In brave new 21st century India, women have taken giant strides in walking side by side, even at times ahead of men in every avenue of life. We cannot escape the fact that Indian society is mostly patriarchal, and women have an uphill task, proving themselves at anything. However, with globalization and access to education in cities, many women have been able to access opportunities that would not have been available a few decades ago.
Priya Sachdev – Sales Director, Miller Heiman Group is one such courageous woman, who has no qualms and the intelligence to grab a good opportunity by the horns.
An Ingenious mind
Priya has been a sales practitioner from the start of her career, which spans two decades across industries and geographies. She has seen the corporate world evolve, and had the ingenuity to evolve with it. Priya aligned with the global sales leader, Miller Heiman Group in 2008, and became the face of this brand in India. Her journey with Miller Heiman meandered from early adopter to consultant, moving on to entrepreneur and now Sales Director for the brand in the Indian subcontinent. She actively represents the group on various online and offline platforms. Priya straddled her deep-rooted feminism with her sales expertise by launching the Indian chapter of the Women in Sales Awards in 2015.
Priya is a straight -talking, transparent leader with a trademark low power-distance persona. Her robust sales experiences and approachable, easy friendliness make it easy for her to engage with senior leaders as well as frontline executives. As a consultant, she uses her intellectual curiosity to explore the businesses that she consults for and is able to challenge standard thinking to enable transformation and top-down goal alignment. Priya has successfully delivered more than 150 projects for the Miller Heiman group in India. These projects have been with leading brands and have impacted their business results positively and tangibly.
The Spark that Keeps her Passion Ignited
Unveiling her motivational mantra – “I believe in the ovarian lottery and the fact any privileges that I have are for a reason. I want to be sure that I have lived my life to justify its purpose”.
Priya has a contagious positivity around her. When asked about this, she says that she approaches each day as a new beginning. She also finds motivation in hard working and positive people around her, especially those that were not born into privilege, and persevered to overcome obstacles and achieved lofty goals. Talking about the most remarkable moments of her life, Priya asserts that “The ability to create and elevate the strategic importance of sales is the key driver of all the work that I do. Every project where we are able to create sustainable behavioral change in the sales professionals that gets them success in their career aspirations is a memorable project”.
Of the numerous projects that she has completed, she mentions two recent projects that hold a special relevance in her life. In one project, they enabled the pre-sales function to define their sales processes and set up a small but strategic team for success. In another, they partnered with a large IT services organization to create effective large account management processes and win wallet share with their key accounts.
A Piece of Advice
Priya acknowledges that Consulting services are the need of the hour and has a low entry barrier that makes it an easy career option. However, she urges entrepreneurs to think through their strategy and positioning as they get into the Consulting and Training businesses. Equating the role of a consultant in a business to a doctor saving lives, she advises budding entrepreneurs to decide if they are passionate enough to make a noticeable difference to someone’s career, and also to be ready for a lot of hard work.
The Proposition for the Future
Priya holds a very optimistic view about the current market scenario and a positive outlook on how the future is going to shape up the business. She emphasizes the need to embrace systems and processes along with investing in learning and unlearning as the answers to future challenges. Priya is confident that the future of sales will be driven by digitalization and technologies like AI. With an eye on the future, she hopes that sales organizations will invest in evaluating their current sales systems, methodologies and processes, and most importantly, nurturing their sales talent to be future-ready.
Source :-The 30 Influential Business Leaders to Watch in 2019