“willingness to learn and ability to never give up are two major factors that drive us towards growth.”
Out of many challenges I faced, one that I would like to share was during my tenure at American Express. After completing under graduation studies, I immediately started working where my job profile was business development and to initiate apt activities to ensure an on-time and scheduled response to the customers. Diving into a diverse and competitive corporate life, I took my job as a challenge and started working towards my goal with utmost dedication. While discussing various ideas of growth with the client, the idea of acquiring a corporate endorsement struck in my head. I took an initiative on the same and I was solely responsible for acquiring corporate clients’ relationship like Deutsche Bank, Aditya Birla Sunlife Insurance and Pretty Secrets, through which my team achieved multifold of the targets. Especially in the case of Deutsche Bank, I discovered an opportunity to get many deals through an activity inside the company, lead the necessary talks with HR Head to make it happen and lead my team members to the activity to help them win deals and achieve their targets. We closed more than 80 deals instantly in the span of four days and the business relationship still continues based on the follow-ups and references.
This business relationship has set an example internally to other team members into how to win the deals more efficiently. This activity helped me to demonstrate my leadership skills to the rest of the team members by guiding them to win deals. I was appreciated by the director and vice-president of the company and was offered four appreciation certificates for my outstanding performance.
It was purely my creativity moving ahead of the curve rather than following the traditional methodology of business development by which I could handhold most of my peers, help them in not just achieving their targets but also guiding them to drive the business in the new fashion.
This experience helped me realise there is more to me than being a marketeer. Hiving a new outlook towards business and pursuing the idea is only possible under good leadership. Hence I decided to pursue an MBA degree to get a holistic idea of business management, and IIM Trichy is an opportunity for me to nurture leadership and management skills and unleash my true potential to follow my ambition of being a leader.