Coffee and Chat: A Very Different Sales Executive

We are sitting across each other at the cozy and dainty café in Gokturk we both like: Delicious. As hundreds of questions I want to ask him pop in my mind, I realize that I actually know him very little personally, even though I have professionally known him for about 20 years! I have been in the position of being his customer in various corporations. He is both an entrepreneur and an enterprise sales executive in the Turkish IT industry. Earlier days of his career he was technical, which really helps a lot in empathizing with the customer.

Mehmet Ali Tombalak is the opposite of the sales executive stereotype. In fact, when you are in meetings with him, it seems like he is the technical or operational executive somehow supporting the sales process. He is extremely modest, never dresses ostentatiously, talks deliberately and is always calm and kind. People in the Turkish IT industry like and trust him, it is the kind of trust that is hard earned over many real shared experiences. Behind the mischievous flicker in his eyes, you can sense the wisdom and practical intelligence of a seasoned businessman.

As we are sipping our coffee, there is ease and rapport that comes from mutual respect. We both consider ourselves and each other veterans. We have been through a lot, but still have the desire and energy to do great things.

We are veterans of the IT industry which has enabled the banks and later the telecom sector, to be competitive with the most technologically developed peers in the world. It has happened in our career-life time and we share the belief of “having put some salt in the soup” as the Turkish saying goes.

As I ask him the first question, I am thinking about what would be a single word that would resonate with his personality. Yes, probably he is one of the most egoless people I have ever known in my life.

How can you always be so positive?

“I am positive because I am aware of where I started in life and where I have come. I never chased after money, I always pursued work I wanted to do, work I enjoyed doing. There is over 7 billion people on earth, many others have done what we have done, and even more. That is why I don’t like saying “I did it” and not going into that conflict makes you a happy person.

AHA, flashes in my brain! He is consciously and intentionally egoless. I wonder how he self-manages to be so.

How can you be so egoless, in an industry where there are so many big egos?

“It might be the advantage of coming from the East of Turkey (he is from Gaziantep). You then know both the West and the East. In East family, values and social relationships are the most important things. In West on the other hand, individuality and individual ambitions are the priority.  

Why are humans so self-important? There are so many countries and so many people on Earth. There is no reason to distinguish oneself.

Furthermore we should be objective about ourselves. For example, as the Turkish IT industry, we have not been able to create an international brand. People criticize some countries, but we should admit that they are innovating the technologies we are using.

I have always enjoyed reading biographies, I think that is very beneficial as well. You learn from other people’s experiences.

Finally, I am a good observer, awareness is important. You need to always question what is going on.”

From your experience, what would you recommend young people?

“First, to be tenacious, to be a fighter.

From the book of the Starbucks’ founder the message I got was the following: In addition to the significance of putting your heart and soul into the business, getting investment into the company again and again by showing that you have your heart and soul in the business, is the critical factor that made the story happen!!! He says that their goal has been to build a company that can get investment repetitively. It is very difficult to grow just locally and organically.

All these great success stories are global, today the world is not just a city or a country anymore, it is global. Young people living and working in Turkey, should work aiming to produce something international, something broader. It can even be an app to put in the Apple Store.

In Turkey, the available scale is not sufficient. There are a lot of players in the market, causing the prices thus the profitability to decrease. For example, already there are 32 licensed Fintech companies in the Turkish market. (The law regulating companies to provide payment services was published mid 2014) So secondly, think global.

Thirdly, I would advise young people to have clear targets and to pursue them.”

You are very different from a typical sales profile. What is the best way to sell?

“To really LISTEN. Let the customer talk. Be sincere. When all else is equal the customer will buy from the person she/he likes.

When I lost a deal, I always knew who got it and why. Because the customer would tell me that they are sorry they will have to buy from someone else and the reason.

During the bad times, you should be at customers’ side, be supportive.

Money is the last thing to talk about. Always talk about the customer need and how you will meet it first. Some years ago, a company stopped serving a bank, because the bank did not accept to pay a certain amount. The Bank had urgent need for a service, I immediately arranged for it without even talking about money. After 10+ years that bank is still a customer.

Never be arrogant or egoistic to the customer or act wealthier, stronger than them.

I always say that “Under high pressure coal turns to diamond!”. Our difficulty was that in the beginning we were not a brand and when we became a local brand in our sector, we had to compete with international brands that have the advantage of easy access to the customer such as IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft. (He means Probil, the IT services company that he was a partner of and that he managed many years. Probil was later acquired by Netas). But this was also our strength, because it made us humble and we had to be creative and find ways to have good communication with the customers and to provide good service. Being local and small made us agile.”

What do you enjoy doing the most?

