Humans are faced with countless competitions in life. All of us want to win, but our destiny is somewhat governed by our personality. Terry Kwok, a sales guru at Alibaba.com, is passionate about his job and boxing. Once an amateur boxing champion, he brought his competitive and tenacious mind-set to the workplace. Terry has been named the Account Manager with the best sales performance across Hong Kong and Taiwan regions for three years in a row. In his seven years with Alibaba, he was promoted four times. In the boxing ring and in real life, he always gives his best and he is a real winner.
In retrospect, Terry graduated from IVE with a Higher Diploma in Sales and Marketing in 2008 and was hired by a design firm as Sales Executive soon after. But months later, the global financial crisis broke out and the whole department was dissolved. Terry also lost his job.
The first turning point in his life was being hired by Alibaba. “It wasn’t easy and I had to attend four interviews. I was the youngest person in the office when I reported duty,” said Terry. Scoring only 12 points at the HKCE exam, he started with the Foundation Diploma in Business Stream at IVE(Haking Wong). When it comes to academic results, he admitted that he often barely passed the exams. Lacking qualifications and work experience, he found himself falling behind others. But that does not mean he will never be a winner in life. “I believe going to school is about training a multitude of personal abilities. Education is not a means to an end and the diploma surely is not the only thing you get out of it. It is actually more important to learn logical thinking, communication skills and stress resilience when you are at school. These are the personal qualities that matter most as a salesperson.”
Analysing business models, saving businesses for clients
“When I first started at Alibaba, I was more diligent than others and I worked overtime often,” Terry said. But working overtime is not always productive and Terry made sure his time was well spent. He worked at the “International Section” of Alibaba then and his job was to invite local small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) to join the Alibaba trading platform and to sell their goods around the world. He explained, “To convince more clients to join our platform, I have to be familiar with online sales models. I spent much time going through a great amount of data and information and turned myself into an online sales expert. I then taught my clients how to run a business on the internet.”
There was a client decided to close down his business due to poor return, and wanted to find a job instead. Yet, Terry was not ready to let go. He did some research on the sales potential of related products and convinced his client to try again with a new online sales approach. He turned around the failing business successfully. “Now he got most of his orders from the online platform. He even saved up enough money to get married.” Terry worked hard to think from an entrepreneurial point of view and earned recognition from his clients. Each of his colleagues deals with 50 to 60 clients on average whereas Terry takes care of over 100 accounts.
Giving his best, learning to let go
Once an amateur boxing champion of Hong Kong in the 56 kg category, Terry is still an avid runner and boxer. Many sportspersons pluck up their courage with the motto “give your best and have no regret.” This also happens to be the motto of Terry at work. But not everyone is ready to give what Terry did. “Financial year closes in April. March is our last chance to bring in more sales and to outperform others. In the past three years, I rented a subdivided flat near the office every March, just to stay away from friends and other temptations and to focus on getting more business for the company.” His morale gets higher every year and even his colleagues follow suit. “My colleague with the second highest sales performance also rented a flat near mine recently. As neighbours, we both worked hard for the company.”
The ups and downs in performance are simply the unavoidable truth that every salesperson has to face. Years ago, the Macau government provided subsidies to SMEs who opened new accounts on Alibaba trading platform. Terry benefited from that as it brought in a vast number of new clients. Later on, the subsidies were cut off and it so happened that Alibaba adjusted the membership fee at the same time. The client pool of Terry dropped from 50 to single digit. “I was really frustrated. I built my client base from ground zero and it was gone overnight. The morale of other colleagues was really low in the office and I was thinking about finding another job. Right then a colleague, a close friend of mine, was promoted to be the department head. He convinced me to stay.” Terry decided to try once more and things took a dramatic turn for the better. Terry was able to achieve outstanding results with the new clients he picked up from others. From this incident, Terry learnt that the macro environment is beyond his control. What he can do is to give his best always. But he must let go and move on when things do not turn out as expected.
Setting life goals, defying negativity at work
Terry agreed that working in the sales field is highly stressful. Only those with good performance get to stay and underperformers are ruthlessly phased out. To keep the fire burning, one must find ways to inspirit oneself and to relieve stress. Terry would set short-, medium- and long-term goals for himself beyond his professional sphere. “When I was young, my long-term goal was to offer a better life for my girlfriend. I put up our photos in the office to boost my morale. My short- and medium-term goals were to repay my student loan and to save up for my own home.” His strongly objective-oriented mind-set helped him deal with the negative emotions at work.
From an account executive to the top sales guru, Terry had four promotions within the past seven years. Apart from broadening his client base continually, he also strives to provide existing clients with value-added services so as to keep them happy. Terry always has new ideas in this regard. For instance, he came up with a coterie concept and tried to create some sort of bonding among those clients with similar background and profiles. He would organise outings and training sessions for clients in the same coterie. He found it more efficient and effective to communicate with them and he also got to understand their needs and concerns better. He also has new ideas to bring in new clients. He said, “It may seem hard for one salesperson to bring in 40 new clients. How about getting four salespersons with completely different backgrounds, such as from banking, logistics or insurance sectors, to bring in 10 clients each? We can then host a four-in-one seminar with all kinds of information for them.” After hearing these new ideas from Terry, it was hard to believe he had just worked for 12 hours before the interview. His voice was bright like the morning sun. You could literally feel the fire burning within, just like the glorious moment when he won the boxing championship.
