skills that will help him to be promoted and have endorsements by his senior.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: Tell us Mr. Mahmoud how can sales department achieve high results?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: If the sales department want to achieve high results, it should focus on increasing the quality and efficiency of the product because if the product is always developed, the satisfaction and loyalty of your customers will be always positive. Also sales department should ensure that the product is always available for all customers all the time and they can find it easily. Besides that, developing the products will help the company to compete with its competitors.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: What is the most important thing that distinguish successful sales department from others?
Mahmoud Keshk: It is the creativity and thinking out of the box. Every time you enter successful sales department, you will find such that amazing and creative ideas!!
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: What are the most problems that face sales & customer service departments?!! And what are your suggestions to solve these problems?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: The most important problem that face any sales department at any company is the level of call center service. The companies are always in need to hire employees to work at the call center staff and the hired employees don’t have the enough training before they start working so that they don’t do well at work.
So the companies should work on training the call center employees well before they start working and also the call center team need to be more creative and adopt a new way or a new strategy like other foreign companies so as to improve its efficiency.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: Tell us about Transactional NPS (TNPS) surveys? And why companies use these surveys?!
Mahmoud Keshk: Transactional NPS surveys are generally conducted to understand a customer’s experience at a very specific interaction. Here, the goal of the survey is to know how satisfied the customers are with a specific process or transaction. It is not aimed to evaluate the overall customer loyalty to your company but it measures customer’s likelihood towards a particular process. Transactional NPS can act as a frontline feedback tool that can diagnose customer problem transaction. These feedbacks help an organization in taking corrective measures to rectify the problems with existing processes.
Transactional NPS surveys are conducted after any process with the customers so that you need to reach out to your customers just after any interaction so that the customers don’t forget that transaction (or the experience associated with it).
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: In your opinion, what are the criteria or skills that sales employees should have?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: The ability to convince the customers with the products, his communication skills, and the ability to listen to the customers and knowing their needs well.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: If the performance of the team is low or if the team doesn’t achieve the required targets, how you deal with that?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: It’s very difficult that all member of the team don’t achieve the required targets but maybe one of the members doesn’t do the task that he was asked to do. In this case, we give the employee another chance to achieve his target and if he didn’t, he would lose his job.
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: Does sales job differ from one company to another?!! If so, how?!!
Mahmoud Keshk: Yes, sales job differs from one company to another and this depends on the kind of the product and the purpose of the company from sales department whether it just want to sell its products regardless of any thing or want to enlarge its business like national and multinational companies which focus on developing their products and add a value to their customers not just focus on selling the product
-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: From your experience in sales department, what is your advice to undergraduate students or fresh graduates who want to enter sales department “what are the skills they need to work on”?
Mahmoud Keshk: My advice to anyone who want to enter sales department is to enhance his skills.
For example: How to convince customers with the products, his negotiations skills also should be developed, his communication skills should be excellent to be able to deal with customers, English language and computer skills are also very important skills. Also he should be knowledgeable about the latest news and information at sales field.