“I used to enjoy creating value, but now I enjoy to creating value with the team. When I was a technical person, I was okay working with the machines because that is one-way communication, machines just responded to my commands. I thought that I’m a shy person, that’s why this is a very good starting point for me. After all, I thought, I can sell these products better than the sales guys because these guys do not know them. In the beginning, it was very difficult for me, because now the communication was bilateral and most of the time it was managed by the other side. But after a while, I realised that I am not that shy and I can create value, which is joy.

After all this sales experience, I realized that I can create more value but I do not have enough time to do so. Time is the most valuable thing, you can’t go and shop for it. When you are ready for the next step, you must create time for it. For effective time management, delegation is crucial. I learned how to delegate and coordinate.

At this stage, I like observing and analyzing, analyzing people’s career  path with them and forming their career road map, similarly developing forecasts and predicting the possible future of companies by evaluating the company structure, strategies, financials and operational state.”

What is your dream?

“I want to live 3-5 years in a different country. It does not have to be a popular country like USA or UK, just a different country. I believe living abroad culturally enhances you, it increases awareness. At the same time living abroad enables benefiting from and being nourished by diversity. I would be happy if I can start initiatives that help future generations to be more harmonious with diversity and to become able to create value.

I hope to do this by expanding one of my businesses abroad as an entrepreneur and going there to live and to work for a few years.

For example, I really admire Finland, how they transformed their country via education. I read “The Country of White Lilies” and I was very impressed. However, I don’t like cold.”

What do you perceive your unique function to be?

“If I focus on something, I make it happen. I will mobilize all the resources necessary to get it done.

I don’t try to do everything myself, however I arrange the person who is good at the task at hand to do it.

I continuously observe and then bring different perspectives to the situation.”

How do you relax?

“I like reading books and watching movies, but the best are activities with my son. He motivated me to cyle and swim and also he likes playing GO and now I play GO whenever I need to refresh.”

Would you recommend a few books that you think are must read?

1.   “Why Nations Fail-Daron Acemoğlu & James A. Robinson:  to see that what we are going through is the same as all developing countries go through. It is a thick book, but sections can be read selectively.

2.   Doppler-Erlend Loe: Written with Norwegian sense of humour, a book that makes you smile and look at ourselves from the outside in this sterile and surrounded environment. Being good and short, it that can be read quickly.

3.   Two books by Irvin D. Yalom: When Nietzsche Wept and Lying on the Couch. Irvin D.Yalom is a psychotherapist and both novels are about experiences of psychotherapists. They explore if therapists are treating their patients or in reality are they actually healing themselves.

4.   First, Break All the Rules-Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman: This book has a lot of research behind it. With many examples, it explains that you can be successful only by focusing on your strengths. I can say that managers will be inspired from a lot of things in this book, it is also an enjoyable read. I have given it as a present to many colleagues.”

5.   Two books that I shared most with my co-workers have been: The Dip-Seth Godin and Life is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment-Peter Buffett.

How do you give negative feedback to people who work for you?

“Immediately, positively and without demotivating the person. At the end of the day, if the person is demotivated, it will affect the company. Also it is a dialogue, we both share our points of view, we have to convince each other. I may be wrong. Usually, I ask the person to prepare a SWOT for himself/herself, then we review and discuss it together. I don’t believe in yearly reviews, feedback should be immediate and about specific work or incident. I do not like acting “as if”.

I care very much about a person working in the best position for himself/herself. I act with the principle that a person is the right person for the company only if the person is in the right position. I will support a colleague with an opportunity to move to a better position for their career in a different company, even if the person is very valuable for the company. I help him/her decide by doing their SWOT analysis with them. I have remained friends with colleagues that we have parted this way. Reflecting on employees being in the right position and enabling them to move to the correct company if necessary, has been my number one priority.”

In bad times how do you motivate yourself?

“I believe in gratitude. I think about people who are less fortunate or who are in a worse situation. As long as we are alive any problem can be solved one way or another.”

What motivates people at work?

“Our team was very motivated although we could not pay as much as some other companies, because:

·      They were empowered, i.e. sales people determined the margins in the proposals,

·      We were transparent, i.e. the financials of the company were fully open to the employees,

·      There was dialogue, communication was both ways between the managers and the employees,

·      We grew together, we learned from each other.”

What would you ask yourself if you were me?

“I would ask “When you reflect back what do you think your most important gain of your career is?”

I would say sharing and compromise. After the first five years of work experience, I became a partner in a company via a new job offer, without being an investor and I worked a very long time in this company. This experience has been my philosophy throughout my life. I learned growing by sharing, earning more by sharing and compromising. We could resolve our differences by compromising even in a multi-partner structure and we benefited from it. I implemented the same strategy in the company I set up and never preferred to be the only one to win. I invited colleagues who I believed that would contribute, to continue with me and to win together. Thus, we share the ownership, the responsibility, the potential roadmaps, the earnings and even the risks of the company. We achieve our targets much faster with their valuable contribution. Therefore, I believe that being able to share and the culture of compromise which is a result of that, are the most important points in business.”